Actually, when the P5 was introduced it was $10K, although it came with a low end wheelset. Even adjusting for the wheelset still $2K-2.5K less. And the Felt IA FRD was $14K.

I think any way you look at it this bike is priced in a pretty rarified tier, $11K for the less expensive model is really high for an Ultegra Di2 bike.

 
i guess the numbers the bike sells will show if people like the p5X .
I would think its undeniable the p4 did not hit the spot of the design buyer.
(great for me i got mine super cheap)
the funny thing overall is there was a bike windtunnel test and suddently we are talking about design etc , rather than waiting for the results.
It does make me smile that one would go to do an aero test and then decide the night before the test to sell a bike that was ridden 5 minutes ( not even a dentist would do that )

I don't find that odd at all, pretty much consistent with what Kiley has been saying all along. I don't think he is very keen on the Diamondhumpback's brakes, and I did wonder if he only bought it for this test in the first place. There are lots of reasons to buy a bike; aerodynamics is just one reason, albeit a very high-ranking reason for right-minded competitive triathletes.

For me, I'm very keen to see the results (and even chipped in some money) but at the same time I'm almost certain that the next bike I buy will be the Ventum (when I can afford it). The reason? 1.4 litres of integrated hydration storage. I like to carry liquid calories for my long-distance racing, and pick up water from the aid stations. The Ventum has enough on-board capacity to hold all the liquid calories I need for the whole race at 140.6 and I can put a BTA in there for the water handups. So minimal or no aero penalty for what I need to carry and I don't have to stop at special needs to grab my second bottle of Infinit, or stick it behind my arse.

But what I suspect will actually happen is the B2 will be close enough that I am encouraged to keep my optimized P3C for a couple more years.

Agree wth this. If I had a choice I'd probably go ventum or tactical if I could. I'm not in the place to afford a new bike but I don't want disc brakes since I don't want to replace all my wheel sets. I want ease of travel in case I want to travel to races and I want good integration and Ventum has that locked down. And that bike can be ridden on the trainer which is huge. Dimond is out because of that for me.

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Twitter - Instagram

Isn't that how people do it?

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--Chris

Its definitely one of those bikes that looks considerably better in the flesh than it does in its brochures. The way it is built up (or adjusted) also massively affects how well it is perceived. I'm not a fan of the disc brake thing for a variety of reasons but I suspect when Cervelo do a lower cost, trickle down derivative of this bike, they will sell a lot of them. At the moment, I don't see it as anything diferrent to 'Project California' and the resulting R Series bike.

Cervelo just wouldn't learn that whilst it may well be engineering led, the end consumer isn't (even if they think they are) and that bike, stretched peoples need for performance beyond what they could aesthetically tolerate........ and for a low yaw bike, that remains an excellent choice.

They're measurable. A lot of different ways. Starting with a rolldown test and a $5 stopwatch at the low end. And using something like Aerolab, a good powermeter and speed sensor, and an indoor velodrome at the higher end.

With a wind tunnel you're just paying a premium for more accurate equipment and people less likely to make mistakes in testing than you are.

But I've become pretty confident in my self-testing. It's been consistent enough for helmet selection, etc. Maybe not accurate enough for some things, like tire selection (which I haven't tried).

It's a little different. The R5Ca's innovations are mostly hidden. Manufacturing innovations. Visually, it's a classic road frame that most people wouldn't be able to identify as anything special.

The P5x is attempting to change what a tri bike is. I think it will succeed in some ways (adjustment) But may not succeed in every way.

I'm (sort of) playing devil's advocate here: Why should I spend $11000 on a P5X when I can get this for the same money? I can get two of these for less than the price of the top end P5X. The list price on my car (2013 Hyundai Accent) was about the same as the Dimond Marquise, brand new. I haggled 'em down to the P5X price range.

I'll be the first to admit that even as a person who can sell bikes, it's really hard to justify the cost of today's bikes. If the person interested in buying hasn't justified it themselves, I'm sure as hell not going to help matters. I suck as a salesperson. lol! I'm kind of a cheap ass - none of my bikes cost me more than $1800 new. I got kids to feed and to do things with, etc. I look at the price tag of a halo bike, and want to compare it to other things that can be done with that money, and I just can't ever see it happening. How did a motorcycle manufacturer produce an electric motorcycle - with battery technology that is in relatively early development - for the same price? What is so expensive about bicycle development that commands so much money? Is it an issue with the middle man or supply chain? Is it a matter of retail price creep due to rounding up to nice even numbers?

So, I guess what I'm saying, is from the average Joe's perspective, the cost of a bike is not necessarily offensive, but just not practical. A bike can be practical - their beauty is in their relative simplicity - but they're not practically priced.

