All About Bikes
A Pivot Cycles podcast delving into the technical, professional, cultural and emotional sides of life inside Pivot and the mountain biking industry.
All About Bikes
Ep #6: Fox Live, Electronically Controlled Suspension
For this episode of All About Bikes, we speak with Everett Erickson, the head of Mechatronics Engineering Group at Fox, and Chris Cocalis, to explore what could be a standard in the future of mountain biking. A suspension system that reads terrain and adjusts to your riding style. Sounds crazy? It’s already here, and it’s called Fox Live Valve.
Welcome to all about bikes the podcast from Pivot Cycles. My name is Jens Staudt and I will be hosting Chris Cocalis from Pivot in Everett Erickson from Fox today. We will talk about a electronic support system called Fox Live Valve. It's been on the market for over three years now and pretty much all models from Pivot are Live Valve compatible. Where this idea came from, how it works for you on the trail, and why it's more than a lockout and can be a great addition to an enduro bike. Everett, the actual inventor of Live Valve will give you an insight on the challenges of developing something so sophisticated, and why it almost can transform your regular bike to feel like it has a motor. So we're welcome today with Chris Cocalis from Pivot.
Chris Cocalis:Hello, Jens.
Jens Staudt:And Everett Erickson from Fox. So we want to know more about Fox Live Everett. You're probably the best person to talk about it. Right?
Everett Erickson:Yeah, I head up the advanced products group in Fox, we actually just changed the name to the mechatronics engineering group.
Jens Staudt:You are responsible for Fox Live on mountain bikes.
Everett Erickson:Yeah, I'm the inventor. I'm a mechanical engineer. So Live Valve is our first foray into bringing electronics into passive mechanical systems. This goes back probably 12 years or so I worked with Bob Fox on it. So actually, Bob and I are listed as the inventors on the technology.
Jens Staudt:As far as I know Everett, your history is not only mountain bike, so maybe you tell us a bit more about your background, and how you ended up doing bikes.
Everett Erickson:Yeah, that's an interesting question actually, where do ideas come from? After graduate school, I did grad work and controllable shock absorbers using Magneto rheological fluid. It's a fluid where the viscosity changes when you apply a magnetic field. Anyways, that's not important. But it opened doors to a job in Detroit. I moved to Detroit after grad school. And I was working for tenneco automotive, and their advanced products group working on electronics suspension. And we had some really cool technology and the work was fun. And then 9/11 happened and the whole division got cancelled. And they just created everything and put it in storage. And I think that was really the genesis of things that we didn't do back then we're just kind of seeds for thinking about Live Valve. Probably 10 years later, we got a mandate from the management at Fox to start working on electronic suspension. And I already had an idea what I wanted to do that I've been thinking about it just going in the background for so long. So that was the genesis of Live. We started in mountain bikes first, and worked on it for about six months. And I'd had a background in power sports for the first 10 years that I was at Fox. I actually was on the power sports side of the business. And then when this advanced products group got opened, I was tapped to lead and found that group. So quickly, we said, Man, this has application in power sports as well. And we opened up a parallel program. And we're working on both projects simultaneously. Which was a cool experience, because I think there's a lot of cross pollenization of what we're learning on side by sides and bigger vehicles we're applying to bike and vice versa, actually,
Jens Staudt:in particular, what is the main benefit to have Fox Live on your mountain bike?
Everett Erickson:The trade off typically with bicycles and suspension is pedaling efficiency versus grip and versus comfort, right. And so, in passive systems, I'm talking just standard shock absorber systems, you have to make a valve, which is the tuning inside the shock, that's kind of an overall pedals decently but still works in downhill situations and still gives enough support that it goes uphill, okay. Right. And regardless of the linkage systems, I mean, some linkages are better than others, for sure, but there's always that compromises that kind of sweet spot that you try to hit. And that's why we're so excited about injecting electronics because it gives us like another dimension to explore where you can use sensors and controllable valve to change the state of the shock based on the situations on the trail, right. And the goal is to knock down some of those compromises.
Jens Staudt:Before we really start digging down into the rabbit hole. I remember that Fox Live had been communicated to the media, to the world. And then it maybe took about a year to actually come out to market what were actually the challenges and who do you teamed up with?
