Originally Posted by
rhenning
I am trying to figure out how it got so heavy. A couple of pages back I posted a picture of my wife's 24 inch wheeled titanium Seven bike and that weighs between 15 and 16 pounds. Are you sure the weights quoted are right, Roger
It's over-engineered, it passed with huge margins all fatigue tests (more than double the ISO required limits!) and some parts passed multiple tests with a single unit (when other vendors use a different part for each test).
I guess they applied the "better safe than sorry" philosophy for durability in this first model. Probably future versions will balance durability and weight a bit more.
Also robotic welding in inert chamber produces fantastic results. Whenever I see videos of other vendors (incl. Brompton), manually welding steel frames, you realize how leading edge is Helix here!