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Travis Rassat
Vector Cycle Works
Noblesville, IN
BikeFit Instructor | FMS | F.I.S.T. | IBFI
Toughman Triathlon Series Ambassador

Fwiw pretty much all boutique hobbies have the "how low does it hang" level of equipment for those who can and do justify it to themselves. Why do manufacturers price them that high? Because they can and some will indeed buy them.
Golf clubs, whiskey, auto part upgrades, etc etc... Bikes don't have the market cornered on expensive just for the sake of being expensive

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My Blog - http://leegoocrap.blogspot.com

Ummm yes we are. Remember the thread where the Dimond Mafia came out and got mad at the guy who tried to buy a fork?

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Make Inside Out Sports your next online tri shop! http://www.insideoutsports.com/

Dan, I have a theory that the forward-facing curve of the downtube trailing the front wheel on the Andean and P5x might test well in a tunnel, but is actually a bad idea in real world. On the open road where you are actually steering and the back edge of the wheel can easily move several centimeters left or right as you turn or lean, the amount of time that frame section is actually centered behind the draft of the front wheel is maybe 50%. The rest of the time, the result is a parachute effect of frame material catching the wind, which is a lot more drag than the classic downtube angled back towards the bottom bracket. Has that ever crossed your mind or am I totally off base with that?

Sure, it's super aero if you're riding in a straight line. But we don't ride in a 100% straight line for long. And if there's any yaw while you are in a straight line, then you have to angle the wheel off-center a bit as well.

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Zen and the Art of Triathlon. Strava Workout Log
Interviews with Chris McCormack, Helle Frederikson, Angela Naeth, and many more.
http://www.zentriathlon.com

i don't blame anyone's buying decision! i'm just looking for consistency. somebody a few posts up made the comment that $11,000 is very high for an ultegra Di2 bike. yes! but most ultegra Di2 bikes aren't spec'd with HED deep wheels, and the aerobars that come on the P5X, etc.

a dimond with ultegra Di2 is within $500 of the P5X but can't match the P5X's spec, in my opinion. so, again, just looking for some consistency. i don't care what you buy! but many of the the posts in these threads have so many false equivalencies i think i'm over in the lavender room.

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Dan Empfield
aka Slowman

I recall the video diamondback made discussing the bike covers this very issue. I cant seem to find it online though. It had two engineers taking questions on the bike and was 10 min long or so.

https://www.facebook.com/...inch_thumbnail_video

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Make Inside Out Sports your next online tri shop! http://www.insideoutsports.com/

I hear ya. That inconsistency gets even crazier when you start to study the MTB market. Shocks and forks can be pretty big buck components that really skew the numbers!

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Travis Rassat
Vector Cycle Works
Noblesville, IN
BikeFit Instructor | FMS | F.I.S.T. | IBFI
Toughman Triathlon Series Ambassador

Bingo. Mostly. I bought the Diamondback for the test along with wheels to facilitate the test. I needed the wheels anyways, and with Diamondback's makers holding the Andean out as the fastest aero bike ever, I wanted to test it against the B2. The P5-X I initially did not see the reason to test, given that we know from Cervelo's own data that it's essentially no faster than a P5-6 once you add a water bottle in a less-than-optimal place. But I also think it will be constructive to independently audit and confirm Cervelo's own testing, and Dan is also right that I actually didn't think I could get my hands on one. The ability to test it was a blessing for me and it will be a blessing for you.

On a related note, Dan has made the statement that Cervelo released the P5-X with the largest amount of data ever. That may be true for industry insiders -- we know they did a lot of testing, and I have spoken with at least three folks from three different firms who have seen the data. Dan has seen this data, of course. But it's just not true for customers -- you have not seen it. I have not seen it. That's okay, though! Maybe they have their reasons for this and chief among them might be because explaining this stuff to consumers is very hard. These tests are complex; they have sources of error; and all protocols will come under scrutiny by a keen eye. That's a business decision for Cervelo, but I don't think the way Cervelo has released this bike and explained its aerodynamic benefit to consumers has been 'transparent' compared to the way I will explain this testing, release raw data, and interact with/answer questions about the testing. If Dan and I still disagree on this point, which it seems we do, fine. I'm not going to get all snarky about it anymore because that's just not productive either. I have a White Paper to write and there's no use continuing to talk past each other or get heated and let this thing devolve into a super stan ban slam.

In my opinion, the screenshots from my thread here http://forum.slowtwitch.com/...Diego_LSWT_P6239741/ are Cervelo being very open about their testing. Have we seen the setups from other companies before? I don't think so. We just have seen graphs of the drag with the names of the other bikes listed.

No company has to give you data if they don't want to. Bike companies are in the business of selling bikes. White papers should stand up to technical scrutiny. It's up to the manufacturer how much data they want to release. Too much data and too little data can be a bad thing. Misinterpretations of data can cause massive social media issues because some people won't understand what they are looking at.