Everett Erickson:Yeah, Chris was the first first person we worked with on the project. That was definitely some strategy there. Fox is a mechanical engineering company for sure. And so there was a big learning curve for us on manufacturing electronics, to be honest. But also what we are trying to do is pretty challenging. I mean, this is one of the fastest valves in any market, you know, powersports, racing, motorcycles, you know, it's, it's a really fast valve. But the biggest challenge actually, is the lack of power, right, like the motor sports guys have, it's so easy, because they have an alternator, and they have a battery on board, right. So we're trying to do all that fast stuff and pretty complicated algorithms. But also do it while just sipping battery, because you have just this tiny battery on board, right. So the valves have to be small, they have to be very power efficient. And then that creates this compromise or this challenge with friction, and just all these mechanical things in respect to a very small actuator. And so as we're approaching the original release date, we just, we were having issues with the valves, you know, they weren't necessarily as durable as we wanted them to be or as consistent. And we made this, this hard choice it was, it was a really ugly decision to delay it a year. But we said if we release it and it sucks, then we've compromised all this development, we've released a product that we don't think the market is going to be happy about. And so we made the decision to give it another year. And that year just we brought on better suppliers, we got better manufacturing and we met our metrics for the successful launch. That's what we did.
Jens Staudt:So Chris, what did you came up with?
Chris Cocalis:The first system, I believe you guys were running it on a Kona just a test bike, in Scotts Valley in Santa Cruz there and I would say that probably worked great for climbing up a fairly smooth uphill and having the system firm and then going downhill and hitting the first bump and being on a on a downhill for a while. But from our perspective, everything here is just so jagged and it's just up down, up down, power moves, everything and it didn't initially really know how to handle that type of stuff. And yet there was an inconsistency in it opening and closing and really not knowing what's going on with the terrain. And so yeah, there initially it was just evolution with trying to get those algorithms to work and then one of the test sessions were Everett and group of the Live Valve advanced products team actually came out they had introduced the idea of pitch detection where we could change how the system behaved going up, going across flat terrain, going down, and then a whole bunch of other things which Everett's probably not willing to talk about that really made that system super smart in the way it handled the terrain. So yeah, it was at least four or five systems and in even the iterations of shock valving beyond what was happening with the Live Valve and the algorithms and the electronics to get this whole thing to work together. And then there was just a lot of little fit and finish details like the connectors were pretty common for electronics out in the world but not so much for the bicycle industry. So they had little tiny five pin connectors. The pins could get bent very easily. The waterproofing, there was metal screw together parts for the connectors which were difficult to keep from not banging around and making noise or scratching the frame in different areas and so just even revamping the way the system connected together and that you couldn't plug the wrong thing and to you know, basically being able to plug a wheel sensor and into the into the fork sensor. And so they really thought rethought all the connectors and how everything snaps together and made it easy to set up, easy to use. So there there was a lot of boxes to check in that last year before it actually launched into the marketplace. And by the time it got there it was we had reached points during that year where it was like okay, this is pretty good I could live with this, I could see how somebody could want it. But I would still say inside, but I wouldn't want it because you know I want to know what my bike is going to do every time at this exact same location, if I go to do this step up, it's going to behave the same every time. And that was getting the system to that was probably the, that last couple of percent that took the longest amount of time. And where the Fox guys were probably the most challenged, and we were probably the most vocal. And, yeah, once it got to that point, it was just, it's just pretty amazing. I mean, just the ability, how you can pump through a corner, and it knows when to compress, when to take a set, when not to take a set, jump faces. The fact that when you're in the air, and it opens up completely for landing, it's just doing things so quickly. It's such an advanced level, that it's really hard to fathom everything that's, that's been built into the system and what it's possible of, capable of.
Jens Staudt:Talking about the capability of the system, how much faster you were on your local test tracks, Chris?
