Kind of interesting. Thought I would share it.
http://www.baselinemag.com/article2/0,1397,1618016,00.asp
John
(soon to not be a member of 3rd Hand Racing Team).
Good article. Seems that the Cervelo Soloist is another bike that should have an aero advantage up the L’Alpe d’Heuz. Or will CSC use the R2.5?
Should be interesting to see what wheel choices will be made for this stage.
I don’t think they are even using the soloist at all at the tour, and I don’t think there is any question that they would use the R2.5 over the soloist on L’Alpe d’Heuz.
This is interesting, but I was wondering who would want to ride a sub two pound frame?
Count me out.
…what’s strange is that they’re still working on these ultra-lightweight frames when it’s fairly easy with an unlimited budget to get a bicycle under the UCI weight limit… even a soloist.
actually Voight and Piil have spent quite a bit of time on the soloists’ during their repeated breakaways. there’s a cool pic on the cervelo site of one of them switching from the soloist to the r2.5 right before the pave section.
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with proper engineering it is no problem to design a sub-2lb frame that is durable. We have this 1200g Italian frame that retails for $4000 (well, it’s not really an Italian frame, it is made off-shore and then painted in Italy to qualify as “made in Italy”) that broke in testing before we really got started (it cracked at 5,000 out of 100,000 cycles). Then in frontal impact it broke at 2x the base level. We have 850g prototype frames that go over 100,000 cycles with no problem and go to 4x the base level in impact testing with no problem (that’s as high as the machine will go). Bottomline, I’d rather ride an 850g properly designed frame than a 1200g POS.
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Why not build a lighter frame? If you can make the frame lighter, you can put it back somewhere else like in deeper aero wheels. Or if you are not one of the 1,000 professional cyclists but you are one of the 3,000,000,000 recreational cyclists, you can ride around on a 13lb. UCI-illegal bike.
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Whether the riders ride a Soloist or an R2.5 is completely up to them, and unfortunately they are not always rational in their decisions. Sorensen always rides the Soloist, even though he was actually the one rider who was very worried when the team switched from carbon Looks to Cervelos. He begged us to hurry up with the carbon bike last year because he thought the Aluminum would be too harsh, but while riding the Soloist he liked it so much he converted to become a true Aluminum-believer. Rides it on the cobbles, in the mountains, in training, everywhere. Though I just heard that he may now try the new R2.5.
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Not sure the Madone SL offers much aero benefit for Alpe d’Huez. One can debate about hte original Madone, but the SL has the downtube and seattube replaced with a round tube. So all that is left to call it a Madone is the curvy toptube and the price tag. Not sure how aero those two features are :-).
Interesting article and very thoughtful response. Two comments: 3 billion recreational cyclists? That is a lot, even for worldwide numbers. I think your Cervelo marketing analyses are a bit on the optimistic side, but I wish you luck, because your company has some quite clever frame designs. I wonder (purely out of curiosity), what percentage of the world’s population even knows HOW to ride a bike, any kind of bike with 2 wheels? Do you think it even approaches 50% worldwide?
Wouldn’t it be nice if we all could know the NAMES of the companies whose stunning frames (and whose POS frames) lasted how long in test rigs? The cycling world is such an archaic, discrete, and secretive world. We need a truly qualified “consumer reports” type of testing publication (like the one in the US that tests all kinds of things, like SUVs in rollover tests, and then trumpets their results from the rooftops, names names, and seems brave enough to rate many as “Not Acceptable!”) Will such a thing ever exist in the ‘ever-discrete’ world of cycling? I sure hope so (maybe I should get off my rear and start such an organization).
efbe already publishes such results.
damn! i can’t remember where i read it. maybe gerard can chime in. but i read that they will be using the soloist for alpe because there were more significant time savings using the soloist in testing (gained over the flat start of the ITT) versus using the r2.5 (despite its being lighter).
Kim
The 3 billion was just a wild stab at how many people ride a bike, although I realize a few of them will not yet have heard of Cervelo. A billion chinese know how to ride a bike, more than half a billion people in India do, so that’s a good start to get to 3 billion. Anyway, I’d be fairly happy to only sell to 1% of that group 
As for testing, the big problem is there are virtually no standards to what a bike needs to be able to withstand in order to be sold in the US (unlike some other countries). Sites like EFBe will show you who passes certain tests (though just fatigue tests, not impact tests) but it won’t show you who fails or who doesn’t bother to test. After all, not sending your frames to EFBe doesn’t necessarily mean your frames are no good, as opposed to if there were standards a bike would have to pass in order to be sold here.
We’re toying with the idea of putting all our test results, including the competition, out in the open but I am not sure what the backlash would be - there are some BIG companies with not so good results in that group. And in general I’m not that big a fan of releasing test data comparing to other companies, that’s why we only show aero data comparing Cervelo bikes.
Interesting in that their number one base line goal is as follows:
“Raise average ticket price of a high-end bicycle beyond $5,000.”
So much for providing value to the consumer who spends $5,000.00 on a bike.
mp
But they don’t publish the frames that don’t pass any of the 3 standards.
Yes, such a 1% would indeed be very, very good (30 million bikes worth).
About the bike and frame testing, what about the idea of a reputable, unbiased (but does such a thing really exist?) organization that doesn’t wait for a company to “send them one of their frames”, but just goes out and purchases a ‘run-of-the-mill’ bike off the open market and tests it to destruction to reasonable and generally accepted industry, engineering, and safety standards?
Two advantages, I think, to that: everybody (of decent market share) would get evaluated, and it would be far less likely that the testing organization would get a “special”, super high-quality frame. I think that is what Consumer Reports does when they evaluate many types of products, gadgets, and cars–they actually go to a dealer and buy them.
About your own test results, I understand your predicament, as goodwill is a scarce resource and making enemies rarely seems to help the bottom line. Tough dilemma, but boy it still sure would be good if such data could ever make it to the public domain.
No they don’t. I would probably buy my next bike from a company who submits their bikes to efbe, or someone similar.
There are some excellent frames on that list, hard to go wrong with any of them.
Storck scenario pro, here I come.