With our analog Elja, we reintroduced the concept of big, wide tires on mountain bikes. Even for XC bikes, all Elja models fit up to 29x3.0” tires. And they’re faster and more fun for it.

Roadies and gravel racers figured this out years ago, but most bikes, even trail and enduro bikes have been stuck with 2.6” tire clearance for far too long. We figured it was time to bring all that free speed to the trails, too.

Wider tires roll faster, have better cornering grip, and improve traction and comfort. So we gave the eElja the same massive 3.0” tire clearance.

It comes as standard with Goodyear Escape Max 2.6” tires, which we feel are a perfect balance between weight and grip for a trail bike, but if you prefer faster rolling XC tread you can opt for Goodyear Peak 2.6" tires instead.
If you then decide you want to go all-in and tackle the absolute roughest terrain, no problem! eElja has class-leading tire clearance to easily accommodate 29x3.0" tires!

If you really want to geek out on our reasoning for wider tires, read this.

Lauf Single Pivot
A true single pivot. Without any supplemental links & pivots driving the shock.

But not the “old fashioned” single pivot you might have seen before.

“LS” is not short for Leaf Spring
Lauf made a name for itself with its leaf spring suspension fork. Optimized for smaller hits and vibrations. We’re still as much in lauf with that concept as the day we came up with it. Its instant suspension reaction, zero-maintenance and ultra-low-weight set it in a class of its own for gravel bikes. However, MTB suspension and gravel bike suspension are very different engineering tasks…

Gravel bikes are mostly subject to vibration from rough surfaces. Gravel bikes benefit from a “low-pass filter”, that wipes out high-frequency “stuff” with minimal friction and energy loss. This is done efficiently by the undamped leaf-springs of Lauf gravel suspension forks.

MTB suspension should be good at dealing with larger impacts, eating up impact energy through damping. Hence, we needed a damper in our system. And, when we add a damper, we might as well add a spring at the same time. Modern bike rear-shocks conveniently combine both.

We did not set out to incorporate leaf springs into MTB rear suspension. As that would be approaching things from the wrong end. We set out to simplify MTB rear suspension where we could, while maintaining optimal suspension performance.

LSP has leaf springs
LSP ended up incorporating leaf springs! Just not in the way we (or you?) expected.

Don’t cross a river for water
Studying other suspension systems made us realize that if we chose a good pivot location for a single pivot suspension system, there really wouldn’t be gains from adding multiple pivots, links or sliders. In fact…, we think a lot of placebo-medicine is being thrown around in the industry.

Most MTB rear suspension designs locate their effective center of rotation in a similar area, for good reasons (reasons we’ll cover in our upcoming MTB suspension video-analysis). They however reach their targeted center of rotation through various methods, avenues and alleys. At Lauf we don’t like crossing rivers for water. We simply placed our main pivot in the right spot. In a simple single-pivot manner. Not via needlessly complicated measures.

What does LSP do?

Why don’t all bikes use simple single pivot rear-suspension? And how does LSP improve upon older designs?

1. Flat leverage ratio curve -  Decades ago, multi-link suspension designs introduced the (awesome) possibility of ramping up their coil-spring suspension stiffness towards the end of suspension travel. Giving you responsive suspension that still didn’t bottom out all the time. However, it’s like nobody got the memo that modern air shocks have volume spacers to achieve exactly this. When studying leverage ratio curves of modern multi-link XC/Trail bikes, one finds that they are generally pretty flat, i.e. they are not utilizing their ability to provide a variable leverage ratio through their linkage system. Because, why would they? When the air-shock already does it.
2. Lack of lateral stiffness - The way single pivot rear suspension designs are generally executed, there is a lot of lateral flex. This is where LSP comes in with its:

• Bracing-Box. Firmly bracing the left and right swingarms together (crucially) behind the seat tube. Resulting in an order-of-magnitude laterally stiffer structure than if one would go the traditional route of bracing the sides together in front of the seat tube.
• Oversized main-pivot bearing. BSA/DUB bottom bracket main pivot. For maximized anchoring strength and stiffness.
• Maximized main pivot spacing. For a maximized bracing angle.
• Oversized shapes. Where appropriate for stiffness.

3. Lateral loading of rear shocks - Some single-pivot designs expose the rear shock to undesirable lateral loads (in extreme riding scenarios). This is where LSP employs “leaf springs”, or as we call them, “flex-arms”. The flex-arm design doesn’t provide suspension, but it “greases up the system” and prevents it from damage. It takes advantage of the distance from rear shock to the Bracing-Box in the LSP design, to provide lateral compliance between rear wheel and rear shock when needed.

