Also, I would omit ebikes from this, nothing against them, but if it has an electric motor, it is of course going to cost more than something without one.

It will come in the form of an E road bike, with an electro magnetic motor. Probably not that far off it if pro tour mechanical doping rumours are to be believed? Boutique brand, probably Pinarello. Isn't the Bolide already well over 15k when built up anyway?

I agree it will be a Pinarello, maybe a Colnago.
The most expensive bike I have found is the Bolide Daytona at $16,100

These prices are not new. 2011 Felt Da launched at $12.5K. The P5X launched at $15K in 2016. I'm sure there are plenty of Treks and Specs that have been at that point too in the last few years. Not sure why it's such a fuss. I get it's a lot of money, but the outrage in 2011 or 2016 might have been more appropriate.

To answer your question, though, I think some time in the middle to later part of this decade and it will likely be Tri.

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My YouTubes

Like the P5X Lamborghini Edition SuperDuper Bike for $20K?

https://gearjunkie.com/...limited-edition-bike

I think it is just a matter of psychological price points. I remember when we got a 2006 Trek SSLx in the shop I worked at, and it was the first $10k bike we carried. We all were like DAMN! but the year before we had sold $8500 bikes and added 2k worth of upgrades.
Same kind of goes for when the first cell phones starting to cost over $1,000 every kind of stepped back and said, "that is a lot of money" then all bought phones for a grand.

I thought the McLaren Venge was 19, but I can’t remember for sure.

What I do find interesting is whether a company like Canyon is going to ruin the party for ridiculously expensive bikes. The new Aerohead is $9k with DuraAce or Campy Record. That is probably a full 3-6 grand below what most of the other brands are trying to charge.

I'm not sure, but here's the Tarmac McLaren, from 2014:

https://www.cyclingnews.com/...rks-tarmac-revealed/

It's not unusual as a business model. Have the flagship model that offers more performance than 99.9% of the population could ever take advantage of, sell a few units to pros and celebrities and the folks with more money than sense who want to buy competence in a particular pursuit, and in the process you not only cement your brand as "the best," but you absorb some of the expensive R&D costs associated with it.

Down the road, the technology and "brand prestige" trickles down the product line to the stuff that most of us mortals use in the real world.

See "Corvette ZR1" or "Ford GT" and smile as you're hopping into your stock, base model Corvette or Camaro, or Mustang GT.

I'm totally ok with having someone pay $20k today on a new "Cervelo P7X" so that the P2 I buy in 5 years is a better bike.

I just posted about this in another thread but I am not convinced this the model being adopted for TT bikes. Specialized never released a cheaper version of their TT Shiv nor has this technology every made it into a more budget TT offering from them and that frame was around for ages. The Tri Shiv has also been around for over a year with no indication Specialized is going to trickle down the price. In a similar vain Trek has simply been killing off the more budget options rather than upgrading them. It is notable that Scott and Orbea both killed off their existing bikes before releasing the new offerings and have not indicated more modest bikes.


Cervelo is an outlier with the p-series following the more traditional business model you have outlined. The Cervelo model relies on people buying 3k TT bikes though which pretty much every other major brand on the market is currently betting against. With the original P2 Cervelo was right so they maybe right again here. However it may also prove that we are seeing a more fundamental shift in the Tri bike market where 'entry' level is 7-9k with super bikes being 12-15k. I hope this isn't the case but it is in line with the biggest brands on the market.

 

You may be right, and I was using Cervelo as the example...but since they're the most recognizable and most popular tri bike, at least for a long time (not sure the current sales data), they're a fair example to use.

And even if the "other" model becomes dominant...those $15k tri bikes are still going to be a grand or two when they pop up used a few years down the road...and since "wind" and "the shape of the human body" are static, the marginal gains in technology that the extra $10k buys you are wasted on the vast majority of us, anyway.

