The Spanish high-performance cycling brand co-founded by Grand Tour champions Alberto Contador and Ivan Basso has entered the electric bicycle market for the first time — the NOVA, an all-road e-bike weighing just 11.5 kg, built around the Mahle X20 rear-hub drive system and launched simultaneously in e-road and e-gravel configurations.

A Brand Built on Grand Tour Racing DNA

AURUM was established on September 29, 2020, by Alberto Contador and Ivan Basso — two of the most decorated Grand Tour riders of their era, combining multiple victories at the Giro d'Italia, Tour de France, and Vuelta a España between them. The brand was not conceived as a licensing deal or a lifestyle extension. Both founders drove the development process from the frame geometry outward, shaping a machine they describe as the bike each would have wanted to race at the height of their professional careers.

In 2021, just months after the brand's public debut, AURUM became the official bicycle of the EOLO-KOMETA Cycling Team, a UCI ProTeam operating under the Fundación Alberto Contador. The same season, with AURUM making its Grand Tour debut at the Giro d'Italia, rider Lorenzo Fortunato climbed to victory on the legendary slopes of Monte Zoncolan — giving AURUM its first major win just 221 days after its founding and earning the brand the distinction of being the youngest cycling label ever to claim a Grand Tour stage.

The brand's signature product, the Aurum Magma, embodies that racing identity: a stiff, light, visually clean race machine built to the highest weight-to-performance standard Contador and Basso could demand. The NOVA is not a departure from that ethos — it is an extension of it into pedal-assist territory, the first time in AURUM's history that the brand has moved beyond unassisted road geometry.

The Engineering Case for the Mahle X20

The choice of powertrain explains the NOVA's weight figure. The Mahle X20 complete system — rear hub motor, integrated rechargeable battery, and head unit — weighs approximately 3 kg, a figure that allows a bike builder to target total weight below 12 kg without radical frame compromises. A conventional mid-drive system would add substantially more mass and shift the bike's center of gravity in ways that alter handling for road-oriented riders.

The X20's rear-hub architecture keeps the frame's bottom bracket area free, preserving the unobstructed pedaling feel that road cyclists associate with performance machines. The motor sits inside the rear wheel hub, invisible from most angles, and the system's integration within the frame means the bike reads visually as a conventional road bicycle — a characteristic AURUM's race-aesthetic audience considers essential, not optional.

65 Nm, 275W — and No Added Weight

In September 2025, Mahle released a firmware update that raised the X20's output from 55 Nm and 250W to 65 Nm of torque and 275W peak power — an 18% torque gain and a 10% power increase — without changing the drive unit's physical weight or dimensions. Any X20-equipped bike manufactured or activated after August 1, 2025 ships with these figures already applied; existing bikes in riders' hands gained access to the same upgrade through rolling firmware releases across late 2025. The updated system also added compatibility with the Universal Derailleur Hanger standard, broadening its integration options across drivetrain configurations.

Assist delivery is managed through torque and cadence sensors mounted at the bottom bracket. The system measures actual rider input continuously, adjusting the output level in real time rather than operating at fixed power steps. For a brand whose audience has spent years on analog race bikes, that adaptive character is central to the product's appeal — it augments effort rather than substituting for it.

The Ultra-Light E-Bike Battleground

The NOVA's arrival tracks a broader consolidation happening in the premium lightweight e-bike segment. The Mahle X35 — the X20's direct predecessor — was already appearing in e-bike builds that reached as low as 10.5 kg, making it the default architecture for designers chasing that weight threshold. The X20 extended that floor while raising performance, and brands including Wilier, Scott, Schindelhauer, and Urwahn have all converged on the same hub-drive platform for precisely that reason.

What AURUM contributes to that competitive field is not a novel powertrain — the platform is shared — but a brand identity that none of its competitors can replicate. No other name in the ultra-light e-bike segment can point to a Grand Tour stage win achieved within months of its founding. The community of serious road cyclists who have followed AURUM since 2020 represents a built-in audience for an electrified option that doesn't ask them to compromise on the ride quality the brand has always stood for.

Two Variants, One Platform, One Calculated Bet

Launching both an e-road and an e-gravel configuration simultaneously reflects a deliberate choice to maximize market reach while keeping the engineering foundation unified. The e-road variant targets road cyclists seeking assisted climbing without altering the handling profile they associate with a premium road machine. The e-gravel build serves mixed-surface riders — one of the fastest-expanding demographics in premium cycling globally — who need low weight, terrain versatility, and long-day capability in a single package.

By anchoring both variants to the same 11.5 kg platform and the same Mahle X20 drivetrain, AURUM avoids the engineering fragmentation that has strained smaller brands attempting multi-segment e-bike programs. The strategy mirrors what made the analog Magma a coherent product from the start: one precisely executed platform, refined to the highest weight-to-performance standard available, rather than a range of price-tiered options that stretch resources and dilute identity.

For a brand that claimed a Grand Tour stage win fewer than eight months after its founding, moving from zero electric models to a fully realized dual-variant e-bike lineup in one announcement is consistent with the speed at which AURUM has always operated. Whether the NOVA can carry that momentum into the electrified segment — and whether the pricing reflects the ambitions on paper — will determine if AURUM's first e-bike becomes a reference point in ultra-light electric road cycling, or simply a well-engineered addition to a field that keeps growing.