Makes sense, they would be competing with the ENVE AR 4.5, the new Stan's, and a few others.

If you call a cyclocross wheel the same thing as a gravel wheel, there are tons.

I think they are looking at a different market than cross since the wheels I referenced above are more aero focused than more cross wheels.

Yeah, I understand the marketing bit. I've recently noticed that now gravel and endurance bikes seem to have taken primacy over pure road bikes in bike shops. And they're unlikely to stock a single cross bike on the floor.

However there are plenty of aero CX wheels. Zipp, HED, Enve, all make aero cross wheels.

I already put in my request in for a 650B version aero-optimized around smooth tires ~45-48mm wide :-)

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http://bikeblather.blogspot.com/

However there are plenty of aero CX wheels. Zipp, HED, Enve, all make aero cross wheels.


I am sure there are aero benefits in a CX race to using aero wheels, but I recall reading an article or interview with CX Legend Sven Nys a while back and him saying that the real advantage of the deeper rims was that they picked up less mud!

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Steve Fleck @stevefleck | Blog

Ha, I'll put my request in for that too! My first thought when I saw this was in order to get to the magic 105% aero rim width, they'll need a 50mm wide 650b rim or 40mm wide 700 rim, while still keeping the internal width around 20-25mm.

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I'd imagine they'll make something to compete with the Enve 4.5 AR. They could optimize the wheel around the 28mm GP 4000s. I mounted one on a Jet+ rim just for giggles the other day and it measured out to about 31mm. That might not be an ideal gravel width but I'd imagine it would be workable and you could make such a wheel reasonably aero. The 28mm Schwalbe Pro One tubleless. If they could optimize around the G-One speed that would be a pretty neat trick.

I was hoping they would re-work the Flo 30 with their new algorithm.

I suspect they still might do that as well and have it extruded from a 2000 series alloy and make it a touch deeper in the process (35-38mm would be my guess).

Count me in on this as well. My 650b gravel wheels were designed for mountain, not 20-ish mph riding.

This will definitely be gravel focussed and not cross focussed.

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Chris Thornham
Co-Founder And Previous Owner Of FLO Cycling

What's the difference? Thanks.

There are few gravel specific frames currently on the market, but they are designed to accept much bigger tires than CX frames. The 3T Exploro is one example of a very forward thinking bike. As it currently stands, we will be using this bike during our design. Wider forks and stays give us a lot more room to design in, and we will be taking full advantage of this.

Gravel is growing, and many of the bikes at races are pieced together using odd road, cx and mountain components. Our goal is to help develop new products designed specifically for this genre of riding.

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Chris Thornham
Co-Founder And Previous Owner Of FLO Cycling

How big are you looking? During the off-season, I fit 40mm WTB Nano tires on my CX bike (Giant TCX SLR 1) for gravel rides. Is this the tire range you're looking at for the new wheels?

How big are you looking? During the off-season, I fit 40mm WTB Nano tires on my CX bike (Giant TCX SLR 1) for gravel rides. Is this the tire range you're looking at for the new wheels?[/quote]
At this point it's a very open design range. As we conduct many studies, we will let the results help fine tune exact dimensions... so to be 100% honest, until we see what the results say, we won't know exactly. That the fun of letting data/results help define your end product. We'll be chronically all of this publicly.

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Chris Thornham
Co-Founder And Previous Owner Of FLO Cycling

I like your thinking.

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https://www.kickstarter.com/...bike-for-the-new-era

Heh Flo welcome to 2014. They are really late to the party on this one. Still could be a player if price is right. So many great options already on the market.

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The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.