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I remember seeing this and the Marque at Sea Otter. The design of the bikes were so ahead of others at the time, from aesthetics to sus design. I took a Marque for a spin and was smitten. Never bought one, but it's short link virtual pivot design pedaled amazing for the time, but was def outside my pay grade as well.  Not sure what caused their closure, and Atomlab's at the same time. I know they were linked together somehow, but unsure how exactly. (plot thickens?)

Pablo I think is still involved in the industry, at least somewhat. He threw in with Hyper when Cam Zink signed on, and I think had a hand in the design of the DH & enduro bikes they showed over the last number of years but have pretty been nothing but vaporware.

Here in the northern part of the midwest of Canada's underbelly we unfortunately don't have a lot of vert to contend with, so getting the brakes to the too hot to handle now temps are far and few between. It'll be great to see what the co's say.

Did you reach out and ask any of the manufacturers what their friction coefficients (μ/Mu) were? The info is there, but wondering if that's something a manufacturer would share. It would provide more science to the testing.

My experience with Shimano pads can be summed up thusly: sintered for everything. I've found their semi mets to become extremely noisy when it's cold and/or wet out, regardless of brake. I even replaced the stock pads in my TRP Spyre brakes with Shimano sintered and the power increased noticeably. They do get noisy when cold until they heat up, but that's worth it compared to the honking from the semis.

Damn straight to all of this. I tend to keep a bike longer than the standards it was built to (looking at you 15x100), which in the past made owning and updating as necessary an easy and economical process. But hooooboy did C19 mess up stocks and pricing of older components. I've had to go off brand on some small parts and headed things off at the pass early on in the pandemic and purchased shop file boxes of brake and derailleur cables and housing. Excessive? For sure. Regretted? Not a bit, not with most local shops running 2+ weeks out without taking into consideration getting parts. Being able to handle all aspects of maintenance is a hold over from my shop and industry days, and admittedly gave an excuse to the spousal unit to indulge in a mess of tools that no, I don't need em now, but yes I will need em in the future.

Kona was WAYYYY ahead of that curve.

Rad, but more rad is the answer to, "How long before we see the design ideas applied to the Slash, Remedy, and Fuel EX?"

The system lubricates the pistons from the inside-out. Applying fluid externally can lead to inadvertent pad/rotor contamination or too much piston slip. See DMVancouver's bit below. FWIW, I use a chunky pad spacer (the old Hayes ones work a treat). Leave one pad on the piston, insert pad spacer, and pump the brake lever until the piston without the pad on it contacts the spacer. Remove the spacer and pad, push the piston back in, and repeat the process 2-3 more times, then do the same thing to the other side. This works on 2 or 4 piston brakes regardless of manufacturer, and has taken care of much of the wandering bite point issues I had on one set of my SLX brakes and my GRX ones as well.  My other set of SLX's required a bit more work and tinkering as the problem reared back up worse on a night ride in 0F temps.

Super good point on that, and it applies to the phenolic units most big co's use as well. I will add the voice of, "However..."

If you look around on other mass commercial websites, you can find phenolic caliper pistons for much of Shimano's line up, even the 4piston jobbers. You will of course void your warranty. You can ask me how I know in a DM :D

Big plusses for the third paragraph. I've found that exact trick to remedy most of the Shimano wandering bite point issues on their brakes using the white ceramic pistons (SLX and up on MTB, GRX/Ult/DA on Road. None too sure about the 105). Even if it doesn't 100% remedy it, it does a good enough job to make it less of an issue.

Lubing pistons decreases piston retraction. The piston requires a bit of friction with the seal to have the proper amount of retraction. Lubing the piston decreases the friction between the 2 parts, resulting in the piston sliding through the seal too much. This goes contrary to a lot of comments on forums. Conversely the opposite is true. Too much friction prevents the piston from slipping properly, resulting in a mushy/poor bleed feel at the lever.