Cervélo RCA launched, costs $10,000, weighs 667g + video

. Love it, but want a BMC SLR01

The Cervelo RCA is slightly aero, thus canceling the effect of the lower weight of the Supersix evo Black

Just buy a cannondale super six evo black if you're in the market (FULL BIKE = £7.5k) and save yourself enough wonga to nigh on buy ANOTHER super six evo black (did i mention full bike for £7.5k?) when you get fed up of the first one...

Oh and the frame is lighter - not that that matters - oh weight (get it) it does to Cervelo!

http://road.cc/content/news/61231-cannondale-2013-launch-655g-supersix-e...

Hmmm, wonder what the replacement plan is like - should you actually ride it and erm prang it.What am I saying if you can afford this, you wouldn't twice about it, would you (?).
- Personally, I'd prefer a little 953 number

Nice. But How much !

Saying that I've just read that 20% have been sold already, so there must be a few people on the planet with a spare $10k.

I wonder how much of this technology was developed in a laboratoire like this one, and who between Monsieurs Vroomen and White has the sleekest, shiniest hair (my guess is not Vroomen.)

Is it just me, or did they forget to integrate the pig-ugly external battery on this £10,000 bike?

For £10,000, I'd like my battery in a velvet-lined watertight compartment within the frame structure.

Surely this "engineering revolution" isn't beyond the wit of man? If the engineers at Cervelo are so good then why haven't they added this basic future-proofing pre-requisite? ...or did all the good engineers leave with their ideas when they got bought out?

Holding onto my cash until the time when batteries are integrated within the frames.

aaah damn! I've already placed my deposit for the special edition 25K BMC 'Lamborghini' road machine then look what pops along.

The irritating missed opportunities are as follows:

1. everybody, including the Cervelo engineers (the inhouse ones) knows very well that the greatest aero benefit is derived by the front of the bike, and the cheapest/easiest gain is to increase the aspect ratio of the head tube/top tube/down tube junction.

2. Everybody in the industry also knows that the truncated airfoils only work on high aspect ratio airfoils, placed where the airflow naturally wants to separate. The short and fat truncated airfoils do not work, ever, under any circumstance, not even at high yaw angles.

However, Cervelo cannot deviate from the R5 shape too much as that is what they need to sell a lot of, thus the non-aero head tube and the front of the bike remains.

They also need to jump on the "fat, brick like shapes are all of a sudden super aerodynamic" bandwagon as that is what consumers now expect from "aero" bikes.

...and lastly, Cervelo could have made a brand new shape that better takes advantage of structural engineering and carbon fiber composite properties and either drop even more weight or increase stiffness to levels that are useful for more than marketing.

...and the thing is they know how to do this, but they also must sell stuff, so here we are...

Stop reading the waffle and look at it. It's a fine looking bike. Understated, nothing too radical. It just looks...right. That's another fiver wasted on the idiot tax tomorrow night.

Nanoparticle filler is not a new concept or unique to 3M/Cervelo. In fact many nanoparticle fillers are available as resin additives. These additives may be the previously overused and underperforming CNTs (carbon nanotubes), to silica (very common), rubber, and just about anything else that can be dispersed evenly.

Additives reduce the amount of resin that is required as they take up volume, they also modify viscosity of the resins and this can enhance the quality of prepreg and/or improve the resin flow during curing, and they can also change the physical properties of the resin and thus the carbon fiber composite. Silica is a good additive for improving resin toughness.

More reading: http://goo.gl/9VlBH

This does not take anything away from the 3M resin or the fact that Cervelo's factory is using this resin, but it is again a case of something that is old news and common outside of the bike industry being presented as groundbreaking and new in part to justify the HUGE price premium.

And as Didonc (the poster) says, the marketing copy and justifications for various advanced features and engineering are scientific non sequiturs and belong in low grade science fiction.

"3M have developed a resin with uniformly dispersed silica nanoparticle. Because the particles are so small they can flow between the carbon filaments and providing increased strength due to the greater density of carbon."

Sorry. What?

"they reckon this new tube shape should save 7.4 watts (74 grams or reduced drag compared to Squoval 2) a 100 kilojoule reduction over a 5-hour stage."

Again?

There's some sort of direct-to-brain wiring that allows these sentences to pass through my eyes in a subconscious fashion, as 'tech'. Perhaps it's because I'm a man, and men love this sh*t. I have a decent grasp of physics, and of manufacturing technology. But neither of these ostensibly critical facts about the analysis of the machine seem to make sense, or to be complete as statements. Anyone?

There's a profession in the movie industry, for a technician who draws additional details onto the surface of spacecraft, to make them look more 'tech'. None of it does anything, or is intended to represent a real purpose. Perhaps this is the marketing counterpart. I don't doubt that what they're doing is incredibly advanced in material science terms, but it'd be nice if they could give their audience some credit when writing this crap.

YESYESYES

Yay I'm re-in-love with Cervelo!

But I'll give them a year to trickle down otherwise my next bike will be a Scott Foil!