Scott Addict eRide Premium

The Addict eRide Premium takes the design of Scott's flagship race bike and adds a dollop of electrical assistance, creating a bike that is just as much fun to ride uphill as it is down. It still rides very much like a performance road bike though, and with all the cables and batteries hidden, your buddies will barely notice it's an ebike. Well, until you start to pull away on the hills.

I've ridden a handful of e-bikes over the last couple of years, but this is the first time I've actually lived with one for a decent amount of time. One thing is for sure – road e-bikes are a lot of fun. Plus they definitely aren't cheating.

Like many brands, Scott has chosen Mahle's ebikemotion X35 hub-based motor system, and it delivers the power in a very smooth, progressive manner. As you pull away there is no massive surge of assistance – it's more like having a strong tailwind nudging you along.

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It's the same on the climbs. You don't really notice the motor kick in or out, so it just feels like riding the normal Scott Addict with the additional weight being cancelled out by the motor's assistance.

It's tempting to rely on the motor and not use the gears, but ride this like a traditional road bike and you barely know you're on an e-bike.

For starters, if you're a relatively strong rider you are going to be above the 25kph (15.5mph) cut-off for the majority of your ride anyway, unless you're spending the day in the mountains.

Even with the motor whirring away it's not going to turn you into some sort of climbing god. You'll be quicker for a given effort, but you've still got to work hard. I certainly wasn't ticking off any Strava KOMs on the local hills.

In fact, I'd get home having hit the same sort of heart rate figures I normally do, although my average speed would be higher by 1 to 2 mph (depending on the route). So I was still getting the same sort of workout levels.

The frame

Leaving the electronics alone for a second, I have to say this bike is a great ride anyway, thanks to pretty much exactly the same handling and performance traits as the Addict RC 30 I reviewed back in 2020.

The geometry is reasonably aggressive, with this large 56cm model having a 73° head angle paired with a 165mm long head tube and a 560mm top tube.

The seat angle is 73.5°, which puts you in a more forward position for getting the power down, while those other numbers give you a fast and direct handling machine.

With the added weight of the motor and battery, the eRide actually feels really planted on the descents, which gives added confidence when tackling technical sections or stretches where the surface quality is a bit on the dicey side.

With plenty of feedback it's easy to know what the tyres are up to, and banking hard into bends the fork's stiffness allows no understeer or feelings of vagueness.

It's the same on the flat, too. The aero design cues of the frameset and the deep section wheels allow you to maintain speed, and a 30-mile ride on the Addict without turning the power on highlighted just how eager this thing is to get a shift on. It's only the extra power needed from a standing start that makes a difference.

When it comes to climbing, you have two options. Stay sat in the saddle, keep the pedals lightly spinning and make full use of the motor; or, just like you would on your normal bike, stand up and mash those pedals taking whatever bonus assistance you can get.

Either way, the stiffness of the lower half of the frame and the fork won't see you wasting any power. The Addict feels very taut indeed.

What's it for?

For the first week or so of testing, my riding time was pretty limited to around an hour and a half a day, so I couldn't really exploit the motor assistance of the Scott. I was struggling to work out whether it was something that would really benefit my riding and training or not.

After all, I was mostly only using the motor on the climbs, so instead I could buy a non-e Addict and save over 4kg (including the bottle range-booster battery) and climb the hills quicker.

But when the rides started getting longer, and the big, back-to-back days kicked off, I really found the e-bike came into its own. This was highlighted on one of my favourite testing routes, a fairly lumpy loop that covers around 50 miles. There is a bit of everything in it, including a hill that comes about 15 miles from home that's a bit of a pig.

Hill help

It's about a mile long with an elevation gain of over 350ft, and a maximum gradient of 21.1%, although that does constantly change giving an average of 9%. My average heart rate while climbing it was a mere 104bpm!

In fact, looking back through the whole ride I can see a massive reduction in my average heart rate on the climbs where I'd used the motor on full power. The terrain is rolling, and my average heart rate was hanging around the 145-150bpm mark.

I was in the early stages of finding out how much range the battery gave, and only using the internal one – not the range booster battery you can see in the cage – so up until the midway point I had left the Scott in the lowest of the three power settings.

From the midway point to the top of the above climb is eight miles, with a lot of long, draggy climbs. It was also bloody freezing and the snow had turned up two hours early, so I was using everything the motor could give me on these hills, but still working hard enough to keep warm. My average heart rate for that section was 99bpm.

