Brian's Day 3 Randoms - Taipei Cycle Show 2023
BLKTEC was showing off some wild looking wheels. They're road wheels and the company has no plans to bring this tech to MTB, so it's fully thumbnail clickbait.
It's day 3 at the Taipei Cycle Show. Levy, Max, and Henry are off trying to convince people to share OE prices with us and I've got my head down in the hotel fighting my never-ending emails. Here are a few of the things that caught my eye over the past few days.
These brakes won a design and innovation award from the show.
RideRever's Updated Arc Brakes
RideRever is the brake brand of Chia Cherne Industry Co, which is also the parent company of Jagwire. They've got some interesting tech coming with friction welded rotors, but they're still in prototype phases and didn't have any for me to see.
This was the version we saw in 2019
The 2023 version has revised geometry and ergos.
We actually covered their Arc brake back at the 2019 show, but it's seen some major updates for 2023. It's designed for XC, trail, and all mountain (if that were a thing), and is available in tooled or tool-free adjustment versions. The ambidextrous lever uses mineral oil in a twin master-cylinder setup, and is Matchmaker and i-Spec II compatible. The semi-metallic pads are top-loading, and the caliper is forged aluminum.
Weight is listed as 225g, but not clear what that weight actually includes. The old brake was listed at $105 without rotor, but pricing has yet to be announced for the new one.
The ergonomics felt very good in hand, and I'd be curious to see how these perform on trail.
Looks clean.
The caliper comes with drop-in semi metallic pads
Looks familiar.
There's a lot of components that go into your components.
Teclin's Suspension Components
Teclin is a Taichung-based specialist tubing manufacturer, processing aluminum from raw ingot to finished, machined parts under one roof. Think seamless stanchions and shock damper shafts. They also have products ready for OEM/ODM and private label commercialization.
One of my favourite things at the show is seeing all the suppliers of components to your favourite components. This fork crown may look familiar to some of you. In fact I believe they make components for several of the boutique suspension makers we know and love.
These have a really nice finish.
Funn's New Pedals & Updated Stem
Funn gave up a sneak peek of their new Python flat pedal. It's very low profile, with a tapered platform shape. They achieve the unique finish by laser etching it before anodizing. They weigh about 320g per pair, and come with short (pictured) and long pins. No word on availability or pricing just yet.
Funn has also added a 0mm rise option to their their Equalizer stem line. It joins their existing +-10mm rise option, and is essentially the same otherwise. All the existing faceplates can be mixed and matched between the different versions.
All the colours
Details:
• Material: CNCed 6061 aluminum
• Clamp diameter: 31.8mm / 35mm
• Stack height: 34mm
• Length: 35mm / 42mm / 50mm
• Rise: 0mm (+-10mm version still available as well)
• Colours: Black / Grey / Red / Blue / Orange / Green
• Material: CNCed 6061 aluminum
• Clamp diameter: 31.8mm / 35mm
• Stack height: 34mm
• Length: 35mm / 42mm / 50mm
• Rise: 0mm (+-10mm version still available as well)
• Colours: Black / Grey / Red / Blue / Orange / Green
Looks like them thar e-bikes are here to stay.
Bafang's M510 Motor
Bafang had its M510 motor (err drive system) on display. It was released last year and holds the sweet spot in their mid motor offerings—claiming to deliver a massive maximum of 95Nm torque, with a reasonable 2.9kg weight. The battery here was a fully integrated 630 watt-hour unit that weighs 3.6kg. Bafang is quick to mention the higher overall torque curve of the M510, and high cadence support of 120 rpm. It's got a magnesium housing to save weight, and is said to have improved its software for smoother power delivery. It's also apparently got better waterproofing than their previous motors.
The bottom bracket interface that shall not be named.
Lots of control options.
Hybridizer is a great name.
The Hybridizer eMTB that Bafang was using as a display unit looked pretty good and had a nice under-toptube storage area. I wasn't able to find much more info on it at the show, but it looks like it's related to the Hansol Works company—someone please hit the comments if you know more!
More Randoms
Single entry SPD power meter pedals
Sorry for the dark photos, the lighting was tough in this booth.
Questionable name aside, Pedotec is well established and their parent company APMS has worked with Cube, Cycore, and others over the years. With an MSRP of $800 USD and an OE price of about $100, these dual power meter pedals are much cheaper than the current offerings out there.
