Hello Vital MTB Visitor,
We’re conducting a survey and would appreciate your input. Your answers will help Vital and the MTB industry better understand what riders like you want. Survey results will be used to recognize top brands. Make your voice heard!
Five lucky people will be selected at random to win a Vital MTB t-shirt.
Thanks in advance,
The Vital MTB Crew
curious if the new 40 will come at the same time.
And the 2025 "Simplicity is the ultimate innovation award" goes to Transmission 90 mechanical and XT M8100 for their outstanding lack of electronic component complication, perfectly acceptable shifting performance and general affordability. We thank you for being as good as anyone ever would need.
RAAW is a german company, last year, the total numbers of all MTB sold in Germany was about 80k, that number is getting smaller and smaller in the last years. now look at EMTB sold, that was 800k, 10x as much as non motorized MTB. so they exist in an ever shrinking market if they don’t adapt to the new reality..,
If they keep their release strategy the same, they’ll release the new 38 on April 7th, 2026.
The question is, can brands survive without making an ebike? Based on what I know about sales at bike dealers, pedal bike purchases are in persistent decline. In order for a brand to grow or even stay the same size, they will have to make an ebike. I think there have smartly been many hold-outs... and I agree, maybe producing a product like an EMTB is too intensive and requires too much warranty overhead to the point where that process can kill a small/mid sized brand. But I also can assume that most brands aren't in business to persistently struggle to stay afloat and/or get smaller and continually step closer too less and less staff.
I'm surprised we don't talk about the weight difference between AXS stuff and cable more. I'm no weight weenie (36 lb alloy Norco Sight w 2 lb of lead), but I'm certainly not interested in adding unsprung mass to my bike when I can avoid it. Seems odd, especially on a DH bike where suspension sensitivity is the whole point. I just checked, and a 90 series rear mech is about a 100g lighter than a GX T-type (incl battery). Better yet, an XT 12-speed mechanical rear mech is another 110 grams lighter than the 90 series. Not totally against electronic stuff, but I figure every gram of weight I knock off the rear end I can add in lead on the BB and have better suspension feel+lower COG. Even better when I'm paying 1/3rd the amount for XT mechanical lol.
That all being said, is there any way to make the electronic components any lighter? Are we at a plateau with battery energy density or in how small/light we can make the servos/motors? I would imagine those are the heaviest electronics pieces on the mechs. I was thinking about how it's odd that I've never seen any advertisements about advancements in those realms, but you'll see brands flaunting their $500 carbon cage upgrade that saves 13 grams.
Almost 8K USD build on Eagle 90 is a bit hard pill to swallow... especially when the current Spire 29" Carbon Complete Bike with X0 AXS Build and Factory suspension is 6999. Wild times for sure but not really following what they try to tell with that.
@Dave_Camp shared this elsewhere in the Vital forums, but he thinks unsprung mass doesn't have nearly the effect on suspension performance that we tend to assign it in the popular imagination. And he's pretty smart.
As someone who's pretty sensitive to suspension performance and who runs really heavy wheels, tires, and inserts, I tend to agree.
Even heavy wheels really don't make that much of a difference.
It's just due to the relative strength of the forces. Put your bike in a stand and try cycle the rear to sage point. It's a LOT for force than what people assume. 200g of a derailleur is just nothing in comparison.
People think 500g/1kg would make a huge difference, but it's almost all handling related and not suspension movement.
What do you mean by “relative strength of forces”? This sounds like a misunderstanding of the physics as play within suspension. The conversation around unsprung mass relates to the acceleration of the wheel when it impacts a bump, and this acceptation is directly tied to the mass of the object being accelerated. While anecdotally you may not have noticed a difference in the added weight, 500-1000g is substantial. Apologies if I’m coming off strong, but I think it’s important to discuss anecdotal vs scientific/theoretical when talking about this stuff.
I’m curious to see what Dave’s comments were on this. I’d assume that rider preferences or terrain variation end up being comparable to the percent variation that you could get from a 100-200g change in unsprung mass.
Agreed. Not to say that a 250g increase is very noticeable, but it definitely does something. Probably not something that us laymen should be really worried over, but if I was a high level racer pushing my bike to ragged edge and .010 seconds was the difference between a good result and great one, maybe this would be a thought? Anyways, we should get back to rumours, I meant my original post as more of a discussion about the potential to refine electronics not a total derailment.
It's like when we add DH casing tyres over say EXO/EXO+ the whole bike just feels more planted and smoother.
the rotating mass Allows the Wheels to Just monster more things.
tyre/wheel weight make more a normal immediate difference than frame weight etc.
