When it comes to powerful mid-drive electric bicycles, there’s basically one motor that rules them all. It’s the Bafang M620, and that’s precisely the motor that gives the Himiway Cobra Pro such impressive performance. But as usual, there’s so much more to an e-bike than just the drivetrain. So let’s dig in to see what makes the Himiway Cobra Pro such a capable machine.
As a full-suspension fat tire electric bike, the Himiway Cobra Pro is designed to handle some of the roughest and toughest terrain out there.
Many fat tire e-bikes rely on their massive wheels and large air volume to soak up the rocks, ruts, and other obstacles in their way. But Himiway adds in full suspension to make the ride as smooth as possible, even on rough surfaces.
When combined with everything else that the company included in this over-the-top electric bike, it’s easy to see why the Cobra Pro is intended to pick up right where the beaten path ends.
Check out my test riding in the video review below, or keep reading for the full details. Or both!
Himiway Cobra Pro Video Review
Himiway Cobra Pro tech specs
Motor: 1,000 W continuous-rated Bafang M620 mid-drive motor
Brakes: Tektro hydraulic disc brakes, 180 mm rotors
Extras: Color LCD display with speedometer, wattmeter, battery gauge, PAS level indicator, odometer, tripmeter, left side thumb throttle, front LED light, 10-speed Shimano Deore drivetrain, torque sensor, kickstand
The Bafang M620 motor isn’t just a powerhouse, it’s a fairly refined powerhouse. The integrated torque sensor means that those who want to pedal this e-bike can actually have an enjoyable experience doing it. The bike won’t just rocket up to whatever pedal assist speed setting you’ve chosen, but instead will respond intuitively to your pedaling force.
But let’s be real, most people are going to hop on this thing and gun the throttle, which the M620 is happy to oblige. Keep in mind that if that’s how you plan to ride, then you should be careful about not always being in top gear, which puts a lot of extra load on that chain and tiny sprocket. Ride responsibly and your drivetrain will thank you.
But whether you add some of your own leg power with pedal assist or just enjoy throttling around, the Himiway Cobra Pro’s excessively powerful motor will be happy to propel you up and over pretty much any hill you can find.
In fact, the bike is so powerful that it would be questionably legal in many places for on-road use. It doesn’t only surpass the 750W limit, but also the 28 mph (45 km/h) top speed requirement for Class 3 e-bikes. You can use the color display to set legal-friendly power and speed limits, but there’s legitimate debate about whether or not that really makes a bike like this road legal.
Considering that the Himiway Cobra Pro is optimized for trail use — or even overlanding where trails don’t even exist — the issue of road legality might be moot for mostly off-road riders.
And it’s when you take the bike off the manicured asphalt trails that you really begin to appreciate the design.
Between the soft suspension and the extra fat 4.80-inch wide tires, you’ll be able to hit anything you want without much concern. Rocks, tree roots, washed-out trails, and anything in between will feel like barely a bump with this setup.
Battery for a good time, but not necessarily a long time
The 48V 20Ah battery is admittedly on the larger size for e-bikes these days, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to last you forever.
I don’t doubt that you could actually achieve the 60 miles (96 km) that Himiway claims if you keep it in level 1 pedal assist and crawl along at 6 mph (10 km/h).
But since most people will ride faster and at higher power levels, that battery will drain much quicker. It wouldn’t be crazy to see your range reduce to just 25 miles (40 km) with hard throttle-only riding, though you could easily double it with easier pedal assist riding.
Just don’t be fooled by the Himiway Cobra Pro’s massive range rating. It’s possible, but not probable.
Hefty, but manageable
This is not a lightweight bike by any stretch of the imagination. At 88 lb. (40 kg), it’s downright portly. All of those heavy components like the big motor and battery, the big tires, and the dual suspension really add up. Don’t let the faux carbon fiber paint job fool you, this isn’t a lightweight machine.
But despite the heavy weight, I was surprised how manageable the bike felt. It’s rare that I’m on an e-bike that weighs over half of my own weight, but it didn’t feel nearly as big or bulky while riding.
I can only imagine that loading it onto a vehicle’s bike rack will betray its real weight, but while in motion the bike feels much more reasonable. The massive motor is about as low as it can be, and the battery is also quite southernly mounted. Together, they keep the center of gravity low and make the bike handle well for what is obviously such a massive ride.
That doesn’t mean the Himiway Cobra Pro is nimble. It’s far from it. Those 4.8-inch tires are some of the widest I’ve ever ridden, and they certainly feel like it. Dropping the air pressure for better traction only compounds the sluggish steering. But it’s rare that you’ll be doing switchbacks and super tight turns while beating your own path through the wilderness. So for recreational riding, the bike is easy enough to handle. Just don’t try any overly technical single track trails and you should be fine.
A nice set of components
Himiway put some good components on this bike, though they basically had to in order to justify the lofty $3,999 price.
We’re looking at good adjustable suspension with an inverted front fork up front and four-bar linkage rear suspension. We’ve got grippy hydraulic disc brakes, though I would have liked to see four-piston brakes up front instead of dual-piston on such a heavy bike. We’ve got a 10-speed transmission including torque sensor. And of course there’s that massive Bafang M620 mid-drive motor and big 960Wh battery.
