Advances in the technologies used in road cycling tend to be very subtle from year to year, and it is only when several years have passed and we look back that we become aware of how much bikes have changed. Looking ahead to 2025 there are several trends that we could see if we look at what manufacturers have been presenting in the final part of the year.
The road bike market seems to follow cycles and after several years with expensive bikes and the search for more and more aerodynamic models, it seems that the trend is changing and the brands are no longer going backwards, but they do seem to recover more reasonable prices, as we can see from the 2025 models that some brands have been presenting in the last part of the year.
A price reduction that is more palpable in the entry range where the mechanical Shimano 105 is becoming strong as the only non-electronic option and, who knows, if manufacturers will not demand some more mechanical groupset option in order to have more competitively priced models.
Remember that both SRAM and Shimano have electrified their entire range except for the aforementioned Shimano 105 as far as 12v groupsets are concerned. We do not count Shimano’s entry-level groupsets, which are much more basic and oriented to recreational use. For the Japanese it would be a good way to regain some of the market share that SRAM has been eating up in recent years.
Against this becoming normalized is the ever-increasing integration of frames that is causing many manufacturers to build bikes that are only compatible with electronic shifting so that they don’t have to run more cables through the headset than the necessary brake lines.
We are likely to see even lower bike prices with more Chinese brands trying to take the world market by storm. Special mention to the X-Lab from Chinese manufacturer XDS Carbon Tech who are looking to become a reference brand with the sponsorship of the Astana team. Will it be the trendy bike of 2025 like the Van Rysel from Decathlon-AG2R La Mondiale was this year ending?
We are also seeing a paradigm shift in the bikes themselves. After a few years looking for more and more aerodynamic models, achieving lighter bikes has once again become a priority for brands and, little by little, we are again seeing weights on bikes that are approaching the pre-disc brake era something that is always welcome, especially because it does not mean that brands are leaving aerodynamics aside thanks to increasingly elaborate designs that allow both parameters to be better combined.
Technology and electronics also seem to continue to make their way into the world of cycling, as we see in the appearance of cyclocomputers such as the Wahoo Elmnt Ace which has incorporated a wind sensor or the patents published by SRAM in the last part of the year which indicate that they could be working on sensors for the wheels or new designs of interactive rollers.
To this we should add innovations in the field of training that could be standardized as glucose or lactate sensors showing their readings in real time on our cyclocomputer despite the fact that the UCI does not allow the use of these data in competition.
On the component side one thing does seem clear. The standard tire size will continue to increase. If not so long ago 25mm clinchers were the norm, last year 28 became the norm and it is becoming less and less unusual for racing bikes to equip 700x30c models as standard and allow wheel arches of up to 33 as a result of the use of wider and wider rims.
Source: brujulabike.com