Chris Cocalis:Well, we were the first bike that we did with the with the system was the Mach 5.5, which is great all around 27.5 trail bike. And we had actually launched the bike over a year earlier with, with all the integration for the fox stuff and not telling anybody what these little rubber covers were for that just there's something coming that's going to use this. And so from that, by the perspective of that bike, it's an all around trail bike, the idea was to make your ride more enjoyable. And so if, if you can have a system that you don't have to touch, and you're just more efficient climbing, and you're plusher anytime you hit a bump, and the bike just behaves in an all around great way. That was the really initial goal. The first starting point of, can we kind of widen the use case of how to make a bike work great. And so that we didn't have to just find a middle point for suspension that works not only in a wide array, but then maybe on a steeper climb you might reach down and touch through push the lever to to a firmer setting or just deal with it the way it is. Our bikes are designed to pedal great, but this really enables us to open the boundaries up a little bit in both directions. And then from there, we're like okay, what can this be as far as an XC race system and that's the time when we were working on the new Mach 4 SL. We knew especially for Europe, handlebar lockouts are a big thing. Having the ability to firm up the rear shock and the fork, at same time is a big deal. And at the same time that requires extra cables and extra effort on the riders part to be on top of that. And I think anybody who's ridden a bike with a manual lockout, knows that you get in cases where you've climbed something and all of a sudden, you're coming up hard over the top, and then you drop down into something pretty technical. And now we're dealing with a dropper lever as well. So you want to get your seat down. And at the same time you forget then to release your lockouts. And yeah, there's a blow off and everything but to hit those first big drops in those bumps and not have your suspension compress. That's a pretty big deal. So the ability to really just be able to pin it and concentrate on your racing on your lines on everything and just have this system react exactly as it's supposed to. And every scenario you can think of is, is game changing.
Jens Staudt:If you look on a Fox Live equipped bike, you obviously can see the main controller in the middle of the frame. And in the back of the fork on the on the lower crown, you see one sensor bolted to it. And right next to the axle of the rear end of the frame. There's also a second sensor, right?
Everett Erickson:Yeah, so we have what we call bump sensors that are mounted to the wheels, essentially the front wheel and the rear wheel. We call that the unsprung mass. And those are the sensors that you need for reading what the terrain is doing. Right. And then do we have a main controller, that's where the battery attaches to that's mounted into the frame, which we call the sprung mass. And so we use those sensors to determine what the bike is doing and as far as what the pitche is you know, are you going uphill, you're going downhill. And then we use the bump sensors attached the wheels to measure the terrain and know if you're in bumpy conditions or If you're in smooth terrain, that's a simplification of the system.
Jens Staudt:So Fox Live is actually coming from a moto background. And, yeah, you have a motor, you can produce electricity, there's batteries, weight is an issue. And the first Fox Live bikes, mostly had some kind of a more trail cross country approach to it, what did you do to actually convince those people that are very weight sensitive. So with these super weight weenies, I mean, if you add weight, you get to bring some more benefits to the table?
Everett Erickson:Well, the weight weenies, first of all, full respect weight weenies, that's probably the hardest category, it's really hard to convince somebody that they need the system, it's worth the extra weight, right. And in my experience, the benefits of, you can use your mental capacity to focus on the trail or the breathing or whatever, particularly deep into a long cross country race, where you probably don't have a lot of capacity for those other things, right. And just being able to remove worrying about your suspension and your lockout position was such a huge advantage for the endurance type athlete, that it far outweighed the weight penalty, that's been my experience. But I would say it's hard for me to convince you just with words, I think he would have to try it right and make your own judgment on that. And I think you would find that it is definitely worth the weight penalty.
Jens Staudt:So Fox Live is actually doing the lockout, or handling the lockout for you. 1000 times a second, it measures the ground. And it does actually more than just locking out your suspension. It's what else is it capable of Everett?
Everett Erickson:Yeah, so talking about the sensors, we, we have single axis accelerometers and the front wheel and the rear wheel, we call that the unsprung mass. And those sensors are meant to measure the acceleration that the terrain is imparting to the wheel and ultimately to the bike, right. And it's a single axis because we only care about the direction of the wheel travel, right. And then we have sensors on what we call the sprung mass, which is the frame of the bike. And we use those for the pitch detection to know if it's uphill, downhill or flat terrain, and we also use it to detect when you're in freefall. And so that sensor is a three axis accelerometer. So we get forward four and a half lateral and up and down the vertical and the freefall sensor is cool because it does some calculations got the math involved and you can determine when you're in freefall, you're basically in zero G environment. One G is what we experience when we're just on the ground, right. And so we use that sensor as an example to detect when you're jumping. When you're in air the system open suspension, so you're, you're guaranteed soft when you land.