Fenders would have been nice, but they’re tough to do properly on a full-suspension fat tire e-bike.
Sure, it’s expensive. But you get a lot of bike as well as a two-year warranty (which is one more year than most direct-to-consumer electric bike manufacturers will offer you).
This isn’t some overpowered RadRover off-road e-bike. This thing would eat a RadRover for breakfast when it comes to performance. Speed, power, range, suspension, and just about everything else is over the top. That motor could take a finger off, and I bet it’d do it too, so that’s a not-so-gentle reminder to turn the bike off when you’re fiddling with your chain one day.
Most people won’t ever need an e-bike like the Himiway Cobra Pro. It’s just more than what should be necessary for everyday riding. But if you’re the type of person that likes to get out in open fields, explore rocky landscapes, or sling sand across the beach, then a powerful fat tire e-bike like this will do it. And having all of that suspension under you will make it comfortable in the process.
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In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss Trump’s Big Beautiful bill becoming law and going after EVs and solar, Tesla, Ford, and GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
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A new Tesla prototype was spotted again, reigniting speculation among Tesla shareholders, even though it’s likely just a Model Y, potentially a bit smaller, and the upcoming stripped-down, cheaper version.
It sparked a lot of speculation about it being the new “affordable” compact Tesla vehicle.
There’s confusion in the Tesla community around Tesla’s upcoming “affordable” vehicles because CEO Elon Musk falsely denied a report last year about Tesla’s “$25,000” EV model being canceled.
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The facts are that Musk canceled two cheaper vehicles that Tesla was working on, commonly referred as “the $25,000 Tesla” in early 2024. Those vehicles were codenamed NV91 and NV92, and they were based on the new vehicle platform that Tesla is now reserving for the Cybercab.
Instead, Musk noticed that Tesla’s Model 3 and Model Y production lines were starting to be underutilized as the Company faced demand issues. Therefore, Tesla canceled the vehicles program based on the new platform and decided to build new vehicles on Model 3/Y platform using the same production lines.
We previously reported that these electric vehicles will likely look very similar to Model 3 and Model Y.
In recent months, several other media reports reinforced this, and Tesla all but confirmed it during its latest earnings call, when it stated that it is “limited in how different vehicles can be when built on the same production lines.”
Now, the same Tesla prototype has been spotted over the last few days, and it sent the Tesla shareholders community into a frenzy of speculations:
Electrek’s Take
As we have repeatedly reported over the last year, the new “affordable” Tesla “models” coming are basically only stripped-down Model 3 and Model Y vehicles.
They might end up being a little smaller by a few inches, and Tesla may use different model names, but they will be extremely similar.
If this is it, which is possible, you can see it looks almost exactly like a Model Y.
It’s hard to confirm if it’s indeed smaller because of the angle of the vehicle compared to the other Model Ys, but it’s not impossible that the wheelbase is a bit smaller – although it’s hard to confirm.
Either way, the most significant changes for these stripped-down, more affordable “models” are expected to be cheaper interior materials, like textile seats instead of vegan leather, no heated or ventilated seats standard, no rear screen, maybe even no double-panned acoustic glass and a lesser audio system.
As previously stated, the real goal of these new variants, or models, is to lower the average sale price in order to combat decreasing demand and maintain or increase the utilization rate of Tesla’s current production lines, which have been throttled down in the last few years to now about 60% utilization.
If this trend continues, Tesla would find itself in trouble and may even have to close its factories.
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CANNES — Wall Street’s new plumbing is being built on Ethereum and this week its architects took over the same French Riviera villas and red carpet venues that host the Cannes Film Festival in May.
The Ethereum Community Conference, or EthCC, took over the beachside town that was swarming with crypto founders, developers, and some of the institutional giants now building atop the infrastructure.
The crypto elite climbed the iconic red-carpeted steps of the Palais des Festivals — a cinematic landmark now repurposed as the stage for Ethereum’s flagship European event.
“The atmosphere this year was palpable in Cannes,” said Bettina Boon Falleur, the powerhouse behind EthCC for the past seven years. “The prestige of the location, combined with the quality of talks, has reinforced Ethereum’s stature and purpose in the wider ecosystem.”
Private parties sprawled across cliffside estates and exclusive resorts, but the conversations were less about price action and more about the blockchain’s evolving role as the back-end of global finance.
EthCC, now in its eighth year, has tracked Ethereum’s trajectory from scrappy experiment to institutional backbone.
“That impact was unmistakable this year,” Falleur said. “From Robinhood embracing decentralized finance infrastructure via Arbitrum to local governments like the City of Cannes exploring deeper integration with the crypto economy.”
Indeed, one of the boldest moves came this week from Robinhood, which became the first publicly traded U.S. company to launch tokenized stocks on-chain.
At a product showcase held inside a Belle Époque mansion overlooking the sea, Robinhood unveiled a sweeping new crypto strategy — including the ability for European users to trade tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs via Arbitrum, a Layer 2 network built on Ethereum.
