2020 found us in the middle of a bunch of exciting product developments, we were all ramped up to have an alltime season, but then the Covid pandemic hit and we altered course a little. We shifted our energy into our Version 5 Hyperdrive design. This was a major iteration where we have created our own gears and upped the game once again. The main advantages of the new gearing is a beautiful harmonic whirl of a sound that replaces the louder reduction noise of the planetary gear at top RPM. We have also spent a lot of time getting to know our new prototype quick release interface system and all the variations to work around on todays top end mountain bikes. Being on the forefront, and inventing these systems takes a lot of hands on riding, installing, tweaking and obsessing over. 2020 has been great for this! Photo on right is feild testing the new gear to make sure it is ready for handcrafted west coast production.
2020
Hyperdrive
2019
New Ventures BC
In 2019 Kranked participated in the annual New Ventures BC tech summit competition. 130 companies started the competition. After 3 elimination rounds Kranked found itself competing for the top price in the Top Ten! Being the only hardware based enterprise, we fought hard and managed to place 4th, just outside the cash prizes we were salivating over. The New Ventures tech summit was a pivitol moment for our team, giving Kranked the confidence and exposure to continue revolutionizing the electic bike industry!
2018
STRAIGHT UP KRANKED
Meet some amazing people including para Olympian, Kelly Smith and his brother Kevin, who took the photo.
Push the performance boundaries some more, spend a bunch of time doing ‘company build’ and get first round of investment!
Performance, Modularity and Style. Straight up Kranked
Feeling confident that the product is worthy of commercialization after a whole lot of testing.
New KI’s (Kranked Interface) go to production. Custom molded platinum silicone inserts are made to protect the bike frames from any contact.
Our product offering now is made for the majority of bikes on the market and not just for the Santa Cruz models.
The Kranked Interface has two key adjustments, allowing the drive unit to pivot upwards 6 degrees and the top cap to adjust to different thicknesses.
Dual Sport madness. The best of mtb , skiing and electric drives! Added a ski to the Kranked Hightower+ Hyperdrive and ! Holy Shit.
Broke 4 skis over the course of the winter. Loved every minute of it!!
2017
NEXT LEVEL
Our engineering and intense product focus is paying off as the performance of the Superdrive allows us to take another performance leap and run higher current through the system, adding torque and speed.
The Superdrive's big brother is conceived - the Hyperdrive.
20% more speed, torque and efficiencies. 120amp draw with 55amp continuous and a 67.2 volt battery.
The Moment film is released and the story of Kranked is reawakened 20 years on!
Kranked V10 Hyperdrive wins the best of Show at the 2nd annual Lost Seirras Electric bike festival.
2016
HIGH PERFORMANCE
The performance of the V10.6 Superdrives was crazy. It’s a whole new performance paradigm and Kranked is virtually alone pushing this frontier as the bike industry has a lot of resistance to such a performance paradigm leap.
By this time we had done a whole bunch of small run, fast iterations on our prototype units. Now we were at Version 4.
Internal air cooling, improved electrical efficiencies, custom heatsinks, modular drive carriers, new freewheeling Krankedsets achieve a new level.
Equally groundbreaking for us is that the E2Superdrive gets styled! Kranked set about to make the system look amazing.
Made in small craft batches at the Kranked HQ on the Sunshine Coast of BC we wanted our products to look as good as they performed.
Equally groundbreaking for us is that the E2Superdrive gets styled! Kranked set about to make the system look amazing.
Made in small craft batches at the Kranked HQ on the Sunshine Coast of BC we wanted our products to look as good as they performed.
Got totally distracted by the opportunity to take 25 ebikes into the Chilcotins for a heli tour! A totally crazy undertaking. More on this one day.
The performance of the V10 Superdrives is crazy. It’s a whole new performance paradigm and Kranked is virtually alone pushing this paradigm.
2015
PEAK EXPLORATION
New level of performance pushed Kranked to explore the high alpine and reaching peaks, way out there!
