hey just saw this question
1/ No the powerplay never 'cuts out' on me
2/ there was a case of a reviewer on Youtube who had one that 'cut out' on the, but it was a beta tester. that seems to be an n=1 case
3/ I have had one incident where I powered up at the start of a ride and went to go ride the bike and the motor would not go. It persisted for a few minutes and power cycles. Then it worked for the rest of the day.
... I brought it to the LBS owner, an avid Powerplay rider himself, and he was perplexed too. So he called up RockyMtn and they quickly figured it out: the motor became 'out of sync.' It is a simple procedure to reprogram the motor sync using the control buttons on the bars, can be done anywhere any time. But since that one de-sync and reprogram, the issue has not recurred over 10 subsequent rides. This was only on my own Powerplay, not my wife's Powerplay.
hope this helps
I will mention the only issue I have with this model of eMTB system: it is very loud. The complex cogs and pulleys around the motor area adds in a lot of drivetrain noise, making it easily the noisiest ebike I have heard, of any kind of ebike. Not very stealth. It's not the motor itself, it's all the extra pulleys Rocky designed into their system. Because of this I would buy the new Specialized Levo instead if I was to do it over.
Otherwise this is a super capable Enduro-style bike that rides flawlessly over very challenging west-coast BC terrain.
The only component I had to replace was the brakes, which are SRAM Guide+Code brakes (Guide levers with Code DH calipers), and all SRAM brakes are HORRRIBLE. I put on a set of XT brakes ($200 on ebay) which are fantastic. But maybe a lightweight rider could get away with SRAM brakes lol.
