patentcad

Correct.

patentcad

If anybody wanted to bring a power meter in @ a blow away price point it would be $999 with the electronics package. This Garmin pricing is a yawner.

Homebrew01

I wonder if Saris will develop their chainring based power meter. Then you can use any pedal, any wheel, any crankset with any length crankarms.

patentcad

Yeah, plus it's just more friggin velo friggin vaporware. Not for nothing.

gregf83 

They are having trouble making it reliable and accurate and have decided to make a pre-announcement hoping that customers will hold off on buying an SRM or Quarq for another 6 months.

I suspect the reason they weren't using it in the tour was because the team had already tried and rejected the current version. I don't believe the part about giving away trade secrets. The pictures they've released today look very similar to the 3D models metrigear published a couple of years ago.

kleinboogie

That makes sense. thx.

patentcad

The worst kind of vaporware.

echappist

you must be one of those who takes the dogmas of the Church of Eddyism literally. Ride lots. Yeah. Pros are pros because they are genetically gifted and can handle that training load. For every one person who can handle 25hr of training, a ton more are left by the wayside, burned out by "ride lots". Powermeters and HRM are for us mere mortals who must meter their efforts lest we burn out.

jrobe

Disagree. For example, Lance Armstrong was one of the early adopters of power technology and got a significant advantage over many others who didn't train as wisely. "Ride smart" is much better than "ride lots" when every second matters.

kleinboogie

I'd be interested to see if Garmin gives a "SpinScan" mode. To do that the PM would need to transmit, and the head unit would need to listen to, power data at least 8x a second vs. the 1.1-5x per second that they listen at, and that PMs transmit watts at, currently.

Technical Explanation

Disclaimer: I take it everybody knows SpinScan is just an estimation and in no way uses stroke measurements of any kind.

The Channel Period for ANT+ power meter messages is ~4Hz which means at 90 RPM (1.5 revolutions per second) the best we could hope for is a wattage number being transmitted every 135 degrees of crank revolution, at 120 RPM a message every 180 degrees, etc. Imo, that's not good enough to get SpinScan level accuracy. To do that the channel period would need to be lowered to at least 4,091 to get 90 degree readings (at 120 RPM) to be able to give a decent stroke analysis. The trade-off is of course battery life would be cut in half while running in that mode.

If they provide that then I will be forced to buy a set and a supporting head unit.

echappist

We are largely agreeing and disagreeing on a very small issue. What i meant to imply was that the largest segment of powermeter users are by far schomes like the rest of us.
After all, who do you think make up the largest segment of powermeters users? Pros use it, but they are going after quite marginal gains. I noticed that Samuel Sanchez started using SRM's this year, yet we all know how successful he has been in previous years. Gilbert never had a power meter, and it didn't hamper him from winning. At their level, they are all freaks of nature who can ride lots without breaking down, and i'm sure it's more than simple "ride lots" as they have coaches.

The people who benefit the most are by far schmoes like the rest of us and the youngsters trying to crack the pro ranks. Before having a power meter, i thought it was possible to do 6 days of training/week. It still is, but i realized that if i were to do that for one week, the next week will be shot as the training stimuli is too great for my current training level (provided by CTL). Similarly, when my CTL does rise enough, it may become necessary to do 6 days/week.

PS. As a side note, when the late Aldo Sassi first tested Cuddles, he immediately realized how much potential Cuddles has as a GC contender. This was back in the early 2000's. Conversely, a client of his who didn't have off the charts numbers was Paolo Bettini, and i think he was a-okay as far as palmares are concerned.

SpongeDad

I suspect that $1499 has more to do with the sales guys maximizing profit and less to do with whether they could sell it at $1000 or the cost of inputs. If Quarq drops price, I'd bet there is plenty of room for this to come down as a well.

But with no Speedplay, I'm leaning Quarq.

Nerull

You also don't see road bikes in downhill mountain races. That doesn't make roadbikes useless.

Mithrandir

I know that personally, I am nowhere close to most of the people on this forum in terms of ability. I am severely overweight and bicycling is simultaneously my way of fixing it, my outlet of frustration, my mode of transportation to work occasionally, and my most enjoyable hobby. I love long distance riding and I would love to begin touring next year, and am interested in a power meter solely so I can manage going multiple 100-mile days in a row without burning myself out.