Jens Staudt:The Fox Live system is available on our Mach 4 SL cross country bike, Trail 429 trail bike, then the Mach 5.5 27.5" trail-enduro-ish, Mach 6 27.5" enduro, Switchblade 29" enduro-trail, Firebird 29" enduro. So how do all these different user groups benefit from this system like it's from cross country all the way up to enduro,
Chris Cocalis:We really thought of it as a simple system from from the very beginning, and that it is the Live Valve opens or closes. And so it's on or off, and you really start to just think about things as a and b. And with the cross country bike, we want a little bit of that we want firm for pedaling performance and then open for descending or, or bump compliance. And those things can change whether you're climbing on flat and descending on how each of those items reacts. But with when you take a look at a Mach 4 SL versus a Firebird. And even the Switchblade we found people don't want their fork to stiffen up the same way on a enduro or downhill type bike or long travel trail bike as they do on their cross country race bike. In fact, really, nobody reaches down and touches lockout levers or flips, switches on their, on their forks when they're climbing on the longer travel bikes. And so the initial systems were like okay, why is my fork firming up anytime. I just like the cush when I'm leaning into the front end, I'd like support, but at the same time, you don't want any loss of bump compliance and so the development of the valving in the fork and the shock that happens around these. The systems has changed quite a bit as we've evolved. So the electronics has its capabilities being on or off. But now how the oil flows within within the suspension can change a lot more to so the Firebird, Mach 6, those are great examples and that the forks on those, there's a lot of bleed around the Live Valve. And we're really just going from plush to plusher. And then on the rear shock, we're going from nice support to something quite a bit plusher than what you would run on the Float X or the Float X2 normally as a complete balance system. So you can get a bike that is super cushy on the downhill, and not give up anything on the climbs from what the normal settings would be with a Grip2 fork. Or, like I said, a Float X, Float X2 rear shock. But just again have a little bit wider array of what's possible with the system, where on the Trail 429, we have a bike where that one is the best example of trying to achieve kind of both ends of the spectrum. So we don't have the fork stiffen up. When the Live Valve is on, it's really more towards what we're doing on the Firebird, the rear shock in some ways, it's actually even more extreme than the Mach 4 SL, because that one in the open setting needs to behave more like a Switchblade. But in the closed setting, we want it to behave more like a Mach 4 SL in it's closed setting. So there's more extremes in that and how the valving can accommodate that, along with the electronics to make the whole system work smoothly is really quite amazing. And that's I think the biggest thing we've learned in the last several years of development of the system and expanding and across the line of bikes of how do you make each bike work in a wider range of terrain than than it can with just a standard suspension?
Jens Staudt:Can you put it that simple that by owning a Fox Live bike, you rather have just one bike in your garage than two?
Chris Cocalis:Well, we always liked everybody to have more than two Pivots in the garage, that's definitely our end goal. But yeah, I mean, whatever bike you pick for that day, you can definitely know that you know, if you pull your Firebird out, and then they drag you on some cross country trail, you may be a little bit better equipped for the job. And same thing on the Trail 429. If all of a sudden you're in bike park terrain, you've got something that can back you up a little bit better in those scenarios.
Jens Staudt:We talked a little bit about the development and how Chris helped to bring the system to market getting the connectors better. So obviously, there's an elephant in the room. Why there is no wireless version of it?
Chris Cocalis:Yeah, that's an obvious question. And certainly a question that we asked. And at the time that we were in heavy development of the system, the bluetooth was probably the most advanced wireless system that was commercially available. And it was just too slow. To sense a bump in the sensor, front sensor, let's say, communicate that message to the computer, the computer opens the suspension, it was just too slow that when that bump comes in, you would feel it in your hands before the valve would open. Right? We call this latency in our world. And I'll throw out some numbers. So with a wired sensor, the latency is essentially zero seconds, right? It's the sensor senses it instantaneously sent to the controller, the controller very quickly talking in two to three milliseconds opens the valve and the damping starts dropping. Talk about the fork. And so that's why you can strike a bump with the front wheel. And the fork softens before you feel it in your hands. Right. When we were doing when we were looking at the wireless condition, we were baking in latency in the hard wired sensor. So we were saying let's say that there were 20 milliseconds of latency due to the wireless, right? If it were to happen, and we'd go ride it and we'd say is that acceptable? Does that type of response delay acceptable? And this is subjective. So it's a could be a pretty difficult thing to do. But we were pretty unanimous that around 10 milliseconds of communication latency is where you started to feel. The system wasn't quite as crisp as it is the wired version right. And then for comparison at the time, the Bluetooth latency was about 50 milliseconds. So it's not like we were close, we were five times the threshold of what we felt was started to compromise the speed of the system. And so at the time, it just, it was too much of a performance compromise to go with the wireless.
