2024 Maeving RM1S review | Why Maeving’s new electric RM1S makes sense in the city

For now, big capacity battery bikes don’t have the appeal of their petrol counterparts. They’re heavy, expensive, have limited range and take a long time to charge… when you can find somewhere to plug them in. But owning a small electric bike for the city makes perfect sense. You don’t always need the ‘character’ of a petrol engine, gears or clutch when you crawl through town at 20mph and 30mph. So, riding something that’s as smooth, quiet, cool and easy as an electric bike instead, brings its own enjoyment.

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Maeving’s RM1S embodies all that’s good about battery power. It’s a 125cc equivalent with twin batteries you can either charge in situ or remove to plug in at home or the office. The fact it’s only meant for short trips and simple to charge gets rid of electric anxieties at a stroke. It’s fun, easy to get on with, light, agile and smooth with a 14bhp motor powerful enough to keep up with traffic in between towns.

It has an 80-mile range, which is more than enough for the kind of trips you’d do on this type of bike. Maeving has clearly had a lot of fun with the RM1S’s design, which shines through and it can’t help but put a smile on your face on the move. Yes, it’s expensive for its size and you can buy a lot cheaper with pistons and oil, but it’s beautifully built, works perfectly and offers something refreshingly different.

Handling and braking performance are decent around town, although we don’t come close to pushing it during our test and spend most of our day on Maeving’s accessory K-Tech shocks.

The ride is hard over rough roads (but plusher when we soften-off the shock’s damping), but more dynamic than the softer standard set-up we briefly try.

It’s roomy, thanks to a spacious, upright riding position and low seat, but after a few hours the standard stitched seat gives you bum ache. It’s barely bigger than a pushbike saddle, so no surprise. The bar end mirrors wobble, too, but that’s about it when it comes to niggles.

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The Maeving is easy to ride, smooth and silent. It wafts like a two-wheeled tube train and unlike Maeving’s original RM1 model that only did 45mph, the RM1S does 70mph and easily keeps up with traffic between towns. To operate it’s just a case of pulling in the brake lever, thumbing the starter and off you twist-and-go.

In full power (Sport) mode the 14bhp hub-mounted motor has enough go to win traffic light GPs and is always velvety smooth. There are two lower power riding modes (Eco/Ride) that limit speed around town (30mph/45mph), which is a good idea when it’s so easy to drift a few mph over. It doesn’t have a 20mph limiter to suit the snail’s pace limits of central London, though, but Maeving are considering it.

There’s no ‘regen’ fitted to the RM1S, but at low speeds having an ‘artificial’ brake when you close the throttle, instead of being able to freewheel, can be irritating anyway.

Maeving experimented with it and improved the range by 5% but say ‘coasting’ is almost as effective at maintaining charge, because you don’t have to accelerate as hard to get back up to speed. Talking of which, they claim 80miles from a full charge and charging from 20% to 80% takes around two and half hours, or six hours to full.

It’s hard not to be impressed by a company (full of ex-Triumph engineers) that puts so much thought and effort into the design of a small electric bike and you can tell they’ve had fun with it along the way.

The retro style might not be to everyone’s taste, but RM1S has presence. It gets attention from wherever we go. People smile and because its silent, you can hear what they’re saying, too. Being so quiet is sometimes an invitation for pedestrians and cyclists to walk or ride out in front of you, though.

It's beautifully finished and even comes with racy accessories, like the K-Tech rear shocks and carbon goodies on our test bike. There are few parts to go wrong with an electric bike compared to petrol power and Maeving offer a two-year warranty.

It’s available from July and can be ordered online for home delivery. Maeving will even collect your bike for service and repairs and test rides are available from their Coventry factory.

The RM1S isn’t cheap and you can buy a 125cc petrol bike for a lot less. We ran an online story on it recently and the predictable anti-electric rage coursed through the comments section (other bikes are available), but the Maeving RM1S isn’t aimed at hardcore commuters.

It’s for the kind of rider who’ll take occasional rides to the office or into town for a coffee, in the same way an almost 30 grand Ducati Panigale V4 S isn’t a do-it-all workhorse. The Maeving won’t be for everyone, but it works and we’re glad a great British small capacity electric bike like this exists. Compared to its battery-powered rivals the Maeving RM1S is cheaper than the £8450 BMW CE 02 and Kawasaki Z e-1.

Standard equipment includes a classy Smiths-style analogue speedo featuring an LCD readout with odometer, trips, time, riding mode and the all-important charge remaining readout.

You can charge by plugging into the mains or remove its two 2.73kWh batteries and charge remotely (2.5 hours from 20%-80%). Each battery weighs 15kg. The dummy fuel tank has an electronically operated lockable lid and 10 litres of storage space. It’s where the second battery used to live on the original RM1.