Cycle Tech Releases This Year
Cycling Weekly's Sam Gupta & Joe Baker look at 2024 and cast their predictions on the new road bike tech we may see hit the market. There's everything from wireless brakes, heap electronic groupsets and new glucose monitoring systems that could change the face of cycling forever. Let us know what you think could be released in 2024.
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00:00Some of the tech that we're really excited for in 2024. There is a lot to dive into so I want
00:05to start with something pretty contentious because there's a lot of meat on the bone,
00:09but wireless brakes. Talk to me Joe, why do you think that they could be something one
00:14that we should be excited for and two why they'd be any good? Yeah well as you say pretty contentious
00:21issue. I think there's a lot of people would worry when you start to talk about wireless brakes.
00:26There are a few things that they'd be really good for. I think the most obvious one is at least on
00:32SRAM's group sets we are one hose away from totally cableless or wireless operation of the
00:38bike which is pretty amazing. But I mean why would that be good for the man on the street? Why would
00:44that be good for normal riders? So first of all you've got the fact that you could completely get
00:49rid of internal cable routing which any bike mechanic will tell you is kind of probably still
00:54the bane of their life to an extent. There's the other thing as well with the safety of headsets
00:58and safety of steerers. So at the moment a lot of steerer tube fractures are actually due to point
01:03loading due to having split rings. So instead of having a full ring around your headset thanks to
01:11hydraulic hoses going through the frame you have to have that split so there's room for them. That
01:15can cause point loading and therefore fracture which is depending on who you speak to actually
01:20kind of quite an issue at least in bike design. It's a weak spot so being able to eradicate that
01:24weak spot would make them stronger. Yeah absolutely. I think the other thing is general maintenance.
01:30It would just make so much sense to be able to easily swap bars without the stupidly high labour
01:35costs that we see to do that. The bike shop I used to work in somebody came in and they wanted their
01:41stem lowered by I think it was eight millimetres. It required two brake bleeds, complete recabling
01:47of the bike and I think the labour cost genuinely was £170. That was not overcharged that was simply
01:53just how long it would take the bike shop to do that job and actually just to be able to go back
01:58to the old days if you will but with modern technology would be really would be a massive
02:02gain for consumer and bike shops. Yeah and I guess when you start to think about it it's not actually
02:08too far removed from the TRP hydro calipers because we've seen similar things where you
02:14have the hydraulic reservoir right next to where the pistons are and having kind of this
02:18all-encompassing caliper. The only thing that I can think of in that situation is obviously you've
02:22got a cable actuated system there. How much more bulky is it then going to be to have a motor that
02:28then actuates it plus a battery to run the whole caliper? You're then ending up with a pretty
02:33potentially significantly sized unit right down at the end of your fork. I mean how bulky is that
02:39going to be? For sure I think that depends on how far into the development cycle you're talking about.
02:44And I think this is the big caveat for this one. I think we'll see prototypes next year.
