Originally Posted by
Ultralight
1. Helix can manufacture titanium bikes at this price point. This is ground breaking.
2. How excellent the robotic welds look. This should reduce the cost of frame manufacturing by reducing one of the highest cost - human labor. I for one, found the videos of the robotic welding process to be extremely impressive.
I also noted my opinion that Helix is not as easily knocked off by imitators in other lower labor cost countries due to its complexity which does require much more machining and robotic work than is financially feasible even in lower labor cost nations.
I disagree. They did not prove they can build the bike at the price. They just proved they can build a few bikes with the funding they got. It is totally different.
And CNC machines and robots are already widely adopted in Taiwan and China too. That's why now we can get CNC machined bike parts at the fractions of what they used to cost. One example is a pair of flatbar brake levers I recently purchased at $17 shipped. The original one made by Extralite costs $170. Much heavier Paul CNC brake levers cost $130 now. (just checked the ebay for the prices)
Finally the robots. Actually my major is robotics. Industrial 6 axis robotic arm used to cost tens of thousands of dollars. (I have a universal robotics arm which I paid like 40,000 USD) Now I heard one Chinese company is soon launching a 7 axis arm that costs only $6000. I dunno what kind of dark magic was used but what I am saying is that robots are getting really cheap, and if robotic manufacture becomes cheaper than Chinese labor they will use cheaper robots too.
And they are way advanced than you may think. You will be surprised to know that one Chinese company already copied the Boston dynamics dog robot (spot mini) and is already selling it.
So here I summarize. Whatever magic peter used to lower the production cost of helix tremendously (if he really did) can be also used by Asian countries. And if such magic exists, big brands would have jumped in years ago.