Planned obsolescence in cycling

I've fairly recently become a lot more interested in planned obsolescence and perceived obsolescence, all from Louis Rossmann on YouTube, where he was going for the jugular with brands like Apple for purposely making their products hard/impossible to repair.

I'd really like to have a conversation around how this is in cycling, everything from tyres to brake pads and the perception that "my bike isn't good anymore" because 12 speed, disc brakes, aero advancements etc.

I've worked in marketing for the last 10 years, and I see through some of the utter BS that comes out of some of the brands in the cycling world. 'Reviews' which are advertorials, 'latest model' which is fundamentally the same as the previous one, and not to mention private equity getting their hands on established brands.

Looking to have a conversation around this, but also where brands might be cheating us into consuming more, not just in the cycling world.

For those of you who haven't came across this before:

Planned obsolescence: "a policy of producing consumer goods that rapidly become obsolete and so require replacing, achieved by frequent changes in design, termination of the supply of spare parts, and the use of non-durable materials."

Perceived obsolescence: "Perceived obsolescence refers to a situation where a customer believes they need an updated version of a product even though theirs is working just fine."

I think there's a third term for the glossary that I don't have, which is designing solutions in such a way that they aren't optimised for repair. I presume this is in part because labour on the assembly lines in far eastern factories is significantly less than one-at-a-time fixes in the western market.

The bearings in my DMR v12 pedals recently went shot, so I took them to my LBS for a service. They flatly told me that no one services pedals any more and that they should just be thrown away. I persisted and they did end up managing to service them, but it required them making a special tool to remove the old bushings, and it ended up coming to the same cost as a new pair of pedals. So instead of designing the pedal to be disassemble-able with regular workshop tools, the brand's owners clearly thought repairability was not a priority.

I paid up and didn't moan about it because I don't hold the shop liable for the state of the industry, just another instance of how the cycling marketplace is just geared towards making you want to junk stuff and buy new instead of caring for what you already have and making it last.

You could probably have a field day with SRAM and their dumb sh!t:

• Red AXS with Quarq Powermeter integrated with the chainrings 'for a lighter weight': https://www.sram.com/en/sram/models/pm-red-d1
  
• And these wireless AXS blips that you cannot change the batteries on: https://www.sram.com/en/sram/models/ec-blip-b1
  
  

WTF SRAM?

I bought a very expensive titanium lifetime bike in 26 wheel size.
Next thing you know everything is 29 and it’s impossible to get anything fancy in 26.
Bike industry is run by assholes.

Feels like e-bikes and electronic shifting are both great opportunities for manufacturers to force obscelescence upon buyers. Anything that needs* a computer/piece of software which can be discontinued or have support withdrawn.

*I am aware that you might never really need a computer connection if all you want to do is charge batteries and run things as they came.

WTF SRAM?

That's just blatantly egregious. We should have laws against the unreplaceable battery scam.

(sorry, no contribution to the thread, but fyi, there is a tool sold by DMR to remove and replace the v12 bushings. I own it and have not used it yet; I remember it costing ~half of the price of a pair of v12.)

I bought a bushing kit for my DMRs which failed within about a year, and then afterwards discovered you need special tooling to do it.

They went in the box and DMR have been added to my 'don't buy' list.

Great subject!

About to go away for a week, will comment at greater length when I return, but I'll leave this:

Dave Russell (bike shop owner & frame builder, Slough, very old school) once said to me: 'Bloody CTC, they buy one bike and expect it to last a lifetime.'

cycliq is complicit in this, they dont make it easy to know the info (if there is any) for battery replacement and dont offer user-replaceable battery

brands might be cheating us into consuming more

Whilst I completely agree and the cycling industry in general has turned something so simple into something so complicated, for a little bit of balance, there are brands like Albion @Chopsicle who put a lot of effort into repairing and prolonging the life of cylcling garments.

Interesting topic. I believe that the beauty of cycling is its relative simplicity. For that reason I haven't embraced advancements such as electronic gears or disc brakes. Most of this stuff appears in the pro peleton and then before you know it all the MAMIL's 'need' it

A gearing system that operates perfectly well using wires and springs and doesn't need charging up is still a marvel tp me. Also brakes that do their job and don't require bleeding etc likewise.

Some of my bikes don't get ridden for couple of months at a time. When they do all I usually have to do is pump the tyres up and I'm away.

https://youtu.be/SlTXVIQ_Xxw?si=f-Z2LdnJ62D0s70_

sram just released their red "xplr" groupset and described it as feature that you can now change the chainrings without replacing the integrated power meter. You were the ones that took that away in the first place!