02:48I think this is a few years of actually seeing this on our bikes. Firstly it's going to come
02:52to e-bikes first. It was the same with Di2 electronic shifting. It makes sense that something
02:57that as you say is bound to be slightly more bulky will first end up on something where weight is
03:02less of a factor. I would argue that in a few years time we could definitely see working models that
03:07actually don't really detriment aerodynamics too much and also get rid of the cables and
03:11all the benefits that I've talked about. I guess one of the bigger issues though
03:14forgetting about the size and weight of any potential calipers that are wireless,
03:18should we trust the technology? I mean not having that hard link between your brake lever and your
03:24brake that's our big mental hurdle. Certainly that's going to be a lot of people's biggest
03:28worry and I think rightly so it's really not natural to not trust a mechanical system. It's
03:33what we've been using for so long. However if you look to other parts of the automotive industry,
03:38public transport, we rely on electrical systems absolutely everywhere. But actually if there's
03:43a failsafe built into the bike as well I don't actually see a reason that we shouldn't trust
03:47them. Yeah that's really interesting. I think with tech like this you're absolutely right we
03:53would see it on an e-bike first because in that world you're not as concerned with size or weight
03:59it's more about whether it works well or not. But I don't know I think I've got more reservations
04:04about whether or not it would be even seen on a bicycle first as opposed to seeing it in the
04:08automotive world in some form because I think with something like this it would just need to go
04:14through so many so many rounds of R&D before it gets to the point where the tech is actually
04:21flawless and you've kind of built up that trust in the public arena. Moving over from e-bikes to
04:26the world of road cycling we're going to talk a little bit about electronic group sets. That's
04:30it because we think that over the next 12-24 months we could potentially see more cheap
04:37electronic group sets and we think that SRAM could be leading the way in that market purely because
04:43last year we did see them release SRAM Apex AXS which is their fourth tier so that sits below
04:49SRAM Force and SRAM Rival. So it's whether or not they could actually bring out a fifth tier
04:55AXS group set. We did speak to a spokesperson at SRAM who said that they expect the adoption
04:59of electronic group sets to continue across more price points. They didn't want to give a time
05:04scale unfortunately which isn't all too surprising but yeah I think it's certainly something that
05:08could be coming as you say in the next 12-24 months. Yeah absolutely I think it would be
05:12really interesting to see how other competitors in the market react to that because I think from
05:18a consumer's point of view that buzzword of electronic gears it kind of makes it seem like
05:24anything mechanical just really isn't good enough. So as we know Shimano is going to be
05:30coming out with Q's in the next couple of years but before we see Q's Di2 well that is clearly
05:36going to be so far down the line you potentially have to look towards other rivals that might be
05:43bringing out you know these budget electronic group sets. I think you're absolutely right I
05:47think in fairness Shimano it's fair to say it's got some work to do. They're playing catch up big
05:52time. They're playing catch up as you say and I think the recent release of the GRX 12 speed in
05:57mechanical well Shimano said that well 50% of our customers still buy mechanical shifting I would
06:04argue that a lot of that is down to price in the first place. Yeah and I think that's the question
06:08for the masses of riders that are out there that are on mechanical group sets and you can look at
06:13say Tiagra and below what's it going to mean for the prices of those bikes because currently
06:20there's so much of that product out in the market that you can have something that is
06:25slightly affordable at the moment that if we did start to see either a fifth tier axis group set
06:31or something from Shimano land on stock bikes is that just going to mean that the base level of
06:38bikes gets pushed up even higher and that's my biggest concern is yeah what's it going to do
06:44to the cost of bikes? Adoption of more electronic group sets I believe will probably inflate the
06:49price more to an extent the only thing that would stop that is if actually a budget competitor like
06:55we saw L2 made quite a storm in the social media space early this year if a brand like that was
07:00able to severely undercut SRAM or Shimano and then was adopted by a big major bike brand. And that's
07:06the key that's the key I think the number of people that go out and buy a group set and then
07:10put it on their bike is such a small percentage of the overall market like I'd be amazed if it
07:15was even one percent that it has to be adopted by one of the really big bike brands for it to
07:20actually be a meaningful move for the industry and then it would only be it would be kind of a
07:26budget play would would the brands be able to still sell a bike with electronic gears for less
07:34than a thousand pounds less than a thousand dollars I don't know. It's certainly a push but I think
07:39arguably a pretty big power move for a big bike brand to choose to partner with one of these more