Shredded V10’s everywhere - off the hook! A year of, tuning, iterating, and adjusting to this next level of output.
10X power on a mountain bike meant a whole lot to figure out!!
The journey of pushing the limits, pushing the technology and pushing the level of riding continued.
Crankworx 2015 - 300 peeps went for their first demo run through the parking lot. It was a bit nut ball as almost everyone hit the throttle too hard and went wheelie rocket for a time. Needless to say they got e lek tri f i ‘d.
“You can’t hold a good shred down” keeps us peeled on getting more performance from the bikes, drives and all the parts.
Shredded a ton and learned as much as we could to make the next units better.
oh yeah we renowned the shop!
2014
Birth of the Superdrive
With a new engineering focus, motor efficiency dominated Kranked’s R&D efforts along with the achieving a natural mountain bike pedal cadence with the assist.
We knew what we wanted and the prototype E2 drive system was blowing our minds with the natural pedal cadence ride feel along with no overheating or runaway overheating.
It changed the primary ride characteristic from lightweight moto to distinctly mountain bike with moto like acceleration!
At this point there was no turning back, the performance gains of the Superdrive prototypes were huge. It allowed for much better efficiencies in the motor and less heat generation on the steep climbs. The pedal cadence integration also drastically improved the ride feel and handling of the bike.
Kranked became 100% committed to creating it’s own drive system.
This changed the business model and the daunting journey as an eco shred tech startup began.
First reveal of the E²Superdrive at the Vancouver Bike show in March - On the new carbon Nomad 3.
King of the Motos - pushing the boundaries. Doug Dalton and Todd Romano become first emtb's to race a Moto race.
The new Santa Cruz 27.5 V10.6 is released and is a perfect, mucho amazing high performance bike for the E²Superdrives.
All of our prototyping and testing informed us that the extra power of these kits really loves a strong , overbuilt bike like the V10. The move to 27.5 inch wheels made the V10 a whole lot better allowing for much better all mountain pedalling..
2013
RIDE FURTHER FASTER
Year started wide open, and never slowed down. The V10’s were dialled. Kranked was on fire and and was spreading the stoke and wide.
Pushed all the technology to it’s breaking points, over and over. Learned, fixed, improved. Rides in the coastal British Columbia were showing us where improvements needed to happen.
Custom builds of Santa Cruz Nomads and V10’s were financing our electric riding addiction.
Full throttle - Erides Van with solar trailer went on tour hitting up Google, Santa Monica and then Sea Otter where Kranked rocked it in style with the VIP Cuda lounge as a booth!
Then we hit up Moab (OMG) and then set up in Whistler Village with a pop up store, running tours and selling bikes. Love Whistler!
By the end of the summer, after a huge year of stoke our excited bubble of reality was pierced a bit.
It became apparent that there was a lot of resistance in the mtb community to electric bikes on the trails.
Kranked’s exuberance and outward facing personae pivoted towards product development. Dr. Eric Enga joined the team as Director of Engineering and started working on a new drive system.
Kranked made it’s third interface for the V10! Trying to match the quality of the bike in both style and performance.
Performance, Modularity, Style became the design criteria and Kranked set it’s sights on producing a truly high performance electric drive system that gives you non stop superhero riding capabilities.
End 2013 with a little edit that showcased the Kranked Ego Kit
2012
RIDE HARD RIDE FREE
First Ego Kit arrives from Austria in January. JF, from Spin Cycles, the gnar gnar courier from the opening of Kranked 2 installs first drive system on Kranked EViper.
40 rides are logged in the first 60 days. Mind Blown.
Kranked becomes the Canadian Distributor for Ego Kits.
Our first little film piece starring JF Petit riding analog and Linden Feniak riding the Kranked Viper Ego 2400.
This is the first high performance electric bike Kranked built.
