Hidden Prototypes & Wild New Tech at Sea Otter 2025

Good morning from day two of Sea Otter. I'm here on the ground. I've been sleeping in this rooftop tent in order to make sure that I don't miss anything for you all around the show. We're gonna head out and see what we can find and report back. And then I'm gonna camp myself back in here and edit some articles for the night. All right, we are here, hidden behind the fox truck with this, the new RAD prototype fork. Big hubbub at the show. Fox is making what looks to be an inverted Enduro fork. From what we can tell, it's long travel. Obviously it's on a pivot Firebird, so kind of suits the Enduro bike. There are a lot of little details that we can see on the outside, but no info from Fox yet. Okay, so as you can see, it's running a Grip X2 damper, but with kind of a modified high-speed compression ring. And then interestingly on the damper and air side, there are these little buttons tucked in. I would assume those are pressure release valves like seen on the Manitou Dorado, but I think it's safe to assume this is some version of the Grip X2 damper. On the air spring side, what's kind of interesting is there's not one, but actually two air caps. So traditionally this is where the air fill would be, but there's also an air cap on the bottom of the fork, whether that's a dummy or maybe a two-chambered system like we've seen in Ohlins and Manitou forks. I don't know, but it is interesting to see two options there. One detail that is often tricky on inverted forks is stanchion guards. These are carbon fiber and they look to bolt directly into the lower castings. And then they also manage the cable routing, which snakes up, I'd say pretty cleanly. It looks like it's well-managed and there's no provision for a fender that I can see, but we'll see what develops on that front. One other interesting thing, it's got dual clamping bolts on both sides of the axle and what looks to be a thicker 20 mil axle. So whether it's a downhill wheel or some new standard, I don't know, but it is different than we're used to. So pretty cool stuff. This is already on a bunch of different athletes' bikes around the show. So I'd venture a guess that we're getting close to production on this thing. And it looks solid. I mean, I'm super stoked to give it a try whenever that day comes, but for now we can just speculate. So I'm gonna continue to do so. I've got an article on the website about this already. So head over there for a bit more, I don't know, guesswork, but you know, check it out. All right, I'm here with Jack of the Vessel Bike Project and he has this absolute hog of an e-bike here. We're gonna run through it just because it's definitely one of the more unique builds I've seen in Sea Otter so far. You said this thing has a 950 watt hour battery? 960. Giant battery. Giant battery, easy swap. And motor is what now? A Bafang M560, 140 newton meters of torque. Oh yeah. I mean, considering like all the news recently on big, fast e-bikes, this is like well in excess of any of those. Kind of cool to see. I mean, clearly a handmade frame. You said it got a little rusty overnight, hit a fog. Nice and foggy and wet overnight. Jack did the fabrication on this thing. Really cool, like press broke and laser cut down tube situation to hold the battery. Obviously a pretty complex linkage going on with the floating brake arm. A lot of cool details here. What travel is this? 180, 175. Wow, that's big. How's it ride? Really good. Yeah, that's what I can say. Pretty. At this point, are you selling bikes or is it still just kind of like building them for friends? Yeah, we're kind of selling bikes. Just like a little low key. Cool. I'm here at Praxis, where they have unveiled a new prototype for the time being, Gearbox. They're calling it the Hit. And functionally what it is, is a set of clusters tucked inside this module that fits into a frame. You can change the number of clusters and the orientation of them to get different gearing. The one they're showcasing here is essentially a four speed with about a 200% gear range. So like a downhill drive train. And the way it works is quite novel. Functionally, each cluster has two gears kind of tucked into each other because each segment can flip up in sequence. So the chain is always flat and plain. So you don't get cross training or any weird drag because of that. And then the actuation is quite clever. It's all done via Bluetooth. And it's a set of pins that actuate these sliders on the back of the cluster. So as this is spinning, the pin ramps off that, pushes it into a direction, and then you can go from big gear to small gear. Essentially, the number of clusters could be built up to a 16 speed gearbox. It's four, eight, 12 or 16. And the form factor is surprisingly small and this is using an industrial chain. So not by any means the most efficient method, but the most durable currently. So I'm curious to see how this develops. I think probably gonna turn into something pretty cool. This is a really exciting one. So stay tuned. I am here to show you something from a company called Morel. So Morel is a new venture into the battery space. In fact, Gary Fisher of the origins of mountain biking is part of the company. And essentially what Morel is introducing is an ultra fast charge e-bike battery. So this demo that they have here is a 350 watt hour battery. So typical of like a light e-bike, light EMTB or a commuter bike. And this battery can charge in 15 minutes, which is remarkably fast. So the charging time depends slightly on which charger of theirs you use, but regardless the slowest charger is about 20 minutes. Fastest is about 15. This is a lithium ion cell like we're used to, but the configuration and chemistry behind it is novel to the bike industry. The guy behind this company previously worked in battery powered aviation. And so he found that this was a better way to scale the concept that he was working on. It's pretty cool to see someone move from a massive industry to a little rink-a-dink one, but in a way it does make sense to try to like penetrate the market with something a little more accessible, like a bicycle as opposed to an airplane. So pretty cool. We're here in the Forbidden Booth. So earlier this week, they released a brand new long travel e-bike, but what they're teasing at Sea Otter is this, a titanium hardtail. It's called the Heathen. We don't know too much about it yet, but it runs a 120 or 130 no fork and has the same proportional geometry that their trail bikes do. That means the front center and rear center both grow pretty dramatically as you go up in the size range. Again, we don't have too many details yet, but it's cool to see kind of a novel offering in the hardtail wars. Usually they're all kind of like birds of a feather, but in theory, this is a little different geometrically. I'm here with Bronson of BMore Bikes, and he has the full frame that he has developed, the Mule TR. So this is kind of a geometry concept built around your race or her stamp, right? It's designed specifically around the Gen 2 90 millimeter raised reverse mountain bike stamp, where it's raised up 90 millimeters with a minus 15 millimeter reversed offset. And this is the new black color way. Yeah, so this version has a shorter chainstay, shorter head tube, and a super long 569 millimeter reach. And then it's built with a gearbox and a 423 up to 438 millimeter adjustable chainstay length, allowing then for a really quite long low base and a more trail oriented geometry. I also had a version one, the B&D Mule. Unfortunately, version one was stolen out of my van. Oh yeah, and so a big time for us to get this one built up to the show. Built this up last night. Oh, and drove all night to get here this morning. Oh, if anyone sees a version one with a one inch head tube and a 522 chainstay and a gearbox, Graham looks just like this somewhere in LA. Probably you're still in it as I'm in LA. Please let me know as a PSA. And a bike check. There you have it. All the interesting things that we have found recently. Some cool bikes, some cool parts, some new technologies. I'm gonna tuck myself back into my little cave, sleep out the night, and I'll see you tomorrow.