- I'm here at the 2019 Taiepei Bike Show
to bring you the hottest new bike tech.
This is Asia's largest bike trade industry show
and it's got over 1,400 exhibitors.
It's massive but to truly appreciate just how big it is,
I really have to show you, so check this out,
or should I say, tech this out.
(hypnotic EDM music)
This Pinarello Dogma is fitted
with a really cool piece of tech
called the XSHIFTER by a company called CICLOVATION.
Now what this does is it turns
any mechanical groupset on any bike
into an electronic wireless groupset.
How awesome is that?
It does it by having these little shifter buttons
that are on your handlebars
and then these connect to actuators,
which you place near to your rear and front derailleurs
and that grips the cable and that moves the cable for you
to change the gear and it does it in a really
neat, fast, and precise way.
It's impressive how well it works.
The cool thing here is that it's a lot cheaper
than the full price of a full electronic groupset.
It's a much cheaper upgrade.
It costs 399 US dollars I'm told
and the weight is just 120 grams.
Here we have the system fitted to a
SRAM Red mechanical groupset
and I'm genuinely impressed with how well it shifts.
There's also an app which allows you to adjust
the timing of the shifts
and also the shift intervals as well.
Nice!
I've just spotted a very special bike.
This is the Team CCC bike of Greg Van Avermaet
and its resplendent gold paint job,
which signifies the fact that he is
the current reigning Olympic champion.
It's a stunner, isn't it?
But what's really cool for me
is the fact that it's got these #overachieve wheels on,
which John craftily spotted
in the Middle East earlier in the year
but this is the first time I've seen them in the flesh,
or carbon, and they look really cool indeed.
These are actually a tubular version,
now that I can get my hands on them and see them.
And also something that I've never seen before
is this #overachieve-branded saddle,
which is craftily on it.
It looks incredible.
It's quite a short-nosed saddle
and it's got this really cool carbon rail underneath
so I guess it's very light
but I can't take it off and weigh it.
And also around here,
we've got the time trial wheels,
which we've also seen the CCC team using.
So you've got the disc wheel at the back,
with the big #overachieve logo on it
and this really nice looking Textreme carbon,
and then the four-spoke front wheel as well,
which looks very fast indeed.
I've been trying to find out a bit more information
about the #overachieve wheels and saddles and stuff
and everyone's been a bit tight-lipped.
No one's really saying much about it.
I searched online and found that there is
an overachieve.cc website, which has mysteriously popped up,
but, again, there's not much information on there yet
so I guess we'll just have to stay tuned.
I'm really excited about this piece of tech
because I think it's a world first.
It's an anti-lock braking system for a caliper rim brake
and it can be fitted to, well,
any caliper rim brake or v-brake front and rear.
Here we've got it fitted to the front.
It's from a company called SABS from Taiwan.
The system comes on automatically when you brake really hard
and it's able to pump the brake
at a rate of 11 osculations in three seconds.
That's pretty cool.
And we can see it actually in operation on this jig
with this spinning wheel next to the bike.
In terms of how it works, I don't know.
I've asked them and they're being a bit tight-lipped on it
because they're a bit worried about people
stealing the idea and intellectual property
but they have said that it doesn't contain
pneumatics or electronics.
It's a purely mechanical system
and it works over and over again.
So pretty cool.
If you have any ideas how it works,
let us know in the comments.
I've just come over to the FSA and Vision stand
and there is loads of new tech here, starting with this.
So here we have the K-Force WE groupset.
We've seen it before but I've not seen it before
with hydraulic disc brakes.
That's new for me.
And the most exciting thing here is the levers because
they're much more ergonomic-shaped
than other hydro levers we've seen out there.
That is a really low profile
and the way FSA has done this
is by instead of putting the master cylinder here,
it's put it here.
So it kind of makes them a little bit longer
but nice and ergonomic and low on the tops there.
I like that.
The guys at FSA tell me that the availability
of the WE hydro disc groupset
is gonna be around May, June of this year
so stay tuned for that.
I've also spotted these rather cool looking
power meters and chainrings.
So this is FSA's PowerBox power meter
but it now comes with a subcompact chainset
and also this rather substantial
and aero-looking TT version.
That's a 55-tooth chainring and filled in to be more aero.
I like the look of that.
There's also some aftermarket chainsets
that are specifically for the e-bike market,
which is pretty interesting because
FSA believes that as the e-bike market develops,
customers are gonna start to be
a little more discerning about modifying their bikes
and fitting chainrings that are better suited
to the riding that they're doing.
I'm not seeing any of the brands really focusing on this yet
so that's quite an interesting move.
