Stromer ST5 Pinion shapes the e-bike frame like a motorcycle — Red Dot BoB 2024

A speed pedelec that replaces a car for commuters needs range and power — and that means a correspondingly large battery, which usually ruins bicycle proportions with awkward add-on packs. Stromer designs its S-pedelecs explicitly as car alternatives for commuters.

Give the speed pedelec a voluminous, motorcycle-like aluminium frame where the huge battery disappears into the down tube instead of being bolted on.

The ST5 Pinion integrates the battery seamlessly into an angular aluminium frame with a voluminous down tube, so the silhouette reads more like a motorcycle than a bicycle. It pairs an 850 W rear-hub motor with a 9-speed Pinion gearbox, belt drive, fully integrated front-wheel ABS, keyless battery ejection and up to 1,900-lumen Supernova lighting — at 45 km/h with a stated 180 km range.

The design won Red Dot: Best of the Best 2024, one of only two e-bikes honoured that year, one year after Stromer's ST7 took the same award — confirming the frame-as-motorcycle language as a repeatable premium formula.

Speed pedelecs are meant to replace cars on commutes, which demands range and power — and therefore a battery far larger than any bicycle frame was designed to swallow. Most e-bikes end up with a clumsy pack bolted to the frame. Swiss maker myStromer took the opposite path with the ST5 Pinion: it shaped the whole frame around the battery.

The angular aluminium frame gets a voluminous down tube into which the battery disappears seamlessly, so the silhouette reads more like a motorcycle than a traditional bicycle. Product manager Florian Marti describes the shape as a direct consequence of that integration: more volume, resolved into a motorcycle-like stance.

The engineering matches the bodywork: an 850 W rear-hub motor with a 9-speed Pinion gearbox, belt drive, fully integrated ABS on the front wheel, keyless battery ejection and Supernova LED lighting of up to 1,900 lumens. The result cruises at 45 km/h with a stated range of 180 km.

The Red Dot jury gave the ST5 Pinion its Best of the Best distinction in Product Design 2024 — one of only two e-bikes so honoured that year, and Stromer's second consecutive Best of the Best after the ST7 in 2023.

It treats the battery — the part most designs try to hide — as the element that defines the form.

The motorcycle reference signals car-replacement seriousness to exactly the commuter audience it targets.

Integration is systemic: ABS, gearbox, belt drive and keyless battery are all designed into the frame, not appended.

Winning Best of the Best twice in a row with the same design language shows it is a repeatable strategy, not a one-off.

When a constraint is too big to hide — a 180 km battery — make it the form: designing the frame around the component turns an eyesore into the identity.

The ST5 Pinion became the middle of a Stromer range that keeps the motorcycle-stance frame as its signature, with the Pinion gearbox later spreading to the ST3 line; Stromer remains the benchmark brand in the 45 km/h S-pedelec segment it helped define.