A Post From Bill @ Santana: Eurobike 2010 Report

Bill & Jan McCready: 2010 New Zealand Rally from the Santana Tour Gallery

Back on September 3rd, our friend Bill McCready, owner & president of Santana Cycles, Inc., in LaVerne, California, posted an update to the Tandem@Hobbes list regarding this year’s Eurobike at Friedrichshafen, Germany.  Bill typically posts updates regarding Eurobike and the Taipei bike show each year, which always makes for some welcome reading.

Now, being the proprietor and chief marketing guy of a major OEM tandem producer I will forewarn readers that like most of Bill’s writings, this is a very pro-Santana write-up. I know… well duh!  However, it bears mention for those readers who may be unfamiliar with ‘posts from Bill at Santana’.

Anyway, and without further ado and just a little bit of editing and some of my own comments added from a ‘fact check’ point of view, here’s what Bill shared with us last week in his original post to Hobbes:

A newsworthy post from Bill at Santana

The world’s largest bike show is finishing its third day.  Here are some quick notes. If you’re interest is limited to tandems, skip to the bottom.

Background on Eurobike:

Every late August since the 1990s Eurobike has opened in Friedrichshafen, Germany. Located on a huge Alpine Lake, the shoreline of the Bodensee (Lake Constance) is shared with Austria and Switzerland. The fairgrounds are huge—a dozen structures that seem like airplane hangers. Combined floorspace equals the area of four football fields. Eurobike not only fills every building, it now overflows into two outdoor areas and an adjacent Zeppelin construction hall. Every space has been filled for months. Tuesday’s schedule included press briefings and a remote outdoor demo event for bicycle dealers; with challenging Alpine road and trail loops.

This Year’s Eurobike:

The exhibit halls opened on Wednesday. The dealer-only days (through Friday) are brutal as booths must be manned for 10 straight hours daily. On Saturday, the final day, Eurobike will open its doors to the public. Over 10,000 enthusiasts are expected to arrive by train, plane, bus, bike and ferry. Hours are 9-6 and Santana is in Hall A-6, space 303. Hobbesians are invited to come by and say hello.

Bill’s Observations on Current Cycling Trends:

While I didn’t find a revolutionary new product, here are Eurobike’s two biggest trends:

• The look of molded carbon frames has become dominant. The middle-to-top road and mountain bikes in nearly every booth were carbon. Although they appear to be be molded from one piece, in actuality smaller moulded pieces are bonded, taped, puttied, sanded and painted—very similar to drywall construction. At lower price points aluminum frames with hydro-formed tubes are designed to mimic the look of their carbon stablemates. Frames built with straight round tubes? Totally out of fashion!
• European dealers are embracing “pedalec”—an evolving type of electric bike that probably won’t make it in America. Whereas most US customers think an electric bike shouldn’t need to be pedaled, the pedalec version doesn’t have a throttle. It won’t provide power until you start pedaling. As long as you keep pedaling, the automatic electric assist will provide about half the power. While the bike can be pedaled faster, if you exceed 15mph the assist vanishes. While Europe also has the older style of electric bikes where pedaling is optional, the clear advantage of these newer electrics is that they don’t need to be registered, licensed or insured. What are the brands? The major bike manufacturers such as Giant are assembling these “hybrids” using pre-packaged brains, motors and battery packs supplied by companies such as Bosch and Sanyo.

Tandems At Eurobike:

Tandems? Of the ~ 2,000 display booths, tandems were seen in less than a dozen. In most instances a lonely mountain bike tandem was hidden in a field of singles. Major companies that produce tandems, such as Trek and La Pierre, can show next year’s catalogs with pictures of their new tandems, but the bikes themselves aren’t considered important enough to schlep to the show. Dealers who stopped at Cannondale’s large booth were disappointed to learn that after nearly 25 years in the tandem-building biz, Cannondale has thrown in the towel. Tandems are out of production, and don’t appear in their 2011 catalog. Remaining 2010 models were on the close-out list.

(Editor’s Note: I’m working to confirm if this is true for Cannondale’s US market. The last information I had suggested that Cannondale would reduce the 2011 model offerings to just the single, high-end road tandem model with dual discs, FSA carbon cranks, etc at somewhat higher price point as they transition tandem production to their Asian factory. They have recently taken some big orders from the more savvy Cannondale tandem dealers who are stocking up on the last US production run to take advantage of the cache of the US-built Cannondales & the incredibly low price point. TG)

In addition to Santana, the only other booth where tandems were the star was at Bike Power; a small builder from Berlin that does mostly heavier utilitarian tandems, but also offers some distinctive mid-range tandems for both road and mountain enthusiasts.

One of the clear hits of the show was a 29er tandem from Santana. Constantly being drooled on and photographed, I am sure that pictures will appear in numerous magazines. Equipped with a pair of Gates belts driving a Rohloff 14-speed rear hub, this is the first-ever enthusiast tandem that uses neither derailleurs nor chain. While much has been made of so-called “Carbon Drive” tandems (where one belt has replaced a tandem’s timing chain), our new show bike with a second Gates belt is entirely chain-free. This exceptionally clean and quiet Santana became the first tandem to earn the “Carbon Drive” title. Our friends from Gates and Rohloff keep returning to our booth to witness and enjoy the huge interest this bike was drawing.

(Editor’s Note: Once again — from a fact-check standpoint — Calfee built an all-Gates Carbon Drive tandem with Rohloff rear hub for a customer back in June. I don’t know when Santana fited one to their 29’er. It wasn’t on their 29’er show bike back in April at the Sea Otter when they shot a pair of video’s on ExoGrid tubing that I posted about in July.  Our BikeForums.net friend Ritterview received some photos of the Calfee frame just prior to delivery in a posting to BF that you can find HERE. Frankly, I’d be surprised if there aren’t a few other all-belt driven tandems by now.

Moreover, I’m not sure an off-road tandem’s sync drive is the best place for a belt drive given the number of times the front wheels on our off-road tandems have kicked up small tree limbs and sticks that find their way into our timing rings and chain, never mind the routine sync chain being dragged over logs, rocks and dirt berms that are any every-ride occurrence.  Mind you, we run somewhat smallish 34t timing rings to increase our ground clearance and to reduce the size of the opening for twigs, etc.  The Gates carbon drives typically use larger diameter timing rings which IMHO would exacerbate off-road sync drive issues. Again, just my take as someone who spends a lot of time thinking about and riding off-road tandems in places other than the desert where there are no sticks, etc.  No offense to Santana, but if I was looking to drop some serious $$ on an off-road tandem, 29’er or otherwise, I’d look to Ventana, Fandango, Vicious Cycles, or other frame builders who specialize in off-road bike design.  TG)

Nearly as interesting to tandem enthusiasts is our Beyond tandem equipped with Shimano’s Di-2 electronic shifting. Since its premier at last years’s Eurobike we’ve worked with Shimano to increase the Di-2 gear range. While many enthusiasts loved the 2010 version with the 130-inch high gear, most were apprehensive about the low gear of 36 inches. Earlier this year Shimano showed us how to extend the range. With Shimano’s newer approved-for-tandems version of Di-2 (still a Santana exclusive) the low gear barely exceeds the magical one-to-one ratio.

Bill McCready; founder and prez

Santana Cycles