$1500 is probably too much for a power meter right now (me buying one would be the ultimate statement in fredliness), however. If they get it under $1k I'm there.

grolby

Ah, I see. Do you have an inside line on Garmin's Vector operation? Do you know something that everyone else doesn't? That Garmin intends to make money on this product is obvious. So did Metrigear, before Garmin bought them out. Does Garmin want to sell them at a higher margin than Metrigear wanted to? Who the F knows? Garmin undoubtedly has better deals with suppliers than Metrigear could ever have gotten; there is no way Metrigear could build these things for less money than Garmin can.

Well, give yourself a cookie! You suspect! But do you actually know anything? No.

Look, I don't mean any offense, but both of you sound to me as though you have an idea in your head about how much a product like this SHOULD cost, and how much work and engineering goes into it, and your speculations are about justifying why the cost is too high for what it is, rather than thinking about why it might actually make sense, right now, for it to cost that much - and why everything that isn't a PowerTap hub also costs at least that much. Let's add another line of evidence that I mentioned in my post: development time. First, it was in development hell at Metrigear for close to a year past its expected release date. Then Garmin bought it, it's now 8 or 9 months after that, and by the time it's released - assuming that it is released on time - it will have spent an additional year under development at Garmin, which is not exactly short on resources or engineering talent.

Why are people so unwilling to believe that products like this are hard and expensive to develop? It boggles the mind.

save10

I just crashed this weekend in a race (hair line fracture of a rib and other stuff). My Quarq is working fine. And probably and SRM would have been fine too. But my Look Keo on my right side is pretty messed up because it hit the ground first. It seems like a vulnerable spot

pdedes

has anyone mentioned Brim Brothers vapourware?

rankin116

What? You completely missed my point.

rankin116

Relax, people are allowed to have opinions that don't line up with yours. They know just as much about the costs to develop this product as you do, so you're in just as poor a position to defend the cost as they are to attack it.

Mithrandir

I have no doubt that these are hard and expensive to develop. But there's a few things to consider at this point.

Garmin acquired Metrigear. Metrigear already pumped a lot of money into the R&D and had a product that was mostly finished by the time the acquisition occurred. I belong to a company that has bought out smaller companies to acquire their technology before it hit the market. Every single time we did this, R&D costs were not a factor as the R&D was already paid for, and the acquisition is a sunk cost, so the only factor they consider is "what is the most that we can sell it for at the current time". This is in fact how all economies work now, regardless of whether an acquisition was involved; Products which are made are sold at the highest price the market can bear. If a product is made and cannot be sold profitably, the price goes up sharply, then the product is discontinued, as it cannot be made to make money. Airline travel is in this trap; it will never be profitable for air travel to exist, which is why it receives so many government subsidies.

Once the initial product is done and working, all that's left are:
* new features
* more efficient production methods

New features are a way of rekindling interest and refreshing a product so that they can maintain a high price. More efficient production typically leads to lower prices unless you're in an anomalous market like Apple products, where people will pay 800% markups regardless of competition. I doubt Garmin has that kind of following in the cycling industry, so we will no doubt see the price drop as competition heats up. It happens in every industry. Look at Di2. Once the initial version was out at the $4k price point, they were able to revisit it, make things better, and drop the price in half. Vector will be no different. I've worked long enough in the tech industry to predict that this is what will happen. It's been happening this way for 30 years with every consumer electronic device that's ever been made.

patentcad

If that is indeed the case, your reasons for riding a bicycle are arguably far more valuable than the motivations of most of Road Nazis over in the 33.

echappist

you really do like to address yourself in third person, don't you?

patentcad

I hardly meet the definition of Road Nazi, and I am persona non grata in the 33.

I am your Holy Father my son. Show some respect lest you burn for all eternity in BF Hell (they have the Mets on cable there, but that's it).

patentcad

Actually I'm shocked and appalled that you would make that sort of cheap accusation regarding your Uncle Pcad.

SpongeDad

1. If you don't mean to give offense, don't be snotty.
2. If you are going to be snotty, at least read what I wrote - nothing about development costs, or how hard and expensive it was to develop.
3. If you think product launch pricing is driven more by how hard it was to develop something than by competitor pricing, estimates of how much market share can be taken and how any given price combination maximizes profit, well, you're an idiot. Not that I mean to give offense, you ******.