Bicycle Retailler spotted a similar version a few years back, but these appear to be more refined. Ant+/BLE connectivity, works with all the apps, up to 120hrs battery, IPX6 water resistance, etc. I wouldn't be surprised to see these show up in other markets with someone else's name at some point.
It has to be on purpose at this point.
This one too.
Tioga had a bunch of saddles I'm sure Mike Levy has already covered separately. The BMX seat actually makes some sense for racing where it's really just to keep the bike legal for minimal weight. This one is 80g.
Tioga did tell us that they've got some interesting MTB stuff coming this year, so we'll hope to see more at Sea Otter or Eurobike.
KS Ether
KS had a lot of new stuff to show this year. We've covered their post, fork, and other offerings elsewhere, but I was interested in this unassuming Ether stem. It's forged from 7000-series aluminum, and has really nicely hidden bolts for reduced knee-smashing. It's existed in their line for quite a while now with 50mm and 70mm versions, but they've added this 35mm length version for 2023. I think it looks great, and I'd expect it to come in significantly lighter than the 120g 50mm version. Available in 31.8 and 35mm clamp versions.
AirTag holder
What AirTag holder?
RST Greenergy (aka RST Suspension) won a design award for this Smart Tag Platform. It fits inside 1.5" tapered steerers and uses an expanding bolt system to hold it in place. It apparently holds all trackers on the market, but it's not clear how the tags are held in place. It's also not clear how they've gotten around the issue of the fork steerer + headtube blocking the signal—I tried to 3D print a similar thing last year and struggled with connectivity, but I guarantee they put more thought into I did, so I hope it works out.
No word on pricing or availability.
Okay time for MOS Burger and possibly a sweaty hike up the Xiangshan (Mt. Elephant) trail later. We've got more coverage from Taipei coming soon.
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106 Comments
Either way, it was indeed great clickbait. It gets us talking about different aspects. For rim brakes and comfort or for a hub brake And in the latter case, what rotor interface And in the case of sticking the rotor straight to the spoke junction, how does the rim stay centered when braking? So many questions...
Maybe when I’m 70?……hells no.
Hansol Works is founed in Guangdong, China a few years ago. The founder of Hansol Works, Mr. Hansol, is a passionate MTB rider and engineer with multiple years of experience in the ebike industry, and has been working on the EMTB project for years.
The coolest thing is that, Mr. Hansol kept all the potential buyers updated about the development of the bike and took a lot of thoughts about the design of the bike from them. So this is really a bike “by the riders, and for the riders”.
Before making into production, the Hansol Works factory team also took the bike into the GDL Guangdong DH Series (one of the most difficult and highest level DH series in China), by taking off the motor and racing against the regular bikes, and established absolute domination.
What’s more. The frame kit (with motor and battery) only costs $2000 in China, which is real bargain!
marketing@hybridizer.com;
www.hybridizer.com.
Will you be making a non-ebike version?
That's a shame.
Shame Hope don’t seem to do 25 degree rise options on their sexy new stems.
Still got mt old funn bigfoot pedals with the nifty grease ports. Done thousands of miles and still spinning nicely. They living out a nice retirement on my missus’ e commuter.
The RST smart tag holder is amazing. Not the product itself as it wont work, like Brian I've tried stuffing an air tag inside a steerer and it's pretty useless. It's amazing because it doesn't work yet it's won a design award.
Asking for a friend who hates marshalling the kids races.
After your sponsorship has ended you can get some treatment and move on to expedo pedals
Wait wait wait... is this a typo? MSRP is 8x higher than OE price? That's a crazy profit margin.
I used to work for a company that did aftermarket parts for Harley Davidson motorcycles, and we sold things for about 3x what we paid the machine shops to make them. Our staff did a good amount of inspection/packing etc on those parts too.
But this is even worse - I'm assuming when they sell pedals as OE they're still making some profit. Right? Am I missing something?
I think prices are not going down has mostly todo with the fact that there are almost no components brands that exclusively sell directly to consumers. They still have some kind of distribution network of some capacity. That does not work with lower prices if you want to make money in both cases.
www.instagram.com/p/CqIJ6sDDrV4
just sayin