Rise Above and Beyond

When we launched Rise back in 2020 it shook up the world of e-bikes. We certainly don’t claim to have invented the lightweight eMTB category, we just changed the perception of what these bikes could do.

There were some exciting advances in electric bikes at that time, but nothing matched our vision of what we wanted to ride. Existing bikes were heavy, or underpowered, or both! There was a lack of understanding about how to tune geometry or rigidity, and the focus was instead on adding screens or features that were detrimental to performance, such as removable batteries. We wanted to do things differently.

When we set out to develop Rise, we had a clear concept: To create the ultimate trail riding experience. That meant a bike that connected us to the trail. We wanted that pure riding experience we didn’t find with current e-bikes. We took a different direction from most other brands, trusting what we believed.

Walking our own path was challenging; one big hurdle was convincing Shimano to place their trust in us, a worker-owned bike manufacturer from the Basque Country, and let us create custom firmware for their motors, something they had never done before.

That was just the start of the journey. Following that visit to Japan, we started a period of intense testing and tuning. At this time, Orbea was evolving, fresh from the successes of bikes like our first carbon Rallon, the Oiz and Gain. We were expanding our MyO program to allow more riders to create their perfect bikes. In short, we were growing, enjoying successes and trying to do things our own way.

Rise was a big step, pushing our technology and forcing us to create many new solutions that didn’t exist at that time. We knew that to succeed, we needed to achieve the highest standard in every aspect of the bike.