Jens Staudt:So while riding a bike with the fox live system, that it analyzes the ground and reports to the computer into the algorithm, and it decides in which mode, you're actually in, like, open or closed. So on the controller there is actually there's a button and you can change between five levels of it. Everett, what does these five different levels do and how they affect your field on the bike and on the trail?
Chris Cocalis:Yeah, the levels are what we call the bump threshold. And so the, let's take it back, I'm going to give you a simplified version of how the system works, right? Let's say you're going down smooth terrain. Suspension is firm, pedals great. And you hit an isolated tree root in the trail, right, so when that front wheel hits the tree root, the wheels starts to accelerate upwards, it's going over the bridge, it detects that acceleration. And it says, Okay, we just, we just encountered an obstacle, let's go to soft suspension. So it opens the suspension to take up that tree root. And it starts a timer, right? In this case, let's say it's a half a second. So after half a second later, it says, Hey, are we still experiencing this acceleration from this trail event? If yes, then it resets the timer keeps the suspension open. If it's just one tree root, on the backside of it, it says the timer expires, is it hey, is there any more acceleration? If the answer's no, then it goes back to firm suspension, and then it waits for the next event. Right? That's That's basic power. Now. Now the algorithm is more complicated that it changes if it's going uphill, or downhill. But but that's the basic scenario. So the question becomes, well, how big of a tree root Do you want to trigger that suspension to open? Right? So a one inch little tiny tree root? Maybe it's better just to keep it firm the whole time? Because you barely even know that you rolled over that right? Versus a six inch rock, you know, maybe create such a big input that for sure you want it to open? And the answer to that question is personal preference. There's no right or wrong answer. And so that's why we give this tuning option, the five modes or the five thresholds that you've described. And as you're clicking that up, and going more LEDs, it's saying it's taking a bigger input to open the suspension. And the overall effect is as you go higher on threshold, you'll spend more time in the firm setting. So you'll spend more time efficient. As you have a lower threshold, you'll spend more time with the suspension in the open mode. And so it'll be more biased towards like a comfort setting.
Jens Staudt:Diving a little bit into the rabbit hole. So how many different parameters the system is working with in the algorithm?
Chris Cocalis:Ah man 20, maybe? Just guessing there's a lot of different parameters that like I said, I'm giving you this simplified version when you when you get under the hood, it's pretty complicated. And that's all, you know, those are the things that we implemented to address the concerns Chris had originally during the development phase, right? So the firmware is pretty sophisticated. The result is that it's a simple writing system, right? But we have timers we we have inclined to I'll give you a couple examples, like how steep of an incline Do you want it to trigger into the climb portion of the algorithm? You know, how steep of a downhill Do you want? I mentioned this timer when you hit this route, how long does the timer on and that that kind of bridges the gap to the next bump, right? All of these things have big contributions to the characteristic of the suspension.
Jens Staudt:Right? So there's a massive list of, "what if", events?
Everett Erickson:Oh, for sure, you can go into the rabbit hole big time on this topic and be that the conversations I've had 100 times with people is, hey, in this scenario, this would be the perfect thing to do his suspension, right? Then you'd say okay, and then you can quickly think of another scenario, that in terms of the sensor readings that you're getting, you'd want to do exactly the opposite, right? When you have those scenarios, then that gives impredictability of how the suspension works. And those are problems, right. So you have to be really careful of focusing just on one trail event and doing what you think is the perfect thing and then not considering what the unintended consequences of that algorithm and different trail scenarios are. And so it could be, it could get pretty complicated actually.
Jens Staudt:You're in California, Everett, and Chris, you are in Phoenix, Arizona. Talking about the differences I mean, California you have loamers, steep tracks, in Arizona is all desert, rocks, technical climbs, square edge bumps. Was this helpful for the development of the system? This different type of trails?
