What do you want in a hitch-mounted bike rack? Something that’s easy to take on and off in mere seconds, right? One you can carry from the car to the garage without needing a dolly and a back brace would be helpful. Also great would be the ability to raise and lower the arms that support the bike with one hand while your other hand holds a burrito, a beer, a burrito and a beer, a beer burrito (?) etc.
Well, that’s what you get with the Helium Platform 2 from Thule. Not the beer burrito, whatever that might be, but all the other ease-oriented features above.
Paint it gold if you *need* that Kashima bling.
Other than how easy this rack is to use, it’s pretty stripped down in terms of features. It uses ratcheting arms that clamp down on the tires. There’s no frame contact and no tire strap for the rear wheel to fiddle with. It’s easier to clamp the bike down than the obvious competitor, the 1Up, because, one, the arms are much lighter, and two, you don’t have to find and press a metal lever to lift the arms. One-handed operation is pretty sweet. Of course, it tilts down to allow access to the rear of the vehicle.
And, there’s no locking hitch pin to mess with. Instead, there’s a hitch hook that’s permanently attached to the mount. Slide the mount into the receiver, slap the hook into the pin hole, and tighten a knob that drives a standard wedge into the receiver to secure the rack in place. It fits both 1.25″ and 2″ receivers with no additional adapter. Easy peasy.
Because it weighs so little (rack itself is only 43 pounds), each platform is rated only for 37.5-pound bikes. I’ve carried a 50+ pound e-bike on one with no issue, but, still, Thule will tell you 37.5 pounds each is the limit.
Here’s the attached hitch pin. It snaps in with a gentle nudge.
See? Or rather, can’t see the license plate with the rack stowed.
I have two complaints though. One, I suppose it depends on your car, but if you drive with the rack in the vertical stowed position with no bikes, the platforms will block your license plate. I’ve not received a ticket for that, but I did have a sheriff give me a warning. Now, the ease with which the rack comes on and off means you really don’t need to leave it on the car unless you’re transporting a bike. But still, something to think about.
Two, it costs $800. That’s luxury outdoor goods territory. It’s the easiest, best bike rack I’ve ever used, which is itself luxurious, but you’re gonna pay for that. Granted, most good platform racks are at least $600 if not more these days, but $800 is still a whole lotta cheddar.
If you drive to ride often though, you’ll prob be glad you spent the extra money for this rack. It saves so much time and is so freaking light and easy to remove, it’s easy to justify dropping some extra coin for this puppy. Heck, Yakima is selling Kashima-coated automatic racks that are like $1,200. I’d still much rather have this Helium Platform rack. Paint it gold if you *need* that Kashima bling.
Can’t agree more. I’ve had the Helium since it was released. Still works great, but the ratcheting mechanism on one of the arms is nearly silent now and you can barely feel the ratchet action. Still locks the bike in place, but I’ll be curious if that becomes an issue down the road.
At last, something for the Bimmer! And a mere $800. Do they take Crypto? I hope so. M>
I’ve had many racks but this sounds like it’s copying many of the features of 1Up (the best rack I’ve ever owned).
Yeah, I’m sure it is, it’s also lighter and easier to use.
The 1-Up folks are going to be cranky about the copying of the design I imagine. But the last time I checked they didn’t have any stock. Does this rack have an extension to add two more bikes? One thing 1-Up has going for it is lots of adapters for wide tires and fenders etc.
No ability to add more bikes. The 1Up is definitely more of a system where the Thule is a standalone rack with no ability to change out parts to change functionality.
Wow, can you say 1-Up USA copy? Is Thule out of fresh ideas?
$800 for a rack that can only hold a max of 2 bikes?
I’d rather get a Kuat Sherpa (comes in 1.25 or 2.00″ sizes)
or save my cheddar for a Quikr Rack.
While the 1up is the OG, their patent expired. That’s why everyone and their mother is copying it.
The Quikr is version 2.0 – and it’s been developed/designed by the same guy.
That looks cool, just watched the demo. I love the ramp for e-bikes.
1Up had their singular chance to really impress me, and they blew it so badly, I won’t even get into my brief ownership of their fiddly, annoying, not appreciably better in any way, rack.
I still firmly believe though, that most of their following is as vocally positive as they are, out of buyers remorse wrapped up in embarrassment at having been duped into such a POS. Their one shining virtue is made in the USA, and even it wasn’t enough to make me overlook the issues with that overhyped garbage.
