Hacker News Reader

Comment by nradov | Hacker News Reader

It's a shame that there's been little innovation from road bike manufacturers in the past 10 years or so. The last major innovation was aero carbon frames. Since then everyone is just copying each other and trying to improve by fractions of a percent for weight, stiffness, and efficiency.

Most of the value and innovation has shifted to the groupset suppliers, with Shimano taking the lion's share of the market and a few smaller players picking up scraps. When all the important components come from Shimano it barely matters who manufactures the frame and assembles the complete bike.

At this point road bikes are about as good as they will ever be within the limits of available materials and UCI rules. It would be nice if one of the big bike manufacturers would make their own high-quality components to compete with Shimano. Or throw out the UCI rules and build a fast, comfortable bike for customers who don't care about competing in sanctioned races.

View on HN

> It's a shame that there's been little innovation from road bike manufacturers in the past 10 years or so.

Are you not familiar with electronic shifting? Integrated components? Sure, frames have basically all consolidated down to a few similar model types, but I see that as a good thing. It means the market has all figured out that "this is the most aerodynamic frame possible". I mean honestly, what else would you expect their to be improvements on?

> with Shimano taking the lion's share of the market and a few smaller players picking up scraps.

Uhh SRAM would like to have a word with you...OTOH it's basically a duopoly (with Campy's lagging 3rd). This is a good thing because it means I can swap parts in and out as I please since Shimano/SRAM basically can fit on to any modern bike. I see this as a feature, not a bug.

> It would be nice if one of the big bike manufacturers would make their own high-quality components to compete with Shimano

You mean like every major bike brand is already doing? Trek with Bontrager, Specialized with Roval, etc. etc. Sure they aren't the shifting/braking components, but I'd rather have 30+ years of mechanical innovation behind progress on components than a frame manufacturer and assembler trying to do it. The reality is that most of the bike brands are providing high quality wheels, handlebars, accessories, etc. now, and that should be applauded.

FSA Also recently launched a drivetrain, and there are also other brake manufacturers (I'm an oddball who likes mechanical disk brakes so I pretty much have to look for them)

What kind of innovation are you expecting? Plenty of innovation is still happening in the realm of adding motors and batteries to bikes. Beyond that, what else is there to do with bikes? We're already deep into the realm of severely diminishing returns on weight and aerodynamics, and braking power is limited by physics. What else is there to improve? All I can think of is ABS.

Has anyone looked into a pneumatic powered bicycle? Is it way less efficient than a chain drive? What if you pedaled to compress air into a reserve tank that was then discharged to somehow propel the wheel(s)? That could soften the peaks and valleys of power and allow perhaps for regeneration during braking. With a large enough tank you could save up power during plains to propel you up large hills.

Chain drive can be up to 98.6% efficient, you'd have a hard time beating that.

http://pages.jh.edu/~news_info/news/home99/aug99/bike.html

Its much more efficient to store the energy as electricity. Compressing Air, and using a pneumatic motor has about 5-7% total efficiency.

I'd think that a pneumatic bottle would have to be very large, and/or very heavy to store enough energy for a useful return, the heat lost from the compressed air would lower efficiency, and an air turbine that can provide usable power over a wide range of pressures from the bottle would add additional weight and contribute to inefficiency.

The fact that there are few compressed air hybrids is probably a good sign that it's not significantly better than batteries.

Few electric bikes even use regenerative braking, it's generally not worth the weight and complexity.

>Or throw out the UCI rules and build a fast, comfortable bike for customers who don't care about competing in sanctioned races.

You've just described endurance bikes. but the reality is that the traditional bike design is still pretty much the best design, and anything radical has enough downsides and trade-offs to confine it to a niche market, so the endurance bikes still are pretty similar to any other road bike.

we've gotten really, really good at building bikes in the last 100 years. This year's model not being wildly different to last year's model isn't anything to complain about.

> Or throw out the UCI rules and build a fast, comfortable bike for customers who don't care about competing in sanctioned races.

Every competitive road bike manufacturer is also offering a TT and/or tri model. Those are still governed by rules, but those rules allow far more radical designs. Cyclists looking for something faster than road UCI (but not quite a recumbent or velomobile) know where to get it, that market is not constrained by lack of options.

It's a shame that there's been little innovation from road bike manufacturers in the past 10 years or so.

If you want to stop, we've got hydraulic disc brakes. If you want to go, we can stick a motor on it. Don't want to maintain derailleurs? Get a 14 gear Rohlhoff internal hub. Don't want to maintain a chain? Get belt drive. Don't even want to go to the effort to physically push the mechanism to the next gear? We have electric shifting now.

None of this was available twenty years ago. The "innovation every 10 years" you're looking for happened well over 100 years ago. The low-hanging fruit was taken before your grandfather was born. But build a bike with brakes so good it will lift the back wheel in the pouring rain, and people still aren't satisfied. :-)

> Or throw out the UCI rules and build a fast, comfortable bike for customers who don't care about competing in sanctioned races.

