WOLF VORMWALDE
Director of Specialized tyre development, eats and drinks rubber (probably)
Renewable or recycled materials will replace fossil materials in compounding and casing material choice. There is also legislation in place, or on the way, to run factories as green as possible. This is worldwide.
Tyres, wheels, suspension as a system will grow together more. Every element is a part of the suspension chain. Rather than looking at the elements individually they’ll be dialled in and synced to work in combination.
To be able to adjust a more complex bike there will be electronic monitoring systems and aids to find the ideal setting. You don’t have to look too far for this. See cars and high-end motorcycles for how their chassis are managed electronically. We want to keep the weight down and as riders we actually like involvement. So I believe mountain bike systems will be kept open for rider preferred settings and tuning.
Data collection and analysis will inform riders to make better material choices. Change is driven by an increasing ability to measure performance differences in real riding and competition situations. And then being able to break down the findings into clear recommendations about what makes you faster, safer or more comfortable in a given situation. What I think could be interesting performance wise is if you are able to monitor slip, slip angle, acceleration and deceleration, lean angle. Different tyre set-ups would produce different numbers, allow for comparison and enable riders to put numbers to ride feel.
Also it could feed back into suspension and brakes to help set those up or even adjust them automatically on the fly.