07:43budget group set manufacturers and be able to undercut the market. I agree 2024 is an Olympic
07:50year but what is that going to mean for track cycling and track cycling tech and what's it
07:55going to mean for maybe that tech being adopted on the road what are you predicting? As you say
08:00it's an Olympic year whenever we get an Olympics normally we get a huge amount of new developments
08:04in tech the biggest one really that we've seen on a few different bikes actually at the world
08:10championships last year in August is split seat posts we're not talking about sort of the canyon
08:16style seat post that's designed to give sort of some comfort and deflection we're actually talking
08:20about sort of having two separate seat posts side by side creating like a Dyson Airblade seat post
08:26exactly and that is pretty much the best analogy for these the idea is that you can accelerate air
08:31between a rider's legs and that can help to fill the low pressure area behind the rider's legs
08:36behind sort of behind the lower back so it's the same kind of concept as like the Trek Madone
08:42isoflow correct but kind of above a bit higher up exactly really similar to that the biggest
08:48hurdle here i think is the aesthetics they do look pretty strange so you know for the road bike market
08:53i think that's kind of more of an achilles than potentially in on the track and in sort of time
08:58trialing but really i think there's no real reason why we won't start to see them sort of creep into
09:04the wider road world yeah i think i think that's one thing is that like with the aesthetics people
09:09get used to aesthetics over time people tend to hate things when things are new but then they get
09:14used to them and they accept them and then they want them i don't necessarily see that as being
09:18like the biggest downside in the world i think what would be interesting is what's it going to
09:22do from like a saddle comfort point of view like is that going to mean that you actually lose
09:27compliance in the seat post because obviously there's been a lot of R&D recently put into
09:31making sure that seat posts do work really well for kind of smoothing out the ride as much as
09:36possible so i can see that potentially being a downside um but i mean it seems to make sense
09:43it's whether or not any bike manufacturers would try to build it into their bikes or whether or
09:48not it would be an upgrade that people kind of buy from a third party brand like dorina or someone
09:53else like that from the thrilling world of seat posts to some new fitness tech we may well see
09:57in 2024 indeed um and this is something that actually could be pretty revolutionary within
10:03both the pro racing game but also at grassroots level um super sapiens is a company that currently
10:10exists and they make glucose monitoring systems and it's a little patch that sticks on the back
10:15of your arm and there's a little needle which then obtains the data from your blood work
10:19however currently they're completely banned from pro cycling what's exciting though is that there's
10:25a company in wales called athon technology who's developing a system where they can obtain the
10:31same data but without needing the needle prick in your arm so don't need to have the risk of
10:36infections um and it also means that it would be virtually impossible to ban um the tech is
10:43currently in development but from our point of view if they develop that and they make it really
10:49successful and they make it work i don't think there's a reason why they then wouldn't just sell
10:53that tech to say garmin or wahoo or whoop like i think the all they could just license out to all
10:59to all these parties it would be um it would be pretty revolutionary i think and i think it would
11:04be a really good thing for the majority of cyclists for the majority of cyclists i i i hold
11:10a very different view to be honest i think i would genuinely go as far as to say that if this was
11:15widely adopted in the pro ranks it could genuinely i think ruin bike racing okay so why do you think
11:21that is a couple of reasons um what it comes down to is that bike racing at the minute is
11:28absolutely thrilling due to the fact that so few variables are controlled a classics race for
11:33example there's 200 riders on the start line any one of those riders could be on a great day
11:39take out the domestiques and you know communication in the team as to who feels good on any one day
11:44there's at least 50 riders that could win that race yeah and that and the fact that we don't
11:48know who's going to win is exactly why it's cycling is so exciting to watch a lot of that
11:53comes down to fueling look at the tour de france this year for example the only the reason behind
11:58taddy pogacar cracking as he explained was due to not being able to take on enough carbohydrate
12:02so if you're able to completely control a rider's glucose levels for me i think that could really
12:08just take away an element of volatility from racing i think though that that development and
12:14that progression is kind of inevitable um and i think it feels like what you're arguing for
12:21is almost a stunting of development and a stunting of innovation for the sake of good racing and i
12:27mean arguably you can see in f1 when teams reach a certain level um they really are kind of it can
12:34make racing boring because essentially they've kind of cracked the code um but i think that