The announcement helped push Robinhood stock past $100 for the first time, capping off a week of fresh all-time highs and a more than 30% rally since being snubbed by the S&P 500 during a recent rebalance.
Inside the Palais des Festivals, ETHCC draws founders, developers, and institutions into the same halls that host the world’s biggest film premieres — this time, for the future of finance.
MacKenzie Sigalos
Ether, the token native to the Ethereum blockchain, was up nearly 6% on the week and several public equities tied to the blockchain have rallied alongside it.
BitMine Immersion Technologies, a company that mines bitcoin, gained more than 1,200% since announcing it would make ether its primary treasury reserve asset. Bit Digital, which recently exited bitcoin mining to “become a pure play” ethereum staking and treasury company, gained more than 34% this week. And SharpLink Gaming, which added more than $20 million in ether to its balance sheet this week, jumped more than 28% on Thursday.
Ether ETF inflows are rising again too — a sign that institutional investors are warming back up.
Ether is still down more than 20% this year and lags far behind bitcoin in market cap and adoption. But funds tracking ETH have seen two straight months of mostly net inflows, according to CoinGlass data. Still, ether ETFs total just $11 billion — compared to $138 billion in bitcoin ETFs.
Institutions aren’t betting on Ethereum for hype — they’re betting on infrastructure.
Even as prices stall and the network faces headwinds from slower base layer revenues and faster rivals like Solana, the momentum is shifting toward utility.
“Ethereum is getting plugged into these core transactional systems,” Paul Brody, global blockchain leader at EY, told CNBC on the sidelines of EthCC. “Investors, savers, people moving money — they are going to start shifting from some of the older mechanisms of doing this into Ethereum ecosystems that can do these transactions faster, cheaper, but also very importantly, with significant new functionality attached to it.”
Crypto founders and developers climb the iconic red-carpeted steps of the Palais des Festivals — a familiar backdrop for the Cannes Film Festival, now repurposed for Ethereum’s flagship European event.
MacKenzie Sigalos
Deutsche Bank recently announced it’s building a tokenization platform on zkSync — a faster, cheaper blockchain built on top of Ethereum — to help asset managers issue and manage tokenized funds, stablecoins, and other real-world assets while meeting regulatory and data protection requirements.
Coinbase and Kraken are also racing to own the crossover between traditional stocks and crypto.
Coinbase has filed with the SEC to offer trading in tokenized public equities, a move that would diversify its revenue stream and bring it into more direct competition with brokerages like Robinhood and eToro.
Kraken announced plans to offer 24/7 trading of U.S. stock tokens in select overseas markets.
BlackRock‘s tokenized money market fund, BUIDL — launched on Ethereum last year — offers qualified investors on-chain access to yield with redemptions settled in USDC in real time.
Stablecoins, meanwhile, continue to serve as the backbone of Ethereum’s financial layer.
“The builders and contributors at EthCC aren’t chasing the next bull run,” Falleur said, “they’re laying the groundwork to make Ethereum home for the next billion users.”
Even as newer blockchains tout faster speeds and lower fees, Ethereum is proving its staying power as a trusted network.
Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s co-founder, told CNBC in Cannes that there is an assumption that institutions only care about scale and speed — but in practice, it’s the opposite.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin delivers a keynote at ETHCC, laying out the network’s next steps — and its values test — as institutional adoption accelerates.
EthCC
“A lot of institutions basically tell us to our faces that they value Ethereum because it’s stable and dependable, because it doesn’t go down,” he said.
Buterin added that firms often ask about privacy and other long-term features — the kinds of concerns that institutions, he said, “really value.”
Tomasz Stańczak, the new co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation, said institutions are choosing Ethereum for the same core reasons.
“Ten years without stopping for a moment. Ten years of upgrades, with a huge dedication to security and censorship resistance,” he said.
He added that when institutions send orders to the market, they want to be “absolutely sure that their order is treated fairly, that nobody has preference, that the transaction actually is executed at the time when it’s delivered.”
Those guarantees have become increasingly valuable as stablecoins and tokenized assets move into the mainstream.
Ethereum’s core values — neutrality, security, and censorship resistance — are emerging as competitive advantages.
The real test now is whether Ethereum can scale without losing its values.
“We don’t just want to succeed,” Buterin said from the mainstage of the Palais this week. “We want to be something that is worthy of succeeding.”
He said the hope is that future generations will look back and see a network that truly delivered openness, freedom, and permissionless access to the masses.
White-clad guests dance poolside at the rAAVE party in Cannes.
MacKenzie Sigalos
But the week didn’t end in the conference halls, it closed with tradition. On the balcony of Villa Montana, overlooking the Bay of Cannes, the rAAVE party lit up.
White-clad guests sipped cocktails as the DJ spun by the pool, haze curling from smoke machines.
This year, Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov and DeFi icon Stani Kulechov, founder of Aave, stood atop the balcony overlooking the crowd and the light-dotted skyline of Cannes.
It was a fitting snapshot of the momentum behind Ethereum’s institutional rise and symbolic of Web3’s shift from niche experiment to financial mainstay.