Welcome to the fifth installment of TM-B: Seeing Deeper, the six-part series in which we offer a closer look at the TM-B, some of its most exciting features, and an insider POV on why we created them in the first place.

Today, we take a big step forward, beyond the threshold of reality as we know it, and into the Portal, where rider and bike become one in a realm of seamless connectivity and control.

What’s in a name?

We named the 2.75-inch hi-res touch display the Portal because it truly is a gateway into the full ride experience, with highly interactive features that let you control everything from pedal cadence to podcast episodes.

The Portal is also your DreamRide interface—the cosmic doorway through which you control your place in the TM-B universe. You provide information through the touchscreen and handlebar controls, and the Portal takes these signals and sends them to DreamRide via the TM-B’s hidden connectivity module. It’s what connects you to the bike, and the bike to the world, all in one seamlessly contained package.

In a world full of screens, why make another?

It’s true: Most ebikes don’t have screens like this. But the TM-B is not most ebikes.

Instead of iterating on existing cycling cockpits, we approached the TM-B with an EV mindset, thus bringing modern conveniences to cycling. Throughout our research, we heard over and over again just how important navigation and media are to drivers’ daily trips, so creating a native infotainment system for the TM-B became imperative. 

From there, we built the Portal from bare metal, engineered it around modern EV principles, and teamed up with some of the best user experience designers on the planet to make it intuitive and frictionless to use.

The case for native infotainment. 

Skeptics will argue, “Media and navigation? My phone does that.” And it’s true. Your phone does do that—just not very well when you’re riding a bike.

To be as straightforward as possible, holding a phone while biking is cumbersome and unsafe. And even if you do safely fix it to your handlebars, phones aren’t designed to be cycling infotainment hubs. When it comes to cars, automakers have partnered with companies like Apple to circumvent this design conundrum through CarPlay, which adapts the phone to the needs of a driver and their respective car. However, no such integration exists for bikes and ebikes… and we’re not holding our breath. So we made infotainment native to the TM-B via the Portal so that riders could manage these things safely without getting distracted. 

While we’re on the topic, let’s talk about navigation, specifically. We developed the TM-B navigation system in-house to optimize for the TM-B riding experience. You can think of it like your favorite mobile GPS application (e.g., Google Maps) but with special sauce added to better reflect routing and ETAs for the TM-B, which mobile apps do not account for.

 Tips for getting the most out of the Portal.

1. Stay connected. While it’s not necessary to use your phone to ride the TM-B, you can get the most from the Portal when you connect to the ALSO mobile app. Chances are, you’re already biking with a phone. And now you can keep it stowed away while still accessing navigation and media.

2. Listen to music. Or playlists. Or work calls you’re taking from the road. The Portal connects to your media player of choice and lets you control volume, change the track, or answer/hang up calls. You can pair it with your Alpha Wave helmet for seamless listening, or your regular Bluetooth headphones. Though if you’re riding with headphones, we strongly recommend only wearing one in your right ear to stay alert of traffic and your fellow humans.

3. Dial in your ride. Use the Portal to customize the feel and difficulty of your ride. Choose your pedal assist level, pick your cadence, opt for manual or automatic transmission styles, and swap between ride modes, depending on your model.

4. Stay the course. Turn-by-turn directions mean you only get lost if you want to. 

5. Track your ride. The Portal displays all the key info you want while riding, like speed, battery life, assist level, and more. And data lovers rejoice, for you will be able to upload ride data from the Portal to Strava after you finish a ride.

6. Lock it up. You can rotate the Portal to effortlessly lock and unlock your TM-B, including the precious battery. Don’t have your phone on you? No problem. Just enter a super secret PIN into the Portal to lock and unlock the bike.

7. Keep your eyes on the prize. And by prize, we mean the road in front of you. While the Portal is optimized for convenience, it’s important you only use it when it’s safe to do so and never ride while distracted.

OTAs FTW.

When a screen comes built in, it’s normal to fear the future of that screen’s contents. Not with the Portal. Thanks to over-the-air software updates (OTAs), the TM-B and its Portal are equipped to evolve over time as we continually optimize and dream up new features. Navigation is a perfect example of this. It’s great now, and as more rider data comes in, it’s only going to get better through OTAs.

We’ve saved the best for last.

Thank you for reading the penultimate installment of TM-B: Seeing Deeper. Join us next week for Volume 6—the series finale—in which we’ll talk all about DreamRide and its ability to unlock new worlds.

Lock in your TM-B.

If you’ve made it this far without reserving a TM-B, we admire your discipline. But for $50—which is fully refundable, btw—you could lock yours in today. Reserve your TM-B now.