Rivian’s ALSO e-bike has no chain to the wheel, so someone ran its battery flat

Aaron Draczynski, an early Launch Edition owner of the ALSO TM-B, ran his pedal-by-wire e-bike down from 31 percent battery to its lowest state to see whether it would leave him stranded. It did not, although the final stretch was slow and strange. He posted the test on YouTube under the channel papermodelplane and wrote it up on Reddit.

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The TM-B is the first bike from ALSO, the micromobility company Rivian spun out. Its drivetrain has no chain, belt or shaft between the pedals and the rear wheel, which means a dead battery raises a question that a conventional e-bike never has to answer.

Copper wires where the chain would be

According to Electrek’s report on Draczynski’s test, pedaling on the TM-B generates electricity and the rear wheel is driven electrically, with only copper wires joining the two. Gears are simulated in software, so the bike has no physical gears at all. The Launch Edition also offers a Level 10 boost mode that can multiply rider input by up to 10 times.

The drive system is called DreamRide. In its coverage of the first customer deliveries, Electrek priced the Early Launch Edition at $4,500 and noted a claimed range of 100 miles, along with a rule that maximum assist starts shrinking once the charge falls to 40 percent.

The bike was unveiled in October 2025 as a modular e-bike with swappable top frames, and a month later ALSO announced a lower $3,500 price for the model. Deliveries to the first buyers came months after the original schedule, which ALSO attributed to hardware changes tied to component supply and regulatory approval of the battery and its high-power USB-C charger. The thumb control that triggers boost works as a temporary surge rather than a standard throttle, and it delivers power only while the rider is pedaling. One reader comment on Electrek’s delivery story asked what problem the bike solves, calling it an expensive city e-bike whose customization features are available on cheaper conventional bikes.

A staircase of assist levels from 31 percent down to 4 percent

Draczynski watched the maximum assist step down as the charge fell. The top boost setting dropped from Level 8 at 23 percent to Level 5 at 13 percent, then to Level 4 at 10 percent, Level 3 at 8 percent and Level 2 at 5 percent. Only Level 1 remained before conventional assist cut out entirely at 4 percent. Because he began the run at 31 percent, the test says nothing about the 40 percent point where Electrek reports the assist limit starts to bite, so the earliest part of the decline went unrecorded.

At 4 percent the bike began shifting its simulated gears by itself, several times per second, even with manual mode selected. Near the bottom an infinity symbol appeared and the bike entered what Draczynski called “Infinite Turtle Mode.” In that state the electronic drivetrain simply passes the rider’s pedaling energy through to keep the rear wheel turning. On flat ground he said it felt roughly like pedaling in fourth gear. Hills were a “truly grueling ordeal,” and manual shifting was disabled.

The phone app stopped locking and unlocking the bike at that point, though the touchscreen kept responding.

The garage drain and the reset button under the frame

The more worrying episode came when the bike sat unplugged in a garage. Starting at about 70 percent, it fell to 40 percent by the next evening and to 18 percent a day after that. The following morning it displayed “Bike issue detected” and “Install battery to ride” even though the battery was seated, refused to charge, and would not eject the pack normally. Draczynski cleared the fault with the physical reset button under the frame.

He told readers of the ALSO owners’ forum thread that the day-to-day drop surprised him. His own guess is that the bike was hunting for a cellular signal in a garage with no reception, which would explain a steady drain while idle. Nothing in the test points to a mechanical fault, since the bike has no mechanical parts between the pedals and the wheel to fail; the quirks he documented all live in software, sensors and the battery pack. That remains a guess from one owner, and Electrek’s report quotes no ALSO statement on it.

Early feedback on the bike has been mixed. One rider reached 4 percent after only 30 miles, using high assist on hills and into headwinds, while another owner called the bike a home run. Draczynski’s papermodelplane channel carries the full run for anyone who wants to watch the shifting glitch at 4 percent. What it cannot answer is how a typical commuter, riding at lower assist levels, would fare at the same charge.

This article was produced with the assistance of AI and reviewed by Morning Overview editors prior to publication.

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