Originally Posted by
PeteHski
Another way to look at it is how long do you really need it to last? For me 10 years would be more than enough. Without crashing or misuse I know this is very easily attainable with a carbon frame.
I got the point and many users mention 10 years. But I wanted to go beyond a personal milestone and assess when comes the time (or better say – mileage) to change a road bike because the carbon fails or shows failure signs. The truth is that most of us are outside the hard racing world, so we get more than we need from an expensive carbon road bike. As a result, some users would be interested to preserve the "status quo" as long as possible, without further investments in new bikes.
I already saw here and there in this thread carbon bikes of 10-25 years old still in use. Not enough for an estimation, yet I could not see a story of failure during normal use. Carbon bikes are available for large public for 25 years (roughly). However, if many users change their bikes at every 10 or even 3-4 years just to be in line with technological progress, we might never have enough stories available to assess carbon bike life span above 10 years.