MERIDA a high quality and beautiful ride

Merida – Beauty, high quality and pleasant to ride

There is a city called Merida in Yucatan, Mexico. Wrong Merida I’m afraid – this is a Taiwanese company whose three syllables – Me, Ri, and Da roughly show in Hoklo Chinese, “beautiful and high-quality products enabling anyone to reach her or his destination as pleasantly as possible.”

Merida was one of the companies that helped the rebel Chinese island break away from rural penury and into industrial might, long before the mainland Maoists would get their pseudo-capitalist system into high gear and do the same in the last two decades. Merida has been around in some form since the 1970’s and is a country mile ahead of the brands we see from China today.

Unlike some of our Vietnamese or Chinese built machines you will pay a few quid for a Merida, but as with the European models that this directly competes with, you really get what you pay for. They have to pay for their German design team somehow!

Merida machines pack a punch

There are broadly two sub-brands of Merida e-bikes – the eSpresso road range and the eOne eMTBs.

The Merida eSpresso City 200EQ is the entry level commuter bike. With a Shimano motor and 418Wh battery that sits low down on the frame, this is an ideal machine for getting about town without making a fuss. It has integrated lights and a pre-fitted pannier rack for getting your gear to work or just touring the countryside.

The eSpresso L 500Q is the top of the range of the Espresso range of Merida electric road bikes and with that you get a much bigger battery and better components such as the Suntour NEX E25, Coil, 63mm suspension travel forks up front.

Moving into the eMTB range, the entry level is the dual suspension eOne-Twenty 500 that will happily blast around the trails and countryside with you grinning like a Cheshire Cat as you go. Fitted out with 130mm front and rear suspension for lumps, bumps and jumps, this Merida eMTB has a 500Wh battery for those long days in the saddle.

At the more extreme end of the range, the Merida eOne-Sixty 900E is not the sort of machine you’ll want if you’re frightened of what your partner will say when they see the receipt! For that bunker busting price tag you get the very best of Taiwanese manufacturing and German design. Fox Factory, 160mm forks and shock are for those monster trail days, while it is powered and stopped with the best components Shimano make for eMTBs.

A family brand

Unlike many of the European brands of e-bikes, Merida have remained a family company every one of the last 28 or so years since Ike Tseng first founded the business. Now run by Michael Tseng, the family has kept the ethos of the company Ike first envisaged when he was first provoked into founding the company while travelling in the US where, he claimed he saw a “note at the door of a bike shop stating that no bikes from Taiwan were accepted for repair due to bad quality.” Merida are far from ‘cheap Chinese tat’ – indeed, they are proof that high quality can come from anywhere as long as the will exists within the business to make that possible. Ditch those prejudices at the door and buy a Merida electric bike today at E-Bikes Direct!