Review: Serial 1 Rush/Cty

Harley-Davidson—that model of red, white, and blue swagger that fits somewhere between baseball and apple pie in the American pantheon of icons—started out by attaching motors to bicycles in 1903. Its first production model was the Model 1 (sometimes known as the Model No. 1), and the prototype bike that led to it is often referred to as Serial Number One. So when Harley-Davidson spun off a new brand dedicated to ebikes, what else could that bike be called but the Serial 1?

I looked forward to an ebike with Harley swagger. It would be a burly, brawling cruiser, I thought, or maybe a superlight performance bike. After all, Harley has made a few sporty motorcycles—specifically, the Sportster and the Buell—in the past. But instead of a fun, playful bike, Harley made a sensible light SUV instead. Instead of a cruiser, the Serial 1 is the Harley version of a Honda CR-V.

The riding position is upright and all business. This bike is a sensible grocery getter, not a sporty corner-carver. But you could probably tell that from the included fenders and the front and rear cargo racks. The racks are on the small side, but they're still usable to carry pannier bags, and the fenders did a good job protecting me from road spray.

There's an LED headlamp in the vertical head tube under the handlebars, which is a nice but increasingly standard touch, although not every ebike comes with one. There are also two taillamps integrated into the dropouts on the rear frame. They look cool, but they sit too low to the ground. Bikes' taillights should be high so that traffic can see them more easily. Down there, it's easy for drivers and other cyclists to miss the two tiny LEDs.

Other standard features include hydraulic disc brakes and a tiny storage compartment in the down tube is built to hold an Abus Bordo folding lock. It's a nice touch, even though folding locks are my least favorite type of bike lock.

My review unit was a Rush/Cty model, a class 1 ebike without a hand throttle and whose electric motor cuts out at 20 miles per hour.  It uses a Gates Carbon Belt Drive system. Rubber belts have advantages over traditional metal chains. For one, they're smoother and quieter. There's less clanking and shock transmitted through the pedals to your feet, and they're much less likely to pop off during a ride. Plus, you don't have to lubricate a rubber belt, so you're less likely to cake a pant leg in dirty grease, as you would with a chain.

The other standout feature of the Rush/Cty is that there are no mechanical gears to shift. Instead, there's an Enviolo Automatiq automatic-shifting rear hub that offers a continuously variable drive ratio. Rather than upshifting and downshifting gears, the hub is constantly calculating and adjusting itself to give the precise gear ratio for the road conditions and speed at that moment.

Continuously variable transmissions work best when they're barely noticeable. On the Rush/Cty, though, I couldn't not notice it. For one, I didn't enjoy pedaling the Serial 1 at low speeds, especially from a standstill. Pedaling was almost effortless, but I like feeling some resistance as I push down—not feeling anything felt oddly disconnected. You'll never break a sweat pedaling this bike, but I found it pretty unenjoyable until I reached 10 miles per hour or so.

It reminded me of pedaling one of those life-size replica bicycles you'd find in a video game arcade. There's an Enviolo app that lets you select from three riding modes, to adjust how quickly the hub steps in to provide electric power, but I wished there were more. It was tough to find one that felt right. The app was often glitchy and refused to pair with the Serial 1's onboard Bluetooth, so I frequently had to just ride in whatever mode it was in.

Because the Serial 1 is a class 1 ebike, it doesn't provide motorized assistance above 20 miles per hour. Normally, however, you can still pedal yourself faster even after the motor cuts out. But I couldn't shift myself into a higher, harder gear manually. The Rush/Cty does accelerate very smoothly; I'll give it that. But upon reaching 20 miles per hour, forward momentum abruptly ceases as if the bike were hit with an invisible tranquilizer dart.

It's not that the Rush/Cty is a bad bike. It does an adequate job at most things, but you have to pay a greater-than-adequate price. At 59 pounds, it's not a light ebike, but it's also not a particularly heavy one. I had no problem hoisting it up a flight of stairs. Acceleration is strong, but not exceptionally strong. Braking performance from the hydraulic disc brakes is also good, but again, nothing extraordinary.

The design is ho-hum as well. At a time when ebike designers are trying to do more than just hide components inside frames and are coming up with incredible and unique designs, Serial 1 missed the chance to use its Harley-Davidson DNA to stand out from an increasingly crowded market. The designers did hide the ebike guts nicely inside the frame. But beyond that, the Rush/Cty just looks like a lot of other ebikes on the market.

I imagine I'd have noticed less—or cared less—about the unbreakable speed limit if I'd reviewed the class 3 Rush/Cty Speed, which tops out at 28 miles per hour—for $600 more. It uses the same belt-driven system, so I'd expect the same disconnected pedaling experience and inability to pedal faster once the electric motor cuts out, but at least I'd be able top out at a speedy 28 miles per hour.

If the Rush/Cty were half the price, or if it'd come out several years ago, it would make a more compelling argument for your dollars. But it's 2021 and we're heading into 2022, and the competition in this slice of the market has left the Serial 1 behind in a rush.

Correction on December 9: An earlier version of this article said the upgraded Rush/Cty Speed—the model we did not road test—featured a hand throttle. In fact, a hand throttle is unavailable. It also misstated the Rush/Cty as a class 2 ebike, when it's in fact a class 1. We added more background information on the origin of Harley-Davidson's first motorcycles and the Serial 1 name, as well.