Also, the new chainrings need a proprietary tool to be taken off, because chainring bolts aren't a thing

Yeah I just watched GP Lama's video on it last night. That's a positive development, I think?

I've still got the older style spider PM that only works with the 4-arm Force rings.

Don't disagree with the sentiment of this thread, but feel it's not entirely black and white. Tyres and brakes - I would not want to go back to my bikes from 15 years ago - UK conditions being what they are 90% of the year. Also, maybe some proportion of tech advancements are genuinely stuff that bike enthusiasts came up with, and not consciously driven by the planned obsolescence strategy.

SRAM force 11speed rear mech that you can’t replace the rear spring, turns out you have to shim the mech outward to take up the slack in the spring. WTF it’s not even that old.

I think a lot of the comments here are missing the point of planned obsolescence. Making something that is single use (non-replaceable batteries) is not planned obsolescence, it's just wasteful. A bike shop refusing to service pedals isn't planned obsolescence, it's high labour cost vs low manufacturing cost not making financial sense for the shop.

Most companies that sell their products based on performance or technology inevitably have to make things at the limit of what is possible in order to stay competitive. That then leads to a point where your average service technician isn't able to work on them due to lack of knowledge or appropriate equipment. It's the same with computers, cars and now starting to be bikes. Electronics are tiny, complex and the requirement to be waterproof makes them harder to access.
There is a new EU law which means batteries must be replaceable by the end consumer with limited tools. This will change some e-bike design, but not necessarily for the better in all cases in my opinion.

I am impressed that Shimano seem to be putting more effort into their mid-range groupsets (CUES etc) than churning out a new XTR every 2 years. Shimano's record of keeping a good supply of parts for legacy systems is also a good indicator for the longevity of those systems.

In general, I think design for manufacturing and design for repair should feature much higher on the priority list for brands. I think part of the problem is that a lot of designers are in the same boat as us, they don't know the intricacies of modern manufacturing or the problems repair technicians might face further down the line.

One nuance that perhaps needs thinking about is the 'planned degredation' rather than obsolescence?

A great example of this is in drivetrains, and by that I mean the phenomenon whereby high quality parts are available at the higher end, say 10-11-12 speed for a while, but then as that trickles down to lower levels overtime you can then only by low-end and midrange parts at those speeds.
I have several older 8 and 9 speed bikes, the spread and steps of gears are fine for their use, but I am now somewhat 'forced' to feed them with much lower quality chains and cassettes than I used to. They are definitely not obsolete as I can still easily keep them functioning with new parts, but not easily at the same quality level.

Objectively they still function just fine, and I will continue t use them but this kind of thing can definitely contribute to the perceived obsolescence and desire to upgrade.
It's one thing if a bike can is still exactly as good and capable as when it was purchsed (even if more modern offerings are 'better), but it's quite another one it gets objectively worse due to parts to keep it running becoming lower and lower quality over time.

Tyres are another example of this, it's not all doom and gloom but the available range and quality of 26er tyres is not what it once was. It's conceivable that we will reach a point where the only commonly available options are budget offerings, much the same as we have seen for 27in/630 tyres, and before the resurgence 650B/584.

All Di2 motors that eventually die and you have to replace the whole unit. If it's in production that's it because new ones aren't compatible.
As few days ago got a costumer that got a Di2 lever broken. Easy job to replace but turns out there's no replacement, you have to buy the whole unit.
Ceramic piston broken. Again, whole new caliper.
And don't get me started on specific frame parts or suspension.
We did it to ourselves, buyers is what keep the industry afloat and they always need the new thing. Brands just produce enough spares to cover for warranties

I'm still on square taper and raleigh 26 tpi threading. This is all over my head...

Bring back Cotter pins.

We should have laws against the unreplaceable battery scam.

This and non-standard charging connectors (I think the EU are doing this).

About time the EU weighed in on a single BB standard..

Ceramic piston broken. Again, whole new caliper.

There's got to be a limit of what is considered serviceable and replaceable though.

There's always going to be people that will find ways to fix 'anything' but normal users and even most bike shops and suppliers can't be expected to keep spares for every eventuality. In some cases, like brakes and their internals, it's probably safer to replace the whole lot because manufacturers can't guarantee the person working on it will have the skills to do it properly.

I mean, bike shops where my partner is from won't even touch tubeless tyres, they're not going to deal with Di2 or hydro piston replacement :D