This bike with the high torque Ego Kit e lek tri fi 'd. It showed us just how amazing this fusion of technologies could be and our ride experiences along with our imaginations went wild.
Sea Otter 2012 - Kranked approaches Santa Cruz Bicycles to build a demo fleet. Four Nomads are customized and branded Erides.
Over the year this develops into building and selling Santa Cruz Bikes with custom installed Ego Kits direct to consumer.
Here’s a gem of a little video starring some random riders and the one and only Glen at Sea Otter 2012.
It was the first Sea Otter where Kranked discovered the amazing trail network right out the back in Fort Ord.
It was also where Kranked met super E enthusiast and master machinist Chris Rothe.
Kranked partners with Chris Rothe of Rothe Machine Works, to develop a custom interface for the drive units.
Thus the journey of improving the system innocently starts.
The new interface improved performance by reducing lateral flex and looked way better.
The Santa Cruz 10.5 Carbon is released and the goal of creating the “highest performance mountain bike on the planet,” becomes real.
Pure e lek tri fi’d shred. Rothe and Enga shred Moab, Vegas, Santa Cruz, Whistler, Sunshine Coast and North Vancouver on custom Kranked V10.5 Ego’s.
The ERIDES Van on tour! spreading the gospel and having “Rides of my Life!” A couple times a day.
It was the golden days of discovery.
So much stoke and endless ride adrenaline. The ride was pure high performance unlike anything we had ever experienced. It just kept getting better and better.
Interbike 2012 - totally nutbar. Looking back on it, it was fucking disruptive, the industry must of been hating hard on us, but we didn’t really notice. Way to busy shredding!
It was kinda a snowboard into the ski world sort of thing. Except instead of partying we were braaaping all around the place. Massive grins and good times.
The future is now, we were just really early!
The power and speed of these drives demanded the best spec’d mountain bikes. Stiff frames and pivots, tuned suspension, 4 caliber brakes, it all really made a huge difference to the performance.
The V10.5 Carbon hit all the marks and delivered a confidence inspiring ride, every time. Kranked was riding hard and free!
Fontana Indie Edit. Kranked ended up hanging out at the Barracuda VIP lounge and getting some Indy culture in us.
By the end of 2102, Kranked was all in on the high performance electric mountain bike and it's superhero ride experience.
Kranked was selling custom built Santa Cruz V10’s and Nomads with Ego Kits with custom Kranked Interfaces along with just stand alone Ego Kits for people with bikes already.
2011
PIONEERS
A couple of years since the last film, Bjørn Enga, the man behind Kranked, was searching for inspiration amongst the basement dwellers of Interbike when he came across these dudes.
Australian shred brothers, Mario and Dani Priening had a booth set up with their high powered electric Ego Kits.
A 100 foot long braaap down the exhibition hallway on an Ego Kit equipped mountain bike was all it took. Bjørn had found the mtb nitrous.
The universe had provided a very powerful jolt of adrenaline fuelled inspiration. One that would become Kranked’s new destiny.
Text
Kranked salutes Mario and Dani for pioneering the Ego Kits and bringing the stoke to North America in 2011! True shred heroes and amazing guys.
20+ YEARS AGO
Kranked - Live to Ride was released.
This film started the freeride revolution and forever changed mountain biking as we know it.
It also launched Kranked onto a trajectory of travelling the world and filming the best riders. The riding was rowdy, the spirit free and the stoke massive. It was a golden age of shred and film making.
The mission was to inspire people to get out into nature with a healthy dose of adrenaline and to push the sport into new cool realms.
This was the start of Kranked. Now many years later the same excitement and paradigm shifting performance has once again captured Kranked full attention.
The years below give you a snapshot into the journey Kranked has been on pioneering the all new sport of high performance mountain biking.
Live to Ride!
Thanks for checking out our story. Sign up for our newsletter if you would like to keep up to speed on Kranked and what we are up to!
RIDE HARD RIDE FREE from all of us here at Kranked.