Mentioned yesterday during the time trial…so Bike experts…how do you construct a bike that costs $25K?
I thought the same exact thing. Maybe they took the price of the mold and divided by 24 bikes and then added the cost of production and design time and materials?
It’s the limited production. If they made 10,000 of them from the same molds as the 20 or so they make the costs would drop very dramatically.
I was wondering about this and all the talk about how you can buy Lance’s bike at the local Trek dealer. How many teams are riding bikes that are available to the public? Aren’t most of the teams bikes available to the average person?
$25k? Not sure how you get to that, but here is an example of a $10,000 TT bike:
2005 Javelin Barolo carbon/al frame
Oval Jetstream fork, int headset
Dura Ace 10 speed
SRM Dura Ace cranks with Rotor Q Rings
Zipp 999 wheels, skewers, Conti GP 21mm tubies
Mavic training wheels
SBC Alias saddle
HED aerobars, Oval carbon extensions
Ritchey pro adjustable stem
SPD SL 7800 pedals
"Aren’t most of the teams bikes available to the average person? "
Some of them. You can purchase a bike like Lance’s Trek or a P3C and (soon) a carbon Soloist identical to CSC, but many of the other teams have custom fit or bikes.
I think of team ONCE back when they were using aluminium Giant TCR’s. Giant sold small/medium/large frames to the public but many of the ONCE riders were on custom fitted frames.
Others like the BMC TT bikes that Floyd and team are riding are not available to the public at all.
The original figure I heard during the '04 tour was $200,000 for ten bikes, which is $20,000/bike. They’re all custom-fitted, one-off carbon machines. I still do wonder about the ‘custom’ part- some of the Phonak riders seem to have goofy positions on their bikes. And what do they do with last year’s bikes? The team roster isn’t the same from year to year, so I imagine that several riders are on bikes that don’t fit them as well as they should. Oh, and the Liberty Seguros guys are still on the old Giant TT bikes from the Once days. Just repainted.
As for the cost- I’m sure a huge amount is in the frame/fork/integrated stem and bars. Then you have the Zipp Z99 wheels (about a grand just for a set of bearings), full Campy Record with carbon cranks, and they may be adding the price of things like Powermeters and such. It does seem kind of stupid though- I’m sure CSC’s bikes are just as fast, if not faster, and they cost dramatically less. It is kind of funny to think of a P3C with full Dura Ace as being a bargain… 
Our minds have become warped by Slowtwitch.
hey, you can at least $5 k to that by adding a rolex watch to the mix (just bungee it to the stem)…
you can’t exactly buy lance’s frame at the local trek dealer. the TT frame he is riding now and the one he rode last year is quite different in at least one way from the ones avail. from a retailers.
note the seatposts/seatmast. his seatmast uses spacers for the final seat height adjustment and holds the seat in a non-traditional clamp system. the retail frames use a seatmast that actually fits a traditional round seatpost inside them for the seat height adjustment.
they may be other differences as well.
According to the BMC website their bikes are made from carbon nanotubes. This is a pretty cutting edge technology that I have a hard time believing they are using for anything more than hype. We’ve been doing research on carbon nanotubes at Purdue and the cost of producing just one gram of these things is about $1000. For comparison the cost of one gram of gold is about $12.
Carbon nanotubes do have the amazing strength properties that BMC mentions, but unfortunately that is only at the nano scale. At a macro level they aren’t any stronger than regular composite materials. Phonak’s $25K bikes definately aren’t going to be buying them any stage wins.
thank you thank you thank you…I’ve been waiting for someone to burst the nano-bubble. some of the folks in my soon-to-be-previous workplace are working on that technology too…might even have a connection with you guys (do the names Ng or Meilunas ring any bells?)…but I agree that for now it’s really expensive filler material for the bike marketers to hype up and nothing more.
saw an Easton “CNT” t-shirt on a dude as I was waiting for my plane to Trek a couple weeks ago…had to laugh…
Can you be a poser in the TDF? Is finishing 5th in the TTT on a 25K bike like an AG’er doing 18 mph with a zipp disk?