Recumbents are exactly that, but it's still very much a niche market. Furthermore, at any given component grade, a recumbent will cost more - and add a further premium if it's a trike.

I love recumbents but they're too expensive because they're almost all built by hand by a guy in a garage; never at scale. And that guy tends to go out of business fairly quickly and then you're stuck with an unsupported bike. I wish it weren't so but it is.

Recumbents have terrible visibility (can't see over cars), suck for really steep climbs and sprinting, and are kind of unsafe for fast group rides with multiple cyclists packed close together.

Also the air you breathe is closer to the exhausts of the cars.

We really need more recumbent bikes where the head of the rider is in a higher position.

I think the main problem with recumbents is failing harder in borderline unridable conditions. On a conventional bike you can temporarily move body support to the feet for a section of pave, jump over potholes, fluidly transition to walking and back if necessary.

Just imagine recumbent cyclocross, that mental picture is all you need for understanding why recumbents are a niche. Most real life transportation use of bicycles is full of lesser versions of similar challenges.

I have been riding bikes for over 30 years and I absolutely love contemporary bikes. They are just amazing. I can't believe you're complaining about them. Just crazy. The incremental improvements have really layered up over the years into something fantastic.

A prime example of this was the Trek Y-Foil. It is surprising how much the entire bike industry is shaped by the arcane rules of a very conservative 119 year old European governing body.

There is stuff like https://www.ceramicspeed.com/en/driven/

Why bother innovating when its not needed? Expensive bicycles are in the same market as fancy watches. Its all just wealth signalling. Nobody needs 10% lighter frames, or 5% more aerodynamic shapes. If you want to drive faster or burn less energy you go electric, If you want health benefits you buy the shittiest heaviest bike you can find and pedal harder.

Don't get a shitty bike if you want exercise. Shitty bikes are unpleasant to ride, making the experience not fun, and discouraging you from doing more (and longer duration) riding.

Also, safety is important, and shitty bikes are less safe.

This response to the person ahead of you makes me think you either don't know much about bikes or you missed their point.

I think we all agree, buy something shitty and you get shit, especially with things you put between you and the earth. A medium quality bike, which costs an order of magnitude less than a "fancy" bike, will do literally everyone who isn't a cat 1-2 racer fine, objectively. Price difference is $1-5k for a mid range vs $10-20k for top of the line.

I don't think anyone is advocating for $300 walmart bikes here.

I don't understand your objections, nor do I see how you can infer that I don't know much about bikes.

Yes, the person I was replying to was advocating for department store quality bikes. I don't see how you can interpret it any other way. He literally said "shittiest heaviest bike you can find", not "$1-5k medium quality bike".

You could win the tour de france doing the road stages on a medium quality bike. (if you put good tires on it). Also given your price range, some of the objectively best bikes (meets weight minimum, good aerodynamics) are in the $5k range, and the more expensive ones are worse but have big name value!

That's definitely not true...at the level of the TDF, every gram of excess weight matters, and there's a vast weight difference between a cheap $5k bike and a "fancy" $20k bike.

If you're not at the TDF level, there's no point in spending more than $2k on a bike since the difference in weight won't matter.

If every gram matters why do they wear those little hats under their helmets?

Not sure what you're talking about? Can you provide photos?

Sorry, don’t do photos. Feels like an invasion of their privacy.

It's a cycling cap. Helps to manage sweat and sunburns.

But the grams.

Actually the rules restrict minimum weight and they often have to add ballast. And reducing weight does have diminished returns at some point, particularly on flatter sections. I think the weight obsession is more aimed at selling to amateurs than making pros faster.

It's not so much the weight but aerodynamics. The top aerobikes (not timetrial bikes) use about 10-20% less power than a non aerobikes at a speed of 45km/h (which is not a high speed during racing). That has actually been the big innovation in the last 5 years, the realisation that aero is more important than weight, except for the most extreme mountain stages. All the big manufacturers are now making aerodynamically optimized bikes.

It is true because weight is limited by the UCI limits. The bikes are so light now some riders have had to resort to adding extra weights to their bikes to pass the UCI inspection. The best rider on a $5k or $20k bike will still be in the mix regardless. I'd say they could even get away with a $2k bike.

$300 actually buys you a fancy walmart bike, the really bottom quality uncomfortable ones hover around $100.

Nicer bikes are more pleasurable to ride; they make the activity more enjoyable. What's signalling about that?

these are racing bikes meant for racing. A racer might want 5% more aero, because that's the difference between winning that race or not.

This $3-5K https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/speedx/speedx-unicorn-s... was a racing bike?

I'd say so. although it markets 'comfort' as well as stiffness and low frameweight, i dont expect it to be super comfy. might be it's more aimed at granfondo riders (which are still timed events) or group riders racing for signposts with their buddies though.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com