After that climb it's mostly flat with just a few power climbs, so even though assistance was on, my speed was consistently above the 25kph limit for the motor – which saw my average heart rate back up to around 145bpm.

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For a cold, wet winter day my average speed overall was pretty much what I'd normally achieve in the summer (I've ridden this route hundreds of times over the years), but when I arrived home, I could feel it much less in the legs – although I still felt like I'd had a good workout.

If it wasn't for the weather, I might even have enjoyed it!

Jumping on the bike over the following days also saw far fewer aches and less tiredness in my muscles. In short then, if you like your long, challenging routes, but still want a great workout, then an e-bike for the road is an excellent choice.

Motor specs

We've seen many new performance road and gravel e-bikes from Ribble, Merida, Orbea and more using the ebikemotion X35 system, and for good reason.

While it's not the most powerful out there it's a slimline unit and discreet, allowing a road bike to look like, well, a road bike. It only adds about 3.5kg in weight too.

The 36V, 250Wh Panasonic battery lives permanently inside the down tube and is recharged via the port on the seat tube. This port also accepts booster batteries to increase range as you see in the photos; the 208Wh booster comes as standard on this Premium model (our overall weight up top includes the booster, which weighs 1.6kg; Scott claims a medium size eRide Premium weighs 10.75kg without the booster).

If you have any issues with the system, this port is also a diagnostics point.

The batteries power the Hub Drive M1 motor which dishes out 40Nm of torque once a sensor detects the pedals are rotating. As I mentioned earlier, it kicks in very smoothly indeed, and it's the same when you hit the speed limit and it switches off.

The only time it can feel a little lumpy is when you are right on that speed limit and it's not sure whether to keep going or not. That happens rarely, though.

Also, if you're riding in traffic and keep alternating between pedalling and freewheeling at low speed, you sometimes get a little nudge from the motor after you've stopped pedalling. It'll only scare you the first time though...

With the system turned off there is very little noticeable friction, and on the days I was not using the motor or was on a flatter ride, the smooth pedalling and everything else felt just like on a normal road bike.

There are three power levels, which you can toggle through via the iWoc One controller on the top tube. A single press will see the control light up white to show it's on.

Press once for Eco (green), again for Mid Power (orange) and once more for Full Power (red). The same LED shows battery life passing through the same colours as it drains.

It's easy to use while riding and intuitive enough. There is also an app you can pair up to see exact percentages for battery life and so on; it's not the smoothest app in the world, but it does at least give you a heads up on what is going on. The system is ANT+ compatible, so you can pair it to a bike computer too.

Scott claims a range of 120km (74.5 miles) and 2,200m (7,220ft) of ascent when using both batteries. Mahle says it the limit is 75km (46 miles) for just the internal battery. Obviously though, there are so many parameters that'll affect that.

The ride I described earlier was 51.1 miles (82km) with 2,886ft (880m) of climbing, and flicking around the levels of assistance saw me return home with 45% of the single internal battery left.

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It's hard to determine, but I'd say you are going to get a decent day ride in using either the single or both batteries. Charging time from empty is just over 4hrs for both batteries.

Frame and fork

To cope with the added stresses and strains of the motor assistance, Scott has added further layers of carbon fibre to certain junctions of the frame.

To improve structural stability, the bottom bracket area (including the chainstays) get more material than the standard Addict RC as well, as does the head tube where it meets with the top and down tubes, and the places where the top tube and seatstays meet the seat tube.

Scott says this still only gives a frameset weight of just over a kilo.

Like many performance frames, the eRide focuses on larger tube sections for the lower half of the frame – such as the down tube and chainstays – for increased power transfer, while going slender for the seat tube and seatstays for a bit of flex and comfort.

Up front, the head tube is tapered from 1.25in to 1.5in to cope with steering and heavy braking loads.

Overall, the build quality looks and feels very high, and I'm a big fan of the flip paintjob that changes colour depending on the light levels. The one thing I would say, though, is that the cutout around the top tube control button doesn't have the smoothest of edges.

What also helps the aesthetics is Scott's latest cable routing. Like many bikes for 2021 the cables, hoses and wires run internally through the integrated handlebar/stem combo, before entering the frame at the top of the head tube. With this eRide Premium using an electronic groupset, there is very little going on outside of the frame.

The only thing that can be a bit of a faff is if you need to remove the rear wheel. The rear hub is attached to the frame via nuts threaded onto the spindle, so for starters you need to carry a 17mm spanner instead of just a hex key.

The wire along the chainstay that delivers power to the motor has a connector to separate it from the hub, but if you have a puncture you have to tease the connector out through the hole to detach it.