Everett Erickson:Oh, for sure. And we, we understand being in the Santa Cruz bubble, where there's, I don't know if there's any rocks on the trail, you know, I'm joking, but it's certainly different trail conditions than Southern California or Michigan or South Mountain, right. And so we we tried, this is so beneficial to work with someone like Pivot is to get that trail exposure, the type of terrain that you're running, and, and we go out there and we say, Okay, does the Santa Cruz algorithm work here? You know, in some, in some respects, it does. Sometimes it translates over. And then other times, you know, Chris talked about these punchy moves to get over a steep rock formation or something, you know, we may maybe don't encounter those in Santa Cruz. And so we definitely had to do some algorithm tweaks to accommodate.
Chris Cocalis:Yeah, one of the one of the interesting things that it was actually kind of a funny story Everett and their team came out. And we were doing this short loop. And it wasn't a super steep descent, but it had a punchy little climb, and then a descent on it that was just rock filled. And this is when they were working on the pitch detection, but we're kind of doing a blind taste test, they said they had something that they felt would benefit some of the issues we were experiencing, but they wouldn't tell us what it was, they just wanted us to go ride it. And they actually wouldn't even let us look at the computer and stuff when they were changing things and kind of you guys turn around and look the other way. And then we got on the bikes. And we we did the loop the first time with everything kind of the way it had been, or with some slight advancements. And then they made the changes. They were all excited to have us go back again. I rode it. I came back and unfortunately I'm like, this feels like crap. This is worse than the first time. They all kind of looked at each other like I was smoking crack that day. And then they had me go ride it again, back to back both ways. And I'm like, yeah, that whatever you did, actually makes it feel worse. And Everett I think he looked at me and said, that's impossible. And then explain the pitch detection that like we're opening it up considerably when you're going downhill and, and how can this thing be getting harsher? And then Kevin was like, well, let's go back out on the trail. And Kevin stops and takes out his phone and puts his inclinometer app on and sets it down. And we kind of looked at the sections of trail where it was the rockiest, and there was sections we had the front wheel up when we were men manually across stuff. And I think some of those downhill trail sections. There was little sections that they were flat to maybe just a few degrees downhill, I think 7% Something like this. I don't remember the exact numbers. But it turned out that where you guys had the pitch detection set was more like Santa Cruz, where you're just going down something steep. And so yeah, basically, we were in full firm, like climb mode the whole time down. And so that's why it felt worse. And then it was just changing the computer to change what was considered a downhill pitch in our terrain. And voila, the system was phenomenal. And so but it was a head scratcher for about a half an hour where everybody's kind of like, what's going on here. And, and then yeah, we just just some minor terrain differences where our downhills actually tend to have some flats and some slight uphill sections. And I mean even though you might be carrying 20-30 miles per hour. They're still not steep downhills, and the system can be set up to accommodate that.
Jens Staudt:There are a lot of nerds out there and they may wonder if they could download a specific setting or profile algorithm to have some okay, maybe and South Mountain profile and Santa Cruz profile or some Alpine Switzerland profile.
Chris Cocalis:I would say it's all developed from our perspective to function everywhere like what we've got tuned on our bikes we have tested in Santa Cruz, we've tested in mud and roots and rocks on the East Coast. Back in, even in Asheville, where the Fox East Coast is at and then all throughout the southwest to find a good balance for everything. And then people can select between, you know, one of the five systems and even change that during the ride if they want to get the bump compliance that they're looking for.
Jens Staudt:So we have a system which is able to cope with a lot of different terrain. And Everett, can you give us a little preview of what you may have up your sleeves? What for the system and what it will bring in the future?
Chris Cocalis:Yeah, yes, we are, there's a company ethos that we're never done. So when we launched this, we were thinking about the next what do we want to improve? What do we want to do differently? What the future holds is, I have to be a little vague on that, because I don't know exactly timing and stuff. But I can tell you just things generally we're working on is I think we'll have more of a focus on the system might look differently for enduro bike than it does for an XC bike, which is right now, we might have different tuning, but there may be more fundamental differences between the different bike categories in the future. Certainly, things like wireless is still on the table. I mean, all the benefits are still attractive. And, you know, the state of technology this year might be quite a bit different in two years time. And you know, maybe there's something out there that would that would have the latency to work in our system. You know, that's what's cool about electronics. And it's new for me being a mechanical engineer, but just this, this rate of change of technology in this space is incredible. And there's new stuff coming out, driverless vehicles are introducing technology that was cost prohibitive two years ago, and might be commonplace. Now, same thing with what's in your phone, right? The chips that are in a phone were super expensive, 10 years ago, or maybe didn't even exist, and now they cost 20 cents, you know. So keeping abreast of what the industry is doing in large and understanding how we can take advantage of the new technology I think will inform the future pretty heavy.