4. When bike brand X has 4-bar linkage rear suspension, this tends to make bike-brand Y want to come up with a 5-bar linkage system. More is more, right?

LSP is here to improve your Quality of Life Index and give you a fresh breath of simplicity and singletracks.

LSP is single pivot rear suspension, done the Lauf-way!

Our analog Eljas are light for their categories. But this new eElja? It’s one of the lightest e-mountain bikes on the market! Get this… Lauf eElja AND a Lauf Seigla gravel bike weigh less, combined, than many competing electric mountain bikes.

The eElja comes in as light as 36.6 pounds (16.6kg) for the Race build with Goodyear Peak 2.6” tires.

Even the Weekend Warrior build with Goodyear Escape Max tires, alloy wheels and cranks comes in at just 39 pounds (17.7kg)

And it’s tough as nails, too, because we stuck to our guns on frame durability. Rather than build a feathery but fragile carbon frame, we chased light weight with intelligent specs like the amazing TQ HPR60 drive system and our simple LSP design. Even our own 780mm wide MtnBar carbon handlebar helps out - it’s just 200g!

The new TQ HPR60 is more than a significantly updated version of the older HPR50. It is a ground-up redesign, where no stone was left unturned. The result? It is more efficient than before (more range from the same battery size), more powerful and (amazingly) it is even quieter!

HPR60 is the lightest and most quiet drive system on the market, with impressively smooth power delivery.

INSERT DESCRIPTIVE DRAWING FOR CLIMBING RANGE AS A MULTIPLE OF A SKYSCRAPER

It delivers 60Nm of torque and 350W of power. Combined with the integrated 360Wh battery, that’s enough to power most riders up 1400m (4,600ft) of climbing with 100% assist. Or, more practically, it means you can ride for hours and cover plenty of elevation gain on a single charge.

Boost it with the Range Extender

Need more range? Add the optional TQ Range Extender for another 160Wh of juice and you’ll get 2000m (6,600ft) of 100% assist climbing. Over an extra hour of all-out aggressive riding.

All Eljas are fully wireless, from shifting to motor control to dropper posts. With the eElja we took things a step further and integrated the motor’s mode controls into the SRAM AXS Pods, removing the typical extra buttons required for e-bikes.

With the eElja, your cockpit is perfectly clean, just two AXS Pods (one on each side). No screen, no wires, and no extra switches or levers to clutter things up, aesthetically or functionally.

(IMAGE SUGGESTION: Rider POV looking down at handlebar, straight ahead)

And with the AXS app, you can customize how the controls work, setting whichever Pod buttons you want to shift, drop, and cycle through the assist levels.

It’s the cleanest eMTB cockpit you’ve ever seen!

Elja is not a single-dimension optimisation exercise. Generally, you cannot optimize one thing without other aspects suffering. All-in optimising for weight means you sacrifice qualities such as robustness and practicality (no matter what marketing might tell you). Sure, for a major-brand to sell a given bike frame, it has to pass a series of load, stiffness and fatigue tests. However, fully optimizing for weight means you design your bike exactly according to that test criteria, while neglecting other real-world factors.

We like to achieve low weights through smart shaping* and layup design, combined with good manufacturing methods. Rather than using more brittle high-modulus or intermediate-modulus carbon fibers.

Yes, we are boasting about exclusively using “normal” carbon fiber in our products!

By doing so, we are rejecting shortcuts to lower frame weights. Higher modulus carbon makes it easier to pass compulsory fatigue tests and hit stiffness targets, as microcracks don’t develop as much in/around the stiffer fibers. The stiffer fibers effectively “lock” frame members from flex. This would however demand sacrifices we’re not ready to make. Impact resistance of high modulus fibers is far (not just a bit) worse than for standard modulus carbon.

We believe a fast MTB should not just be light, it should also be robust.

*Refraining from aesthetics-driven sharp edges, because carbon fibers strongly "dislike" sharp bends (which results in a higher risk of failure, and/or higher weight as the inefficient shape has to be made up for with extra fibers). And, refraining from aesthetics-driven or pseudo-function kinks or bends, where a straighter "column" would carry a load more effectively.

• Full carbon fiber
• 35mm clamp diameter
• +/- 12mm rise*
• 780mm width
• 200g

*If you want to drop your bar and get aero, you’ll be happy to know that Elja ships with adhesive rubber strips preventing damage to its top-tube from shifters/brakes hitting the top-tube in a crash.