Update about Supre bikes
When I started Lal Bikes, the long term vision was to become a drivetrain manufacturer that sells derailleurs and other drivetrain parts to many bike companies. This is still our vision because it’s the way to make the Supre Drive the most available for mountain bikers, but the way that we’re pursuing that vision recently changed. I’ll say more later in this email, but first, I have some news to share, both good and bad.
The bad news is that Nicolai is discontinuing the Nucleon 16 Supre. This was the first production bike with the Supre Drive, and it will no longer be available for sale. Nicolai will continue to provide replacement parts for the frame and we at Lal will continue to provide replacement parts for the drivetrain. There’s a number of reasons for the Nicolai Nucleon 16 Supre being discontinued, some of which are my fault. Safe to say that I learned a lot from the development of that bike. I have a lot of admiration for Nicolai’s willingness to pursue new things and to be innovative. Also, we’re grateful for the early adopters who bought the Nucleon 16 Supre—your openness toward new ideas makes it possible for innovators like us to develop these ideas to their full potential.
Nicolai was the first bike company to take the plunge to develop a production bike with the Supre Drive, and they did so at a remarkable pace. Before this project, I had only built one-off prototypes, and with the Nucleon, our team at Lal Bikes got to learn what it takes to build many bikes with consistent performance. We learned about how to do R&D, including the importance of testing in varied conditions and riders, and the need for tight feedback loops if development is to happen quickly (geographic proximity helps with tight feedback loops). We also learned a lot of technical things about the Supre Drive—one thing that stands out was a result of the Nucleon being switchable to a regular derailleur drivetrain by swapping the swing arm of the frame. This allowed back-to-back testing with the Supre Drive versus SRAM Transmission. We found out that the bike handling and suspension performance is better with the Supre Drive. Beyond this, we learned about the needed areas of improvement in the Supre Drive. At the start of the project with Nicolai in early 2022, all I had was prototype drivetrain parts that I built in my parents’ basement, and it turns out that there was a long way to go before the Supre Drive would be production-ready. The feedback from the Nicolai team resulted in the switch to aluminum derailleur links, improved chain tensioner damping, etc. The Nicolai team was patient with me while I made these changes to the Supre Drive while also starting a company and setting up a workspace, all things I had never done before.
The good news is that Lal Bikes is continuing, full steam ahead. I originally got into mechanical engineering because of my interest in mountain bike technologies, including suspension systems, and I’m going back to these roots because we at Lal Bikes are developing our own frame. We’re choosing to not share any more details for now. This is so that we can focus on the technical task at hand. We’ll be in stealth mode and won’t share updates for the next while. Developing our own frame will give us the level of control to fully demonstrate the potential of the Supre Drive. At the same time, it’s an opportunity to apply our ability to innovate to frames, something that I have long wished to do.
Thank you for your support and patience during this next phase of Lal Bikes.
I’ll leave you with a photo of some pretty aluminum.