And then they also have this integrated stem,
which I'm particularly pleased to see
because if you have a modern bike
with lots of integration on it,
as we're increasingly seeing,
then your stem and bar options can be quite limited.
Say, for example, with my Trek Madone,
it's hard for me to use anything
but Trek's proprietary bar and stem.
But with this one, you could actually fit your cables
in through the stem and route them down
into the headtube there.
It's nice and neat.
I like it.
I'm a massive TT nerd, as many of you know.
Couldn't help but notice this rather spectacular
disc wheel from Vision.
It's a Metron tubular
but I believe there's a clincher version as well.
And then I spotted there's some new
FSA WE groupset, well, TT-specific bits as well.
So look at these bar-end shifters!
How cool are they?
They are really neat.
And then on the levers as well, there's buttons.
Not seen these before.
Nice!
Just spotted some new wheels from a brand called CEC,
which I've not heard of before,
but they've really caught my attention
because they appear to have fabric spokes
and these are actually made from a material
called Dyneema according to the brand.
And this is a gravel endurance wheelset and the intention is
that by having these Dyneema fabric spokes,
the wheel can compress more and absorb shocks better
than a wheel with traditional spokes.
It's a really intriguing concept
and I'd be keen to see how it works
and how it actually feels out on the road.
But also by having these these spokes,
they're able to make the wheel a bit lighter as well.
So this is a 38 millimeter deep carbon clincher rim
disc brake-specific wheel, it's 22 millimeters wide,
and it's tubeless-compatible
and it weighs just 1250 grams a pair,
which is very competitive.
You can always rely on Topeak
for some exciting new gadgets
and they don't disappoint me this year either.
The TubiBooster, we've seen this before.
It's a big canister that you that can pre-charge
with 160 PSI to help quickly inflate
a tubeless tire onto a rim
because sometimes it can be quite difficult to seat
a tubeless into the bead
and so this just releases a load of air really quickly.
They've actually modified it now
and called it the TubiBooster X
and with this, you can now attach a track pump
into the top of it and it has a hose as well.
And this means you can make use
of the gauge on the track pump
to be more accurate in how much air you put in.
Nice little modification.
But the thing that's really caught my eye
is this.
This is the AirBooster G2
and it's a CO2 inflator with a gauge built into it.
Really cool.
I've used a lot of CO2 inflators
but I've never see one with a gauge in.
They're really useful gadgets but the problem
is that you don't know how much air's gone in,
there's always a bit of guesswork involved,
and this takes the guesswork out of it.
I'm gonna try it and see how I get on.
So you can't see on the gauge now
'cause it's gone back to zero 'cause it's not connected
but I didn't use the whole canister and
this went about 110 PSI (laughing)
so it certainly, well, it's really hard.
It's only a 23 millimeter tire but that's cool.
I love the idea that you now know
exactly how much air is in there and
you can use the gauge to let a bit out
and you'd know exactly how much is in there as well.
I really like that.
I've come onto the KS stand,
KS being a company that manufactures dropper posts
amongst other things
and you may have seen their dropper posts
on the Mavic neutral service bikes at the Tour de France
but they have some new specific ones for road and gravel,
which is particularly exciting.
This is one fitted to a gravel bike.
It's the LEV CI.
It's very, very light.
It's made from carbon fiber on the tube though as well.
If I press the button on the bar,
you'll see it pop up, nice.
About a 160 millimeters of travel on this one.
Why is this useful?
Well, for gravel bikes, it's particularly useful
because when you go down a really little
steep descent on some gravel,
it can be quite disconcerting
when you've got the saddle-to-bar drop of a road bike.
You feel like you're sort of going over the handlebars
so being able to alter your position
and get lower with your center of gravity,
thanks to being able to lower your saddle,
makes technical descents much better.
There's also an advantage on the road, as well,
by being able to adopt a more aerodynamic
lower position when descending.
This is something the Ivan Basso
used in the Giro D'Italia years ago
but it never really caught on.
However now, bikes have gotten lighter so
you see mechanics adding weight to bikes
to get them to the UCI limit.
Why not add some functional weight and get more aero
and not have to adopt a dangerous position on the toptube?
I think it's, yeah.
Could we see more of dropper posts on road bikes?
Who knows.
Let us know in the comments.
That's it for day one at the Taipei Bike Show.
Hope you've enjoyed our look at the hot new tech.
If you have, give it a thumbs up, subscribe to GCN,
you know the deal.
We've barely scratched the surface of what's here.
It's incredible how big this place is
so stay tuned for more tech coming out very soon
on the channel from the show.
And in the meantime, if you'd like to watch
more Taipei bike tech, you can click down here
for some stuff from last year.
It's cool if you've not seen it already.
Watch it again if you have.