popeye

https://www.velonews.com/gear/tech-we...-power-meters/

I love my G3's. Buy and kill I hope they die.

noodle soup

Weak rant. It scores a 2 on the rant meter.

popeye

I'm old.

datlas 

Didn’t see that coming.

As if.

base2 

I've been grumpy about SRAM for quite some time now. Not that I'm jaded or anything. It's standard practice to buy the competition & scuttle any competing products.

Quarq did make good on my C1 chain ring replacement with a new DZero Dub, so there is that. But, that don't mean I feel good about it. $500 + new rings is a lot to eat because corporate global domination schemes.

You wouldn't believe how long & hard I searched for the discontinued Powertap Disc 32 hole hub. I had to re-import one from a warehouse in Switzerland at OEM price, plus shipping. I recently found another NIB/NOS, 3000 miles on eBay. I just can't see the sense of spending $700 on a 24 or 28 hole carbon wheel set to save $12 in spokes. 32 spokes on aluminum rims is plenty good enough for 99.999% of the customer base.

They've done bunches of little irritating stuff along the way. I'm not a fan & cousel every one I know to steer clear. Way to have business savvy, SRAM. I know lots of enthusiastic cyclists running competing brands/products because of me...& they've all been happy about the change.

veganbikes

noodle soup

I know a few shop owners that stock only Shimano equipped road bikes because they got tired of dealing with SRAM warranty issues. SRAM is very easy to deal with when there's an issue, but customers get irritated when they spend a boatload of money on a bike, and the bike is in the shop for a week or two because a part failed.

popeye

It's not just SRAM, I think I'm more pissed at Wahoooo for buying Speedplay. These are some of the best products out there.

guachi

So SRAM bought PowerTap not even two years ago and are shelving their products?

Sounds like a complete waste of money.

Darth Lefty 

SRAM has digested a lot of brands. Not all retain their own brand identity. Quarq, Zipp, and Rockshox are still there. Truvativ, I'm not sure how it relates, half of it is the same as the SRAM stuff. Avid brand is now down to only cable MTB brakes that have been the same for I don't know, fifteen years? Twenty? Sachs has disappeared as a brand and so have their gear hubs, but when it comes to derailleurs, I've got no idea where Sachs engineering left off and SRAM started... they still tout German engineering.

My employer is being acquired this year. No idea if the job will remain, much less what decals will be on the products next year. But some part of us will still be making the same kind of thing. I think most of us... we are not redundant within our buyer. Our present corporate history is shared between a WW2-vintage aerospace manufacturer and a tire company, and M&A are going on all the time.

Het Volk

Yes - they likely acquired PowerTap to kill it, as it was competition. If you think the conservative case against anti-trust enforcement makes sense.....well, see here.

However, there are so many other options, and so many of those options are more effective than PowerTap, not sure it is the biggest issue, PowerTap always had issues.

(a) Weight for when racing.
(b) Wheel swapping

Just to name a few.

Toespeas

srams new redrum line is awesome !

Leinster

All that’s left is that SRAM still call one of their groups “Rival.”

rubiksoval

I got my first powertap in 2005. Bearings/hub were so awful it had to be sent back every six to nine months or so, but since the only alternative were $2000+ SRMs, it was gold.

I still have a G3 on my time trial bike, and a C1 on my road bike. Such a shame.

tomato coupe

PowerTap hubs had their day, but I can't imagine they were big sellers anymore.

Iride01 

As long as they continue to honor any warranty and service them why be so bothered? Aren't there plenty of other great PM's out there now?

Even though I don't use any SRAM products, I thought I'd heard they still honor the stuff for other products they've discontinued.

WhyFi

Yeah, I had one back in the day - it was a great value relative to the few other options out there. With its limitations and the current options on the market, though? Nope - never even a consideration when it was time for a new PM.

RChung

The G3 hub weighed less than a stock Shimano Ultegra hub, and way less than a 105 hub. In addition, you didn't need a separate speed sensor, which saved another 35-40 g (depending on which speed sensor you buy). So even the lightest alternative, a single-sided Stages or 4IIII added weight while a PT G3 hub could subtract weight, depending on what stock hub you were replacing it with. And it measured total power, not just one side.

Marcus_Ti

Ditto. Especially when Stages Gen3 lefty meters are literally 30% the cost.

Sucks losing competition/options in the market, still.

Chi_Z

pretty sure powertap would die by itself, hub based power-meter are too inconvenient

popeye

I find them very convenient and accurate.

RChung

I agree. The most important characteristic of a power meter is that it helps you answer your questions, not raise a new one ("I wonder if that's because my power meter isn't telling me the truth?"). Features are nice, portability is nice, price is nice, the way it looks is nice -- but being able to rely on the data you're getting is key. That's why you get a power meter.

Psimet2001 

Been involved in this one to a small bit. My company exists because of powertap products. I built over 1,000 powertap wheels early on.

Then it dropped to nothing. We even went up to the Saris headquarters and had a meeting to go over what was going on. "We just saw it drop to nothing nearly overnight. Are we an outlier or is this happening with other builders/dealers?" "Oh it's happening with everyone. demand disappeared."

2 years or so ago when saris dumped the price to the public they reduced the wholesale margin to 20% for non-stocking dealers and something like 23% if you stocked. In short they just told everyone they wanted to be consumer direct. That was to pull in every single buck they could still get off the product line.

I had a buddy whose wife raced for our team. He was put in charge as the product manager on Powertap at Saris. The next week they sold it to SRAM. He was blindsided. They never gave him a heads up. They knew the sale was going through as they gave him his promotion (that's typical in any industry though).

I had no real belief that anything was going to be done with powertap. Saris was looking to offload brands and is now back to just Saris on everything. SRAM is always looking to buy IP and tech. Everyone has been chasing Pedal based power meters. Don't count out more power options from SRAM in the long term.

I called last October maybe to get a new electronics pod and discuss the possibility of upgrading the customers hub anyway (swap). They told me then that powertap was dead. Said they would continue to supply parts and recalibrations could still be done at Quarq in SD. Said they had sold the last new hub earlier in the week.

For everyone that says it was great and they loved the product: yes it was a proven product that was stable and performed extremely well....but all of you stopped buying it. It is now gone. Things change. *shrug*

Psimet2001 

....as for hating SRAM - there are so many other things someone could take issue with.

In general I love the people there and will continue to support our hometown company. That said...I do tend to buy a lot of Shimano stuff. YMMV

JonnyV

That's exactly the problem with products that work and work and last. You will eventually sell yourself out of a job. Unless you come up with something new, of course.