TL;DR
BMC Alpenchallenge AMP City Two is a sleek-looking, full-package commuter e-bike targeted towards a serious cyclist. It’s reasonably light for an e-bike, very rigid and built from high quality and well-balanced components.
It has a great range, requires little maintenance due to belt drive and internal gear hub and is fully equipped for year-around commuting — with fenders, lights and a rear pannier rack. It’s reasonably light weight helps if you need to carry the bike to your apartment.
It has an aggressive riding position (for a commuter bike), but can feel jerky and uncomfortable to ride on bad road surfaces. It has had some minor technical issues during the first 1000km.
I would recommend it as a commuter bike in a city with a good bicycling infrastructure and for a serious cyclist who does a lot of mileage and benefits from the low maintenance, long range, and all-year-round riding features of this bike.
I would not recommend it for a beginner cyclist (aggressive riding position) and for cities with bad bicycling infrastructure (feels bumpy and uncomfortable).
E-bike commuting is great
A few years ago, as we were expecting our third child, my family and I moved to the “suburbs”. This means a daily 2x13km commute to and from work in hipsterville in the town centre. I can choose to go with a car (25mins), a train (40mins) or a bike (35mins).
I have commuted mostly by car for nearly two decades. Last autumn, as I was turning 40, I acutely realised that my sedentary lifestyle was sapping my energy, I felt slightly angry twice a day after driving in the rush-hour congestion and with three kids, I felt I had little time for exercising.
Turns out bike commuting to work solves all of these three problems: it’s an hour of low-intensity exercise, a meditative break between working and not working AND I’m actually reducing my footprint — I require less space, make less noise and spew less pollution to the atmosphere.
2x13km every day, however, is on the territory of arriving to work sweaty and losing your mojo fighting headwinds and hills, so I opted for an e-bike.
I wanted a commuter bike — fully packaged with fenders and lights, low weight to carry into the office “bike room”, long range, low maintenance, reasonably priced.
I initially looked at Ampler or Canyon bikes, but due to supply chain issues with Ampler and the very heavy 25kg weight of the Canyon commuter-style e-bikes, Iwent for the BMC Alpenchallenge AMP City Two.
I paid 2500EUR for it, as it was slightly used (<200kms on the clock over a few months). List price for a new bike was 3000EUR.
I’ve now had it for almost exactly one year and have ridden it for over 1000km during all seasons.
BMC Alpenchallenge AMP City Two review
Looks
It’s pretty for a city-bike. On first glance, it’s a classic “Dutch mens bicycle” shape, but as you look more closely, you see a clean and modern look — an aggressively low handlebar, well integrated motor and battery, seamlessly matching externals like fenders, rack and lights.
The semi-matte paint with metallic shiny specks looks great, as do the subtle BMC stickers where you see more of a contour of the text than the logo itself.
As you look even more closely, you see quality — the fork visually flows into headset, the battery holder seems to be a part of the rear frame triangle, the cabling has been routed internally. The handlebar is very clean with a tiny Shimano display and the front light seems to flow out of the stem.
However, I’ve realised that the people who get this look are middle-aged men. There have been numerous men in their 50s and 60s checking out my bike at traffic stops, sometimes even asking questions. Who would have guessed..
Specs
The components are high quality and the selection is very well balanced. You can tell this bike is from a country with long bicycling tradition and from a company who understands bike commuting and e-bikes.
The frame is aluminium, looks and feels strong and rigid. Presumably this is due to the nature of the bike — a commuter bike must withstand years of low maintenance use and being heaped into a bike-parking lot or being locked to the lamp-post next to a pub in the rain.
The drive train is a 5-speed Shimano Nexus internal gear hub with the Gates Carbon Drive belt drive, coupled to a Shimano Steps motor, controller and head unit set with a 500Wh Shimano Steps battery.
The battery can be removed from the bike — it looks uglier than integrated batteries, but at least it’ removable to charge in your apartment and it’s easily replaceable if it breaks.
There are three power settings “eco”, “normal” and “high” for the motor.
The motor is pretty low torque compared to my cargo-bike’s top-of-the-line Bosch motor, but it’s smooth and can keep you going at 25km/h in most conditions — headwind, small hills, etc.
The range is great — I can get ca 100km out of one charge of the battery when riding in normal mode with normal effort from my part. Range is reduced to ca 60km in very cold temperatures (below freezing) and on hard conditions like ice and snow.
The brakes are Shimano hydraulic disc brakes with 160mm rotors on both front and back. The brakes have a good feel and modulation and provide more than enough power to stop the bike. The problem is more in traction from the skinny tires on wet / slippery surfaces.
The wheel-set is DT Swiss aluminium rims with 35mm Vittoria Revolution “e-bike” tyres. The wheels and tires are probably the weakest part of this bike. Larger size tires would be more comfortable and less prone to pinch-flats. The spoke nipples seem to be prone to corrosion due to salt used for de-icing roads.