I’ve happily used various offerings from SportWorks, Thule, Yakima and Kuat over the years. I keep going back to Kuat NV’s though. Simple to use, light enough, and well appointed, especially in comparison price wise to the now “premium-er” end of the market, A relative bargain for what it gives you.
As a retailer, I generally rotate through, selling two or three year old offerings to ride pals, to fund new shiny items. Always believing a better mousetrap is ever closer to invention (hence the ill fated 1Up fiasco).
When Kuat introduced their 1Up clone recently, I yawned, mostly due to lack of loving the design enough to care in the first place, and secondly, because of cost.
Thules is cheaper, I may check one out, but the design would need to be WAY better than 1Up, to warrant my belief it’s worth the cost above and beyond a Kuat NV….
Unless you need to add more trays, the Helium is far and away more pleasant to use than the Kuat NV. I had the NV for years, and the Helium is just so much simpler to use.
Thanks for the input. I’ve trusted your thoughts for many years, all the way back to Bike. My supplier had one, it’s in my cart, but after a bit of reading (on Thules site, no less), I’m not so sure I’ll pull the trigger.
Many complaints about lack of robustness (Keith Bontragers, light, strong, cheap, pick two stands out here), and sadly, at $800, even that formula falls apart.
But it did remind me, since someone mentioned their Kuat in the review, that Kuat has blindingly awesome customer service. Thule, in classic, “we’re too big for our own good and we love ourselves for our awesomeness”, fashion, not so much. Any dealings I’ve had with them as a bike shop, have been fraught with hassle, long waits on the phone, and crappy answers when I finally got through.
Reviewers stated similar issues contacting Thule, who would not supply repair parts, and counseled them to simply file a claim with their auto insurance to cover a new unit in full.
Man, what a racket.
Conversely, I have a pal who bought my first NV, 10+ years ago. Kuat has cheerfully, and for free, replaced every moving part on the rack as it wore out. He was even honest about his not being the original owner, and offered to pay as things had simply worn out. Nope, they sent them free, and super quickly too.
Service like that is rare. Thule makes their crap in China, same as Kuat, so they *can* afford to be decent minded, sadly, it seems they prefer profits over happy, life long customers.
I appreciate your reviews for their seemingly unbiased, non advertising income based praise. But paying more attention to the nuts and bolts, and overall user experience, long term, as well as the environmental impacts of repairing versus simply replacing a whole product when a $20 part is all it needed, ought to feature prominently, too.
Glad I looked, just saved myself a crap ton of money…..
Craig,
Everyone I’ve ever met loves their 1-Up, to the point that it approaches cult status. Not all of them could be suffering buyers remorse. And some of those folks put a lot of miles on the rack. Having said that, I was put off by the lack of transparency when it came to product availability last year. A wait list that was invisible; they wouldn’t disclose whether it was 3 weeks or 7 months. I voted with my feet and chose to hang onto my old T2. Maybe things are better for the supply chain, but your in the minority I think regarding quality of the 1 Up. Or maybe it really is a cult!
By the way, I consider everything on the web including gear suggestions on sites like this an advertorial unless proven otherwise.
And how exactly would you be proven otherwise?
For example, an opening statement or symbol, as many sites do, this is “sponsored content” or “advertorial.” I’m not calling you out specifically but let’s face it, it costs money to run a website and an easy way to offset costs (like the one’s Steve always writes to us about) is to provide favorable stories about using the products. Or maybe just title the article “The Best….of 2022” like they do at Gear Junkie.
Alternatively, an affirmative statement such as, “this isn’t an ad. I bought this sucker with my own money and I like it better than X specifically because Y and although I know the company has a poor reputation for customer support I still like it because….”
Well, I can assure you we are never, ever paid to review a product. If we were, you’d see WAY more gear reviews on AJ – ha. The reality is, we only cover gear that we’re using ourselves that we like so much we want to share it with the readers. We can’t do “best of 2022” stories, because you’d have to use every single piece of gear in a category for a long time to make that statement. We use plenty of products that we don’t like enough to share with readers too. Unfortunately, there’s a real guilt by association situation going on with gear-centric outdoor stories, but also our readers tell us all the time they want more get coverage. So we publish honest pieces about stuff we like. As a small team, that’s really all we can do.
Not fat bike ready, it’s useless as far as I’m concerned, I’ll take my kuat 2.0, you don’t need a rack to be easier to use then that.
I need a rack that is fat bike compatible, not burrito compatible, not enough rack for the doe, I’ll keep with the kuat.
That does not do what the kuat 2.0 does, it doesn’t “dethrone” anything, I’ll keep my kuat and my money