I cant tell the difference between a heavy drivetrain and a light one, maybe overal weight with climbing but i always feel like you get used to extra climbing weight pretty quick, Heavy tyres/wheels(and compound) make a massssive difference
I compared two bikes(our gen 7 fuels) one in alloy and one in Carbon(9.8) i added the difference in weight to the carbon and after the first 10mins i didnt notice the weight but I did notice the stiffness(this is with all the same parts) the Carbon frame was more responsive and felt like you got alot less Flex when pedaling and providing more forward momentum
However, i still prefer the alloy version, it just feels fantastic to ride 🤷♂️
While a more massive object requires proportionally more force to achieve a specific acceleration, it’s important to remember that in compression the thing imparting this force on the unsprung mass is extremely massive. The unsprung mass is going to get out of the way of whatever impact it encounters. Rebound is really the question.
I think in most cases the things that add weight normally add more performance than you lose from the increased mass, eg heavier/wider tyres.
Also unsprung mass is going to play a bigger part at higher frequencies (more rapid changing direction) and our enemy friction is normally much bigger at that point! So 200g of unsprung mass doesnt matter too much when there is 4-5kg of excess friction in the system.
I absolutely agree heavy tires and wheels make a big difference, just not in suspension performance.
Heavy tires and wheels impart positive and negative handling characteristics. Same as weight, add 1kg and the bike is quite a bit harder to bunny hop. Because taking a 16kg bike to 17kg is a 6% increase. For suspension however it the system weight and friction that matter, so 1kg weight increase isn't as large a change as it is for handling characteristics.
The fact you hit a stationary object is obvious, however, the heavier your moving mass, the more impact energy needs to be dissipated at the same velocity. Dissipation of that impact energy takes away from your velocity.
In theory, if you hit the same object with 2 identical bikes, but 1 has weight transferred from frame to wheels, a few things will happen:
- Wheels will bounce up until they've cleared obstacle, and then continue their upward motion until damping and spring stops the "overshoot"
- In case of heavier wheels, this upward motion is more pronounced, and more energy is required to stop the motion, and then to control the return speed.
The whole point of suspension is so that your sprung weight is stable (ok that may be bit over simplified) and controlled. For an extreme example, just think about how an e-bike or another moto rides. They're very stable compared to a mountain bike, regardless of wheels - it's the sprung/unsprung ratio that's responsible for most of that feeling.
On the other end would be a tractor wheel alone rolling down the street, until it hits a curb and flies up. Now if you somehow attached a bike to that wheel, it'll fly away with the wheel like it's no-one else's business, and it doesn't even matter if the bike has any suspension, the wheel is just so heavy it dictates the path.
Real differences are obviously nuanced, but I'd imagine many would recognize 250g added to their bike's wheel they're familiar with. I'd guess almost no-one would recognize 250g on a frame, but for instance adding CushCore to a wheel is about that weight and does that ever make a difference.
i don't know how well known that already is in the englisch speaking world, but they are in a development partnership with german motor brand hepha:
https://www.emtb-news.de/news/hepha-raaw-entwicklungspartnerschaft/
Wonder if there will be a race day battery for the electronic DH derailleur. Downhill racers don't need the same capacity as a regular derailleur as you only shift a handful of times in a race run. The weight saving is probably marginal though.
Interesting no anvl components on the higher end builds.
My deore/mrzocchi spire 3800 peak pandemic market hurts my cheap soul just a bit less now.
Maybe they think hey bigger price means we can offer a bigger discount at the end of the year and for the people who are gonna buy a new 4 year old bike maybe they aren’t too worried about value to begin with.
Aluminum frame at 2600 is a bit scary. Hope that doesn’t become the norm for the more premium brands.
AXS and Di2 batteries weigh ~25g; I struggle to imagine a scenario in which reducing that weight makes any kind of measurable, real-world difference in performance.
I was totally unaware of that, thank you very much for sharing. Vitalmtb forum delivering the goods, as always.
The weight difference between a normal derailleur and a T-type is definitely in how beefy the T-type is built.. Upside, a single charge on an AXS battery could probably get you through an entire race season..
I think the perceived smoothness of heavier vehicles more comes down to the weight of sprung mass compared to the weight of the rider/driver more than anything. You and your bike a plenty heavy and exert plenty of force in compression to not get bump jumped by even a heavy wheel assuming the suspension and tire pressure is reasonable and of course not wheels that are obscenely heavy. Obviously at some point they would become heavy enough to be an issue. The forces exerted by the suspension are also largely vertical so they do little to take away from horizontal velocity.
Of course it's not very simple, but while you're correct the impact are vertical, the energy lost is still energy lost, and it's no other energy you bring in than kinetic - every time you deflect a part from a straight line, you use energy. So the lighter part you deflect, the less energy.