I'm enjoying the hell out of the Dogma 2 (c. 2012) that I have less than $2k into, and even if you put me on a top of the line, fully upgraded model, I doubt there'd be any measurable difference in the bottom line. I rode an aluminum P2K forever, and even after I upgraded to a P2 and P3 in carbon, my times didn't improve more than could be explained away with the additional training I'd done in the time that had passed. Most of us wouldn't save more than a few seconds, maybe a minute or two, by going from a 15 year old tri bike to the current state of the art. It's up to you if that's worth the additional 5 figures.

I don't disagreeing with you. I still race on the first and only TT bike I ever bought, a 2008 Specialized Transition which I got on a big team discount on, because I don't believe a new bike would make me significantly faster.

The issue becomes that the availability of cheap used bikes depends on other people buying new bikes. At least where I live in the UK I would argue its harder to find a good used bikes now than it was 5-6 years ago. I think this is because the entry point for TT bikes has drifted to the point where a lot fewer people are buying them on a whim only to find they never use them. I am still seeing plenty used top end bikes coming up but at like 40-50% their new prices but that is still a solid chunk of cash. You look at the prices of used Canyon's and people are asking like 80-90% what they are worth new. The problem I see with 20k bikes is that it makes a 10k bikes seem reasonable and a 5k bike seem like a real bargain.

I don't want to see TT bikes be treated only as a super premium item that demand a super premium price tag as I think this just limits access to the sport. I feel even stronger that road bikes shouldn't be pushed in price to the point they are affordable to the masses but I feel like the biggest bike manufacturers (Giant, Specialized, Trek, etc) are still producing excellent entry level road options. As a point of comparison just before COVID screwed with bike prices I bought a nice used but 1 year old in like-new condition gravel bike for £1k. It was a custom build which didn't help its price on the resale market but honestly for the same £1k price I wouldn't be able to find an sort of TT rig for similar quality.

True, but as I've said before, Dave Scott and Mark Allen were doing Kona in just over 8 hours, 30 years ago, on heavy steel bikes with almost zero thought given to aerodynamics and running shoes I probably wouldn't cut my lawn in. With decades of advances in training, equipment, and technique, the course record isn't dramatically faster today.

I don't agree with the premise that this sport is "pricing out" newcomers and amateurs. A typical age grouper with the same commitment to training isn't going to perform significanly faster on a $15k bike and $300 shoes than he/she would on a decent used road bike with aerobars and a decent pair of "$50 on sale" shoes from last year's collection at a running store. While it's great to have all the newest and shiniest suff, most of the "improvements" in the top of the line models don't translate into minutes on the course for 99% of triathletes. For the 1% who will see those improvements, most have sponsors anyway.

Whatever bike it is, guarantee there will be someone riding one with a poor fit, getting passed by someone on a $1200 used bike off eBay.

Not quite mainstream, but not a one-off

https://www.cyclingweekly.com/...nning-machine-472347

Doesn't every E bike have an electro magnetic motor? Isn't that what E bike means?
Are you saying something different?

Sorry I'm not really techy. E bike as far I'm aware stands for electric bike, where the crank axle or rear wheel are driven directly by an attached electric motor. My very basic knowledge is that Electro magnetic is a series of magnets in the rear wheel that are driven by motor in the frame, so theoretically frictionless. The tech still costs a fortune, but was in the cycling press a few years ago as a better way to hide mechanical doping. Seems to crop up on concept bikes.

Shows how much I know, not magnets but electromagnets. This article explains better. Either way it's above the motors at the moment if it's developed, and surely a matter of time, bearing in mind this was four years ago.

https://cyclingtips.com/...nlikely-in-practice/

Ah right. That sort of arrangement is still just an electric motor, albeit a large diameter one. An electro magentic motor and an electric motor are not different things. A typical electric motor uses a permanent magnet on either the static or moving part of the motor and a coil on the other. An electric current is passed through the coil to produce a rotating magnetic field which spins the moving part of the motor. You call this use of electricity to produce a magentic field electro-magnetism and it's used in all conventional electric motors.

Thanks for the clarification!