The front light is a bright Lezyne that blends well with the rest of the look and lights the road pretty well in dark conditions. The rear light is integrated into the rear fender. I ride with the lights on all the time to be visible to drivers. If anything, I wish the lights would have a flashing mode for safety during daytime riding.
The rear rack is good for carrying small panniers, but it’s too small for “bike-packing” size panniers — the rack is quite close to the seat post and the rider’s heels start bumping into the bags.
Riding
The riding position is quite sporty for a commuter bike. As an avid cyclist, I like it. It allows me to be a bit more aerodynamic and feel like I can put more power down compared to upright “Dutch style” riding. Leaning on the handlebar also makes it easier for me to control the bike in tight corners.
However, my wife hates riding this bicycle, although she is within height range of this frame size. As a novice cyclist, she feels too “hunched over” on this bike and wants to have less weight on her hands. So — it’s worth trying the bike before you buy it — you may not like the riding position.
The very rigid strong frame, skinny tires that need to be pumped to at least 3bar to avoid pinch-flats combined with the19kg weight of this bike make it quite uncomfortable to ride on rough surfaces. And unfortunately, my town has a lot of bad roads.
There is no give in any part of the bike, so you just get all the bumps into your hands and your backside. Since the bike is heavier than a non-e-bike, the saddle hits your butt with more inertia as you go over bumps.
The gear ratios are not ideal, at least for this Gates Carbon Drive version. As this is an e-bike that gives you power assist up to 25km/h, you pretty much always ride at exactly 25km/h. At 25km/h, in 3rd gear, the cadence is ca 85rpm .. which seems ideal on a non-assist bike, but combined with motor assist, it fees too easy and your legs feel spinning empty. In the 4th gear at 25km/h, however, the pedalling cadence is 64rpm and this feels too slow and gives me fatigue in the knees and hips.
I love the low maintenance of an internal gear hub, but I strongly recommend going for a hub with a higher gear count to find a more suitable cadence for your speed. Many internal hubs come with 8, 9 or even 11 speeds these days and I am sure this would make a huge difference.
Issues
By now, I’ve racked up ca 1100km throughout four seasons — winter, spring, autumn and summer. The bike has had relatively few and relatively minor issues.
On the very first ride, I discovered that the factory fender connection is not strong enough and the rear fender rattles a little on rough surfaces. This rattling also caused the tire to wear out some of the rear light housing inside the fender and would have probably ended up breaking the rear light. So, I’ve now been riding with the rear fender zip-tied to the rack. This was a bummer on the first ride on a brand new pretty expensive bike.
The red reflector on the pannier rack was glued with a weak glue and fell off a few weeks into riding the bike. Since I always ride with the lights on anyway, lacking a reflector is not really a biggie.
I’ve had two flat tires — one because of a “snake-bite” on a pavement edge and one from a piece of glass, as I was riding on my studded winter tires that are not “anti puncture”. I’ve had no trouble on my Vittoria Revolution tires that have the “anti puncture” feature.
The 35mm tires need to be pumped up to at least 3bar to avoid pinch-flats from sharp pavement edges and are therefore quite uncomfortable to ride on. I would recommend choosing a bike with fatter tires (47mm?) and going for the “anti puncture” variant. Rolling resistance is less important on an e-bike where motor assist takes care of some of the wattage.
I’ve also had one broken spoke — the bike mechanic suggested that it was caused by the spoke nipple corroding due to me riding in salty conditions. Roads in my town treated with de-icing salt in the winter. Since I will keep riding in the salty conditions, I expect more broken spokes.
I am not considering this to be an issue with the bike, since relatively few people ride in snow and relatively few countries regularly use de-icing salt on roads — so I assume it’s “not in the spec” for BMC engineers.
At 900km, the pedals started making a creaking noise and spinning with a lot of friction. I disassembled the pedals and discovered a cheap “sliding” bearing with a flimsy rubber seal that could not keep the moisture out. I cleaned and re-lubricated the pedals and they work fine for now, but I expect to have to disassemble and lubricate the pedals each year.
The Shimano Steps controller has a quirk where if you step on the pedal too soon, before the he bike’s head unit has finished powering up, it gives you a cryptic error message (something like “Error WL-103”). Makes you freak out and think your new e-bike’s electronics is broken .. in reality, the bike computer is calibrating the torque sensor at start-up and cannot do it if you step on the pedals. Fine, but why not just say this, instead of a vague numbered error message.
Conclusion
If I could go back in time and buy an e-bike again, would I buy this one?
I would like a more comfortable ride and more gear ratios.
But I love the looks, the riding position, the long range, low maintenance requirements and low weight of this bike. I am a fan the full commuter package of lights, fenders and rack.
At 2500EUR, this bike as an overall package would still be hard to beat..
