The aero version of the bikes will be up to one quarter the weight of carbon aero frames and are much stronger.
Just like the Giant TCR changed the face of bike building, so too could a small British bike builder, Dassi.
It’s believed to be the only manufacturer in the world making bikes from wonder material graphene.
It’s billed as the new carbon fibre but it’s much stronger and much lighter.
It’s claimed to be 200 times stronger than steel and lighter than paper and a now a former Rolls Royce engineer – Dassi founded Stuart Abbott – is making bikes from it.
The Dassi Interceptor is the only graphene bike Dassi has made so far and the scale of that production is modest; 25 bikes currently being made and likely no more than 100 to come out of the company’s workshop this year.
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As the GCN video below explains, graphene has only been isolated in the last 15 years and isolating it from raw graphite is complex.
Abbott says the frames already being produced by it are just 700g, which is lighter than top bikes on the market but not by a huge margin it must be said.
For example – and it’s just one example – the Pinarello Dogma 10 that Team Sky is riding this year has a claimed weight of 820g (for a 53cm frame).
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But Abbott believes he can get the weight of graphene frames his company is working on down to just 350g in time.
Another potential huge gain for graphene frames is when it comes to producing aero bikes. Currently carbon fibre frames must be made bigger in sections so that they are more aero.
But that won’t be the case with graphene because it is so much stronger. Potentially graphene aero frames could be a quarter of the weight of their carbon fibre equivalent.
Graphene was discovered by two scientists who were working at the University of Manchester trying to isolate a single layer of graphite.
Their success earned them a Nobel Prize for Physics in 2010. Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms arranged in a honeycomb like lattice structure.
And it is added to carbon fibre bikes, with the Dassi Interceptor just 1 per cent graphene but still lighter and stronger than carbon fibre models. Graphene is already being used in some wheels and tyres.
The video below brings us on a really interesting exploration of the whole graphene process.
And just in case you’re feeling frisky, the frames cost £6,000 at present; that’s about €7,100.
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