A day on from Avinox day and the release of the new motors, I was pondering the implications. My impressions - and an invitation to debate:
1. Avinox is bloody impressive at speed and quality of what it releases and has captured the market: the pace of market capture and refinement is hugely impressive. Other manufacturers are being crowded out even faster than I thought we would see. As many have said - it's hard to see how the second and third tier of manufacturers will survive (Fazua, Mahle, Shimano, etc.). Consolidation will accelerate. A lot.
2. Bike brands are a dime a dozen and will struggle ever more: the brands releasing bikes have very little to differentiate themselves by. They all offer very similar offerings, with little to differentiate themselves by. For each special flavor (e.g., high pivot, adaptable geometry, removable battery, etc.) there are multiple options. Bike brands will come and go because it's easier to make a new frame than to bring a e-bike motor, suspension, or drivetrain to market.
3. Avinox is continuing to set the tone with more power (as said very often), but it's the wrong direction to go (in my opinion): the market clearly wants massive power. In my opinion, it's leading away from pedal assisted mountain biking and is leading more into the direction of e-motos that pretend to be e-MTBs, with all the pluses (more people want it, more accessible for some people) and minuses (more easy to be a jerk, more potential for conflict, etc.) that come with it. I think it would have been healthier for the market long term if they had focused more on weight reduction at the previous power level to get closer to the weight distribution and agility of normal MTBs, instead of ratcheting the power up further.
4. We'll see more and more iPhone like bells and whistles, but eMTBs will remain finicky: I expect we will continue to see more features loaded into bikes which people will like on paper, but which will make little difference to the original core use of mountain biking. Similar to smartphones, we won't see big changes in "classic" areas like repairability or reliability, incentivized by the model of rapid iteration, feature addition and planned obsolescence.
5. AI will kill us all in the next 3 years, so it doesn't really matter: in case I haven't riled you up yet, just throwing this in here ;-)
1. Avinox is bloody impressive at speed and quality of what it releases and has captured the market: the pace of market capture and refinement is hugely impressive. Other manufacturers are being crowded out even faster than I thought we would see. As many have said - it's hard to see how the second and third tier of manufacturers will survive (Fazua, Mahle, Shimano, etc.). Consolidation will accelerate. A lot.
2. Bike brands are a dime a dozen and will struggle ever more: the brands releasing bikes have very little to differentiate themselves by. They all offer very similar offerings, with little to differentiate themselves by. For each special flavor (e.g., high pivot, adaptable geometry, removable battery, etc.) there are multiple options. Bike brands will come and go because it's easier to make a new frame than to bring a e-bike motor, suspension, or drivetrain to market.
3. Avinox is continuing to set the tone with more power (as said very often), but it's the wrong direction to go (in my opinion): the market clearly wants massive power. In my opinion, it's leading away from pedal assisted mountain biking and is leading more into the direction of e-motos that pretend to be e-MTBs, with all the pluses (more people want it, more accessible for some people) and minuses (more easy to be a jerk, more potential for conflict, etc.) that come with it. I think it would have been healthier for the market long term if they had focused more on weight reduction at the previous power level to get closer to the weight distribution and agility of normal MTBs, instead of ratcheting the power up further.
4. We'll see more and more iPhone like bells and whistles, but eMTBs will remain finicky: I expect we will continue to see more features loaded into bikes which people will like on paper, but which will make little difference to the original core use of mountain biking. Similar to smartphones, we won't see big changes in "classic" areas like repairability or reliability, incentivized by the model of rapid iteration, feature addition and planned obsolescence.
5. AI will kill us all in the next 3 years, so it doesn't really matter: in case I haven't riled you up yet, just throwing this in here ;-)
