On a recent trip to China where I met with several micromobility companies, I was fortunate enough to spend an afternoon with the electric motorcycle maker Tromox. The team gave me the chance to be one of the first Westerners to ever take a test ride on Tromox’s new MC10 TrailX.
Ahead of the bike’s upcoming US market release, I can already tell you that this thing is a blast to ride and is likely to send shockwaves through the Sur Ron and Talaria communities for its combination of performance and packaging, offering high power riding in a small-format bike.
Tromox brought me out to a motocross track to test the MC10 TrailX, which is already beyond the target scope for this bike.
Keep in mind, this is not a dirt bike. Sure, it’s got a powerful 12.5 kW peak-rated motor and four-bar rear suspension matched by an inverted front fork. But this bike isn’t really intended for flying through the air; it’s meant for riding trails and off-road exploring. (There’s also a street version designed for commuting at speeds up to 90 km/h or 56 mph, but I tested the off-road model).
So it seems the thinking was that if it could handle a jump park, it could handle just about any more “normal” type of riding that recreational and enthusiast riders are likely to put it through on local trails or backwoods exploring.
And by the way, this is one of those test rides that you’re definitely going to want to see, not just read about. Check out my first ride video below, then continue on for the rest of the article!
So there I was, a street rider, all strapped in and ready to roll in unfamiliar territory.
To be fair, I actually already own a Sur Ron, and it’s an awesome bike for backyard hooliganism. But I’m not a motocross rider by any stretch of the imagination.
If either of my tires leaves the earth on a normal day, something has officially gone off-script. I’m a street rider, through and through, more comfortable rubbing elbows with semi-trucks than getting sideways against a soft berm. But I’m not going to say no to a chance to get down and dirty with a bike like this, lack of experience be damned.
And so as the first drop into the track loomed before me, I said “screw it” and rolled on the throttle.
The bike feels only slightly larger than my Sur Ron (and weighs a bit more at 220 pounds or 100 kg), but the power is much more potent, too. It packs around twice the peak power, and it comes on quickly. In fact, I didn’t use full power mode very much since I could easily spin the rear tire in that loose dirt.
I’m not sure what the actual range is, but keeping the bike in a lower power mode offers plenty of dirt-slinging torque while helping increase the run time. Though with a pair of 72V 30Ah batteries, it has nearly twice the battery capacity of my Sur Ron anyway, so I wasn’t worried about run time. It’s like carrying a spare battery to the trails with you, except that it’s already loaded in next to your first battery and connected – no stopping and swapping required.
Someone had played around on the bike before I showed up, and yet even after all of my riding, the bike still had around half a charge remaining when I left at the end of the day.
As I mentioned, I’m not a motocross rider and so I have no idea how to hit jumps. I know just enough to be aware that there is a proper way to do it, and that what I was doing wasn’t it.
After timing a few wrong and landing on my front tire with enough force to throw my chest way further out over the bars than it has any business doing, I decided I should probably stick to my original wheels-on-the-ground approach.
But the good news is that I can tell you the suspension felt great even when I asked it to do things a better rider wouldn’t have needed it to do.
Even trying to keep the rubber side down, I could still enjoy the hill-climbing power of that central motor, which whipped me up the climbs as if they were flat ground. I was sure the speed would noticeably suffer when climbing up the jump ramps more slowly to avoid going airborne, but the Tromox MC10 just wanted to keep climbing. I was amazed that the power didn’t seem to taper off.
If your normal stomping grounds include lots of hill climbing, this is the bike to do it on.
On the berms, I definitely wasn’t going horizontal, but I tried to lean in as much as I comfortably could. The bike felt confidence-inspiring, hugging the bumps and ruts as I whipped around.
The track was quite rutted out when exiting several of the sharp turns, likely because it had been raining off and on the entire time. But the suspension soaked up those ruts and kept me on my line nicely.
As I mentioned, this type of riding is beyond the scope of what the MC10 TrailX is actually designed for. With a 90 km/h (56 mph) top speed and 4.3 kWh of battery, it’s really more of a trail bike designed for fire roads, single track, dirt paths, and other adventure-style riding.
The way its suspension handled the track showed me that trail riding would be a piece of cake for the MC10. And with the power it had for climbing up steep jumps, it will have no problem with real-world hill climbing, which is likely to be significantly less steep than what it was doing on such loose terrain I was riding on.
Combined with the comfortable sizing and refreshing new styling that we haven’t seen in this class. of bike before, I think the MC10 TrailX is likely to do well with recreational and enthusiast riders.
It’s not yet clear what the pricing will be when it enters the US market, and that will, of course, be the deciding factor for how well it will sell compared to all of the Sur Rons and Talarias already on the market. But just in a performance-based challenge, I can tell you it’s going to have no problem against the usual suspects.