I applaud Cervelo for showing pictures of their test setups. No test protocol is perfect.

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Make Inside Out Sports your next online tri shop! http://www.insideoutsports.com/

Hey Dan -- you're right. There are tons of bikes that are as expensive as the P5-X. Maybe even most bikes with a similar spec cost as much as the $11k version, if you assume that you are paying retail and buying from a bike shop.

But it's not all bikes. Dan Kennison from Premier Tactical is selling a bike for half that that comes with a power meter, a disc wheel, and a travel case, plus a base bar that is likely quite a bit faster than that Enve bar. So we as consumers need to make a decision on price value here and the stakes aren't low. Sure, when the IA was released they had a halo tier too at some exorbitant amount of money, a point you've made in the past. But the reality is that the market is changing and there are a flurry of direct-to-consumer options on the market that make this halo tier of the P5-X look like an affront to a consumer base that has only been seeing value options proliferate since the P5 came to market.

Further, for those of us on slowtwitch who understand how to navigate the totally broken distribution model in the cycling industry, the retail pricing and bike shop floor model pricing non starters. If you're willing to cobble things together, a Felt B2 frame ($1000), Enve or TriRig front end ($1000), Zipp wheels ($1600), Quarq power meter ($1000), Ultegra di2 group ($1000), fast brakes ($300), and a Ruster Sports Hen House ($600). So for $6500 I have an absolutely banging bike like the one I ride and have ridden since 2013, and I have a high end power meter and race wheels plus the best travel case on the market. For those of us who know how to put together a bike like this, assuming it's fast or at least not slow, there's not much reason to buy these higher end bikes from an aero perspective. Once you get into wanting a bunch of storage and disc brakes and things and social status for having a $16k bike, sure -- we can go down that rabbit hole. But that doesn't make the $11k and $16k price points seem any more practical in comparison. Not to me anyways.

are you assuming that leading edge is concave? because it isn't

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TEAM F3 Undurance

it took them 5 months to show us that and it has only created more questions. Yeah it was nice to have but it still doesn't paint the whole picture. Again... they haven't been transparent to customers. Do people know what transparent means? Sure they don't have to be and that's their choice. But if you want people to buy a p5x, those people who can afford one and who want a top of the line bike, are going to want a bit more data before buying one. How are sales on the p5x right now? I can't imagine they are earth shattering.

You even said it yourself in that thread linked, that you were waiting for the white paper. Still waiting.....

Have you read the trek white paper? It's not perfect, but it's by far the best one we have seen.

You wonder why there is so much hate for this bike... well for starters it's because of marketing bs that hasn't been proven or backed up with valid data. But also because you and slowman keep trying to shove this bike and lack of data down our throats. And slowman probably has data that we haven't seen. And yet he keeps saying that cervelo has released more data than any other mfg...... yet we the customer can't get see it. You want to argue and say just trust cervelo and that's fine. But don't be surprised when there are a bunch of people that don't trust any mfg's and want to see data to make their own judgements. If you would just stop fighting it and stop trying to convince people, there probably wouldn't be so much hate for it.

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blog

They talk about it around 12 minutes in. But in the end, they DO say it acts like two separate airfoils. On the surface, that sounds great, because he says the positive-sounding word "airfoils" happens twice. But when you think more deeply, the only thing better than an air foil in the wind is no airfoil at all. Especially if the one you remove is C-shaped into the wind.

He equates it to a WW1 biplane. Last time I checked, those weren't very aero. Great at maneuvering, but not efficient at speed.

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Zen and the Art of Triathlon. Strava Workout Log
Interviews with Chris McCormack, Helle Frederikson, Angela Naeth, and many more.
http://www.zentriathlon.com

Bingo

If you're willing to cobble things together, a Felt B2 frame ($1000), Enve or TriRig front end ($1000), Zipp wheels ($1600), Quarq power meter ($1000), Ultegra di2 group ($1000), fast brakes ($300), and a Ruster Sports Hen House ($600). So for $6500 I have an absolutely banging bike like the one I ride and have ridden since 2013,

It would be banging if all these complicated parts were put together, pretty sure there is a substantial cost to all of that. Unless you are volunteering to put everyone's bikes together too!! (-;


And then when something goes wrong(what could go wrong with all that stuff), there is someone there to make it right. I think you are somehow under the assumption that everyone out here has the same skills and knowledge as you do, or they should have. In your world the shop and folks that wrench there may not be needed, but not sure why you have to bad mouth them just because you don't have that need. Most people do, and putting a bike together from scratch is not an option. Now finding that good shop and wrench can be troublesome in some areas, but throwing a blanket over the industry as broken down is a little bit over the top, don't you think?