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Once you've had a play and know what you're doing it's not a major issue, but it's much more of a hassle than just whipping the rear wheel out on a standard bike – especially in the rain or dark.

Sizing

The eRide is available in five sizes, ranging from an effective top tube length of 515mm to 575mm. As I touched on earlier, the geometry is a balance of endurance with a racy edge to it.

The seat and head angles are relatively steep, and the head tube height still allows a decent drop to the handlebar if you whip the spacers out. Stack on this large model is 593.3mm while the reach is 384.3mm giving a ratio of 1.55.

The wheelbase is relatively long at 1007.5mm, brought on mostly by the 422mm chainstays. This does add plenty of stability to the ride, though. If you want to get more details, there is a full geometry chart on Scott's website for all sizes.

Finishing kit

The Premium model here sits at the top of the eRide tree and is suitably decked out with shiny bling.

With its Dura-Ace (DA) Di2 groupset, the Addict is an absolute joy to ride. DA Di2 offers excellent gear shifts wherever the chain is on the cassette or chainset (don't just take my word for it, check out Mat's review of the rim brake setup) and the speed and precision makes it one of the best groupsets out there. Cog-wise, Scott specs an 11-30t cassette paired to a 50x34t chainset.

DA doesn't let you down when it comes to the braking, either. With 160mm rotors front and rear, the DA calipers deliver huge amounts of stopping power and you can feel everything through the levers; modulation is easy, as is keeping lock-ups to a minimum.

Syncros is Scott's in-house component brand, and the eRide uses the Creston iC SL Carbon integrated stem and handlebar. Its fully internal cable routing gives a very clean look, but it's also very comfortable.

The flat section gives you a good place to rest your hands on long climbs, and the shallow curve of the drops allows plenty of positions. Stiffness is high too, for when you want to accelerate hard out of the saddle.

The Duncan SL Aero seatpost offers a bit of flex for comfort and is held in place by Scott's effective yet subtle clamping system.

Syncros also supplies the saddle with its Belcarra Regular 1.0. It's a nice place to spend plenty of miles, and I found the minimalist padding very comfortable. I'd prefer it in black though, from an aesthetics point of view.

Wheels and tyres

The eRide Premium uses Syncros' Capital 1.0 40e Disc wheelset, with deep-section carbon rims on a 24-spoke build up front with 32 spokes for the rear. It's a good quality set of wheels and certainly stood up well to everything I threw at it.

There is plenty of stiffness, and no noticeable resistance at the hub when it's unpowered. The hubs saw some really crappy weather too, without any ill effects.

These hoops wear Schwalbe Pro One Microskins in a 30mm width. They're good tyres with oodles of grip and very little rolling resistance. I find Schwalbe tyres can be a little fragile at times, but had no issues here even in the winter months. They offer a plush ride feel which balances nicely with the Scott's frame.

Value

There are four models in the eRide range, with the Premium coming in at a cool £9,199 on Scott's UK website. Okay, that's a lot of money, but compared to the non-ebike version – the Addict RC Pro with much the same finishing kit and the same cool paintjob – it's not as extreme as you'd think. The RC Pro is roughly a grand less at £8,149.

If it's a top-end e-road bike you're after, Specialized has the S-Works Turbo Creo SL for £10,999, although the range starts at £5,499. Scott's range begins at £4,399 for the eRide 20.

The Specialized uses a mid-motor built into the frame rather than a hub-based system, but looks to offer similar outputs. With the piggy-back battery fitted it's about a kilo heavier than the Scott, though.

Our sister site ebiketips was very impressed with the Ribble Endurance SL2 Di2 when they reviewed it a couple of years back.

It uses the same system as the Scott and, while they tested the Ultegra Di2 option at £4,499, Ribble's Bikebuilder can create a very similar build to the eRide Premium (DA Di2, carbon wheels, integrated carbon cockpit and so on) for £7,053.

Conclusion

First up, living with an e-bike over a couple of months was a lot of fun, and I think they really do have a place in the performance road market – especially if you're a rider who, like me, finds climbing a necessary evil to get to the next great descent.

As for the Addict eRide, it's a high-performance beast that integrates motorised assistance really well, to the point you never really feel the transition between e-bike and er, just bike. The handling, ride position and comfort levels are top notch and, while it's an expensive bike, it's fairly priced both for what it is and against the top-end opposition.

Verdict

Fast, comfortable, sweet-handling road bike with the benefit of smooth power assistance