Now I hear the argument of rider+bike's weight a lot, but that ignores the biggest suspension components we have - arms and legs. The dynamic forces are vastly different from the suspended weight being a solid object, quite the contrary - suspension is essentially trying to calm down your contact points and the little weight you keep on them (hands, feet..), while the rest is suspended again by your limbs.
Getting distracted from rumors(or lack thereof anyways) and all a little bit. But the physics are kind of cool.
For anecdotal evidence, I have 2 very similar bikes in a way, and 2 wheel sets for each. One wheelset is light, one is heavy for going too gnarly. As others mentioned, there's obvious ups and downs to both lighter and heavier, and the handling characteristics ignoring suspension change a lot, I attribute that to the gyro effect of heavier wheel.
They already get swapped between 2 bikes with near identical geometry, similar travel, and different drive trains. Again, this is anecdotal, but when I make a mistake and leave the rear wheel hung up on a square edge, I'd be pretty confident to say the heavier wheel hangs up with more force (as I'd expect) and I get rocked forward more noticeably. Again it's anecdotal, but I also graduated in physics and math and it just adds up to my theory.
Your suspension is doing work on the mass of you and the unsprung mass. Viewing it as doing work to slow down the upward motion of the wheel cuts out the majority of the picture. From a suspension performance standpoint, the argument for lower unsprung mass is the wheel can get returned to the ground quicker after it goes over an obstacle that causes it to lose contact. That is a direct correlation to increased traction. I think rebound is one of the most overlooked things across many industries, but what I was referring to initially was just the compression side of things.
Your arms and legs are exactly why the ratio of rider weight to unsprung mass matters. As the unsprung mass gets larger relative to the rider, less vibrations are passed through to the rider in many scenarios. If you were rigidly affixed to the bike, all that would matter is the total weight of you and the bike combined. While proportionally heavy unsprung mass smooths out vibrations very well, the downside is if it’s going to bottom out you are along for the ride and there’s pretty much nothing you can do about whereas when the unsprung mass is proportionally less you have control over that to a degree via your muscles.
Wheels getting hung up is an interesting one because it has less to do with how the suspension is moving and rather creating a situation where the suspension won’t move. All bikes have a horizontal leverage ratio that sheds light on how it will handle larger square edge hits. I bike with a rearward axle path has a positive horizontal leverage ratio whereas when the axle path is forward it’s negative. This is what causes shock tuners to see lower average shaft speeds with a rearward axle path bike even if it has the same vertical leverage ratio. A heavier wheel is also essentially creating a bigger boat anchor to try and pull over the obstacle, which will always require more force. If you increased unsprung mass, conservation of moment would dictate that you’d notice any hang up less.
Smaller, lighter AXS batteries already exist:
The thing about wheels is that they move on the suspension path, but also rotate. Spinning a wheel faster(sprinting) or spinning it slower(braking) results in a slower reaction with a heavier mass. Changing direction right/left left/right is also affected. For those of us not on a clock it may matter zero, but for the time equals money folks it could be a consideration.
Late to the discussion- but I think you'd have to be a pretty good rider doing A-B-A-B testing to feel 250g of unsprung weight on the rear wheel. The unsprung weight on the rear end is probably about 5kg- wheel, tire, brake caliper, cassette, derailleur, chainstay/seatstay, link etc. 250g is a small % change.
Another thing I didn't see any discussion about is the fact that the tire is kind of suspension for the wheel. A heavier wheel might make the tire work harder and filter out some vibration before it can even get to the axle. Think about a 10kg wheel- might filter out all the high frequency vibration because the tire can't move it at that frequency.
The sprung/un-sprung discussion is mostly academic anyway- you have to run good tires and wheels/brakes/drivetrain for your application. The weight is what it is- might save a few hundred grams by throwing money at it, but it's not going to be a big change either way.
Thanks for chiming in, Dave. I think you described my impressions perfectly, I have a light wheelset with light tires and a heavy wheelset with heavy tires and the light tires feel worse in every way over bumps and chatter. I feel like I'm getting kicked around a lot more, and with the heavier wheels I'm tracking so much better and the ride is so much smoother.
Now, of course the performance of the tires themselves is different, so I suppose the real test would be to glue lead weights onto my light wheels with lights tires and see how they feel. But I wouldn't be surprised if they felt better with weight. I think added upsprung weight helps push more force through the tire, using the tire as a spring before the force ever reaches the chassis.
That's my reverse engineering, anyone, from my ride observations. Would be fun to test.
Anvl is dead. They have a stupid over stock on there stuff so it’ll be selling for a while but it’s gone