MUST OTIVAO: a folding mountain bike with no pedals

Most folding-bike conversations eventually arrive at the same questions: how small, how heavy, and can you carry it? MUST Cycle has added a rather good fourth one: where have the pedals gone?

The Austrian company’s OTIVAO is a folding mountain bike designed to be carried uphill and ridden back down. There is no pedalling stage in between. It is a wonderfully specific answer to a question most folding-bike makers aren’t asking.

BikeRumor’s Jeremy Benson reported on the OTIVAO on 1 October, following its appearance at Bespoked Dresden. The design replaces pedals and a drivetrain with foot platforms. Its intended engine is the hill.

The fold has a different job

With a familiar folder, the folded part is often the bit between rides. The bicycle becomes luggage for a train journey, then returns to being a bicycle at the other end.

The OTIVAO makes that carrying stage part of the outing itself. MUST’s proposition is a walk up the mountain with the bike on its carrying system, followed by a descent on two wheels. The climb counts as part of the day out, rather than something to get over with before the fun starts.

That is the interesting change of perspective. A small fold can make a ride possible without making the journey more convenient in the everyday sense. Nobody is pretending that walking uphill with a bicycle on your back is the easy option. The appeal is choosing an outing in which both halves are enjoyable, just for different reasons.

It also gives the designer a very different brief. A pedal-powered bike needs to accommodate the climb as well as the descent. Here, the rider does the climbing on foot. That leaves the bicycle to concentrate on what happens afterwards.

Small wheels, serious-looking intentions

MUST’s current product page describes a hand-built titanium frame, machined aluminium parts, full suspension and 20-inch wheels wearing 2.4-inch Maxxis tyres. It lists Manitou suspension components and Hayes brakes. This is a mountain-minded machine with a carrying concept, rather than a city folder with chunkier tyres fitted.

Small wheels are familiar territory here at Bromptom. Seeing them paired with this particular job is what makes the OTIVAO worth a second look. The familiar association between a compact bicycle and an urban journey suddenly looks rather narrow.

There is a temptation to judge anything unusual by whether it could replace the bicycle already in the hallway. That seems an unhelpful test here. A folder that works brilliantly for a commute and a machine built around a walking ascent are solving different problems. The revealing question is whether the unusual design makes its chosen experience better.

The photographs and specifications cannot settle that. How it carries, how it behaves on a descent and how quickly an awkward section turns back into a walk are the parts that would make a proper ride report interesting. Bromptom hasn’t ridden it; this is a look at the idea and its published design.

The missing gears make the bargain obvious

There is something refreshingly unambiguous about removing the pedals. It makes the compromise visible before anyone reaches for a chart.

A conventional bicycle offers a way to keep moving when the gradient eases. Here, there is no drivetrain to turn a flat section into a pedalling section. The shape of the route therefore matters to the whole idea. A lovely descent interrupted by plenty of uphill would ask rather different things of the rider from one continuous run down.

That is a limitation, but it is also what gives the design a personality. It isn’t trying to be reasonably suitable for everything. It is asking whether a particular combination of walking and riding deserves its own machine.

The absence of gears may be less of a philosophical leap for folding-bike enthusiasts than it first appears. Much of the interest in a folder is accepting one compromise because it opens up something else. The OTIVAO simply takes that bargain somewhere much steeper.

A trail machine, with a narrower remit than the looks suggest

Full suspension and chunky tyres can invite the imagination to head straight for a bike park. MUST’s own usage guidance draws a more specific boundary: alpine riding and natural-path descents are within its stated purpose, while bike-park operation, jumps and downhill racing are excluded.

That distinction matters when interpreting the design. A dramatic-looking bicycle is not automatically intended for every dramatic-looking bit of riding. The manufacturer’s stated use is more useful than guessing from the silhouette.

Does it still count as a folding bike?

The naming argument is almost inevitable. Without pedals, is it a bicycle, a mountain scooter, or a very elaborate way of improving a walk? MUST calls it an adventure bike. The label is probably less interesting than the outing it suggests.

What makes the OTIVAO worth talking about is the willingness to give the fold another purpose. Carrying is no longer a concession made between the good bits. It is part of the experience the machine is designed around.

It may never make sense for your kind of riding. It can still be an interesting bicycle to exist. A folding-bike world with room for something this peculiar is a more entertaining place than one in which every new model promises a slightly easier commute.

And at least nobody needs to ask how many gears it has.