Sept. 22, 2016, 12:03 p.m. -  Tehllama42

#!markdown First off, I really liked this article. Excellent stuff. I REALLY like Joel Smith's comments about the differentiation between development and change, seems to be echoed by Morgan as well. I have a feeling we'll start to actually see refinement on concepts that bring some industry- wide commonality just on what stuff outright works better, but we'll still see a bunch of stuff which is new for the sake of being new. As much as it's easy to bag on the eMTB stuff, it's really going to be its own new sport in North America, but as power density on batteries (this is really the primary frontier, and very similar to how FIA FormulaE will push the envelope) increases those will become very capable and fun 40-50lb bikes that make good use of 6-8″ of travel. Those will be new riders on two wheels, and pad bottom lines, but as somebody else pointed out they might very well become about the battery/motor manufacturers handling development of the overall chassis, then speccing existing asian-made chassis/frame setups and throwing whichever price point Park/DH bike parts make sense. There won't be that much value added a bike company can provide, as a lot of that is really working the trade space of pedaling performance and descending prowess, while a 500W motor that runs for hours will simply completely obviate that tradeoff, so a more capable bike will be the answer. The upside for guys my size is that eMTB OEM type stuff (see Guide RE brakes as a prime example) will be able to pick up some good value hardware that is actually designed around a vehicle package in my mass range if I'm building into a human powered all-mountain bicycle. Similarly, the electronic integration is something I'm pretty confident I know exactly where it'll end up, and it appears Shimano, Fox, and SRAM are in agreement (common head unit that can control drivetrain and suspension) - but I think they're missing the boat on how much of a sensor suite will be required to really get that right - but once it's all sorted out the shift will again be towards making bikes with added capability, but leveraging the ability to automate suspension adjustments to get a bike that pedals uphill and handles brilliantly, and achieves this in a very similar fashion to how magnetorheological shocks make performance/luxury cars able to do both tasks better. As awesome as that will be once sorted out, some of the technological dead ends to achieve it will be remarkably, hilariously, utterly crappy yet ruiniously expensive. The upside is that some of the tuning and automation will actually get really good - I think the end state goal within a decade will be that the E:I sensor package will be able to tell a rider within half an hour of riding on representative terrain exactly where to set all the knobs which aren't controlled by a servo for optimum tuning, and then be able to handle the rest well enough for 95% of riders. Change won't go away, and I think we'll still see it at the current frenetic pace. The good news is that the category/niche overlap is going to end up being a good thing, and more bikes on offer which fit into hyphenated niches (it's a XC-Marathon XC-Trail bike… it's a Trail-AllMountain-Enduro bike…) are a long-term win for consumers. I think some saturation will happen with a lot of those, because an 'average' bike right now is more than awesome enough for an 'average' rider. Hopefully 'refinement' will be a buzzword that starts happening more then 'all new', and that should be able to take a lot of edge off of that frustration.