12:41it is kind of inevitable and maybe there would be more variables being pulled out in different
12:46areas of pro racing but remember that's only a very small part of cycling because i mean the
12:52bulk of cyclists are amateurs um so i think if amateurs have a better understanding of what
12:57their body's doing um how to better utilize their body and it's even if you're not racing but if
13:02you're anyone who wants to go out on like an ultra ride um and you need to monitor how many carbs
13:08you're getting into your system that's really critical information so it could be that the tech
13:13is developed it i mean we all know what the uci is like if they want to ban something they will ban
13:19it so absolutely they will but the problem is they even if they can ban that in racing they can't
13:25ban someone from wearing smartwatch when they're training so i think we might see a situation where
13:30people learn lots in training but they can't use it in racing yeah but just going back to the point
13:34of view from the wider sort of adoption of that technology i am more for that because i can think
13:39of many times particularly when i was a junior that i've bonked on rides it's led me to in some
13:45some cases getting ill and even early last year i did the tracker 360 360 kilometers and at every
13:51single feed station i was trying to just hack down carbohydrates literally plain rice energy bars
13:57every half an hour and actually being able to keep a track on that for ultra riding would have
14:02to be honest made it safer actually yeah that's really interesting so i think there's a lot of
14:06merit to the technology and if it does become more widely available which i think having a
14:11system which doesn't need to be kind of you know have a needle in your arm then i think that does
14:15make the most sense i think one the most exciting thing is that this tech is it's right there we
14:23could see it this year and that would be that would be pretty significant for the sport now
14:28finally there's one more thing that we're quite excited for um but it often feels like we talk
14:32about quite often that being new gearing systems but you have a pretty strong belief that actually
14:38we could be on the verge of something fairly big here yes it's something that we've talked about
14:41for quite a few years now but i genuinely think we really are on the cusp of seeing a lot more
14:45development in the world of drivetrains and that is going away from derailleur gears okay so um
14:52what bikes can we see this on and is there actually a benefit to the end user yep once
14:58again i think e-bikes are going to see this technology first a great example which isn't
15:02quite production ready yet is driven technologies orbit drive system which is a planetary gearbox
15:07that won an innovation award last year at eurobike but when it comes to the end user i think really
15:13it's something not necessarily for us cyclists but more something for the wider audience so
15:18something like that driven technologies orbit drive system can actually would actually allow
15:23you to just jump on an e-bike choose a cadence say 80 rpm 60 rpm everything else can be done for you
15:30can total automatic shifting you would just have an ecu unit that chooses how much input comes from
15:35the motor how much from your legs and from that how fast you go again all for one cadence the
15:40other thing is maintenance we once again look to the automotive industry gearbox oil for example
15:45does not need to be changed very often if something is properly engineered in a sealed
15:49system there's no reason why you wouldn't have to service your gearbox for say 10 000 miles which for
15:54a lot of people is probably getting on the life cycle of a bike absolutely could not agree more
15:59i think it would be really interesting to see what it does for um i'll say it again the cost of bikes
16:04um however i think the benefits here could potentially be really outweighing the potential
16:09cost um yeah and once again going back to why next year i think the big thing here is e-micro
16:16mobility is massively on the rise it has been for a few years now but it's getting to the point where
16:21actually we're starting to see some bigger players come into the e-bike market this year i think
16:25we've seen four or five different collaborations with the automotive industry and automotive brands
16:30and once again that funding is potentially what could just tip us over the edge of seeing
16:35something like this come to production so joe out of everything we've spoken about today what would
16:39be your one innovation or trend that you're most excited for above all else despite my slander
16:46earlier in the video i think it would have to be the watch technology yeah as i say i don't think
16:49it'd be a great thing for bike racing but for the wider audience i think it's really exciting yeah
16:53how about you sam i think for me i think the concept of cheap electronic gears and that being
16:59like really widespread i do like the idea of um like i said earlier my biggest concern really is
17:05what it will do to the cost of more entry-level bikes if that can be kept in check i think that
17:11will be that'll be really really good in the long term let us know down below out of everything we've
17:17spoken about today what would you be most excited to see in 2024 if you enjoyed the video then
17:22please do drop it a like subscribe to the channel for more content and we will see you again very soon