Review: Lauf eElja Electric Mountain Bike

At 37.7 pounds, it’s just a few pounds heavier than my traditional mountain bike. And yet, with a motor capable of providing 350 watts of assistance expertly hidden in the bottom bracket, the new eElja is anything but a traditional bike.

Over the past decade or so, Icelandic brand Lauf became most well known for its innovative front suspension. Rather than the traditional piston style, Lauf created a suspension system that is almost like two forks connected by a series of small glass fiber springs.

These days, Lauf is venturing into complete bikes, recently rolling out the new eElja electric mountain bike in one of two offerings: the high-end Race build, which boasts carbon wheels, upgraded suspension and groupset, and carbon cranks; and the slightly more modest but still amazing Weekend Warrior build, which has alloy wheels, a high-midrange groupset and suspension, and alloy cranks.

I recently spent a week putting the eElja (pronounced “el-ee-yah”) Race model through its paces and was absolutely blown away by just about everything the bike has to offer. Then again, I kind of expect to be blown away by a bike that retails for more than $8,000. Still, given everything I learned about this bike, both through riding and research, I’d say every penny of that list price would be money well spent.

eElja Race model

Photograph: Michael Venutolo-Mantovani

Weight Watcher

The eElja is fast and nimble on descents, and easy and at home on climbs. It's responsive where it should be and relaxed when it needs to be. It’s also a damn great-looking bike.

Thanks to a beautiful SRAM Eagle groupset that includes wireless SRAM AXS PODS e-shifting and a wireless RockShox Reverb AXS dropper post, the eElja looks super clean, as it only has two cables (one internally routed), which operate the bike’s brakes. The eElja Race comes out of the box with a RockShox Pike Select+ fork, boasting 140 millimeters of travel, and a 130-mm RockShox Deluxe Select shock in the rear. The Race sits on E*thirteen Optimus Carbon Sidekick, tubeless-ready, six-bolt, XD freehub 29-inch wheels wrapped in Goodyear Escape Max Trail Lite 2.6-inch tires. And both the Race and Weekend Warrior models come with a massive 12-speed cassette, ranging from 10 t to 52 t.

And yet, despite all of the sparkly bells and whistles (all of which are things you’d expect on a bike at this price point), the bike’s lightness is its defining feature. With many e-MTBs tipping the scales in excess of 50 pounds, the eElja’s sub-40-pound weight makes it easily maneuverable on the trail. Perhaps just as important, it makes it a breeze to maneuver off the trail as well in those benign moments we often overlook: loading it onto your bike rack, getting it into your workstand, and even putting it away or taking it out of your quiver. Especially if, like me, you store your bikes on wall hangers.

Photograph: Michael Venutolo-Mantovani

Power Without Drama

The bike’s TQHPR60 motor is smooth and intuitive, giving power when needed without jerking me forward unnecessarily. Power delivery was seamless, often allowing me to forget I was riding with any assistance at all.

The eElja also thankfully lacks any extraneous technology. There is no LED screen here. No bleepy-bloopy technology. Other than a discreet motor and wireless shifting, the eElja is virtually devoid of any of the contemporary tech we’re starting to see on most ebikes. In fact, the indicator display, letting you know which of the bike’s three modes you’re in, is simply a series of five tiny lights on the bike’s top tube. The lights change color, telling the rider whether they’re getting 50, 100, or 150 percent of the TQHPR60’s up to 350 watts of available assistance. Those lights also tell how much battery you have left.

Speaking of that battery, Lauf built the eElja around a hidden 360-watt-hour unit from TQ-Systems, which is the smallest battery the brand offers. However, Lauf added a 160-Wh range extender, which takes the bike’s claimed 4,600 feet of vertical climbing at 100 percent assist for a 180-pound rider up to 6,600 feet. And, while I don’t have easy access to quite that much vertical, I was able to get several hours of good riding in before even having to think about my charge level.

No bike is perfect (except maybe a Colnago C40), but the eElja comes pretty damn close. In my time with the bike, I only found two small hiccups.

Photograph: Michael Venutolo-Mantovani

First, once I had the eElja assembled (which required little more than putting on the front wheel, screwing in the pedals, and fastening the handlebar to the stem), there was a bit of a learning curve, which was no doubt amplified by the fact that I have never messed much with wireless e-shifting. Because the bike is so minimal in design, it took me a bit longer than usual to sort out how to operate the SRAM AXS POD shifters and how and where to install the bike’s two external batteries (one for the rear derailleur, one for the dropper post). Still, like I said, it was little more than a hiccup.

The second issue is that, while the motor was perfectly suitable for the punchy little climbs in the trails around my town, I felt like it might need a bit more oomph if I were tackling a serious, sustained climb.

Having said that, those two very, very tiny hiccups (the former of which is due in large part to the fact that I try my best to avoid e-shifters and therefore don't have much experience with them) do not detract from the eElja nearly enough for me to call this bike anything less than nearly perfect. I've been riding bikes nearly every day since I was 5 years old (which, ahem, was 38 years ago if you want to do the math).

I've ridden and owned hundreds of bicycles of all stripes, from road and track bikes, BMX bikes, hybrid city cruisers and urban fixed gears, mountain bikes, and vintage bikes. And lately, thanks to this recurring gig, I've been riding more ebikes than I have just about anything else. And with that wealth of experience and knowledge, with those hundreds of thousands of two-wheeled miles on my odometer, I can wholeheartedly say that the Lauf eElja is one of the five coolest bikes I've ever ridden in my life.

Electric mountain bikes are still a relatively new entry to the ebike canon, a subcategory that is quickly gaining new and exciting entries. After a week on the Lauf eElja, I’d venture to say the category has a new benchmark to live up to.