Jens Staudt:We covered what is the technical background of the system. Now, we offer it all the way down to cross country bikes, trail bikes, going up to enduro bikes. This makes it very universal, but what is the rider like? Like the specific rider profile? Those who will benefit the most from this system?
Everett Erickson:Do you want to take that Chris?
Chris Cocalis:Everett, would you like to take that one first?
Everett Erickson:I'm curious to hear your answer.
Chris Cocalis:We can both take it. Okay, yeah, go ahead. I'll give you that company line. I'll give you my opinion. I'm really curious to hear Chris's answer. Actually. The company line is it is agnostic. I think it has benefits for all different types of bikes. And maybe the benefit is different depending on what platform you're talking about. But we've come in saying that's the OEM to answer that question. And we'll help them make a system that's tailored to that type of bike, right? My opinion, my personal opinion is more because of the type of bikes I'm riding but the mid-travel like the 140 millimeter travel bike, and the guy who maybe has a family and wants to go out for a quick hour and a half, two hour ride and then have energy at the end to go play with their kids or to take on a house you know, chore that afternoon. And this system I think could be the difference between getting back and being just dead tired and wanting to sit on the couch versus having a little extra energy to take on that afternoon activity. And for me the little longer travel bikes you can make them pedal so much better I think you get the bigger bang for your buck, in my opinion.
Jens Staudt:This sounds like a half e-bike to me.
Everett Erickson:It can feel like that.
Jens Staudt:It does have a battery.
Everett Erickson:Yeah.
Jens Staudt:Chris What is your take?
Chris Cocalis:Yeah, it's quite similar I mean, it's in the fact of what Fox's stance is as a company of that it's meant to benefit all riders in that depending on who you are and what you're doing. I think I said at the beginning that for me the Mach 4 SL where you would either have normally a handlebar lockout and or this Live Valve system does it for you. That's to me where I noticed the biggest difference because quite honestly, it's a pain to lock and unlock a lever. And so it's just such an in your face benefit when you get on the bike without it. And it's just this rocket ship that also can have the capability to have descending way beyond its category. But, like Everett said in the mid-travel, man, I love what it does for the Trail 429 at 120mm in the rear and 130mm in the front. Because that frame almost weighs what the Mach 4 SL frames weighs. So it can be a race bike, and at the same time, that bike has the capability to hit bike park level terrain. And so having a system that even widens that more and allows you to truly take advantage of that cross country pedaling efficiency at its at its maximum capability and also the maximum plushness which even with the levers on the shocks without actually stopping and, and, and using an Allen wrench to change further change damping levels, you're you can't span the breadth of the system. So yeah, it's a it's exactly what Everett said it, it can, it can give somebody that little bit extra. And everybody in just about any of their riding cases can use a little bit extra, no matter who you are.
Jens Staudt:So in the future, we will see Fox Live maybe in a different shape. But on all our bikes?
Chris Cocalis:Oh yeah, we're definitely putting it on our hardtails. Just kidding, we're not putting it on our hardtails. We'll continue with developing Live Valve and pretty much right now every Pivot full suspension bike has that option. And we're planning on continuing with that in the future.
Jens Staudt:Even though Fox Live is out there a couple of years in the market, maybe not all people had a chance to actually ride it. Everett is there something that you may want to clarify that people assume of the system and have not had experience on it?
Everett Erickson:I want to challenge this idea that it's just an electronic lockout. And I'll offer this scenario to try to illustrate that right. So let's say you're climbing a relatively smooth trail, and you hit one rock, an embedded rock or a tree root again in the trail, right? If you've got a mechanical lockout system, and you're in your climb mode, say your your suspension is going to be firm, when you're going over that tree root, I doubt you're gonna as you're climbing full effort, you're gonna bother to unlock it, go over that root and then lock it again. But if you look at just going over that tree root with firm suspension, say this mechanical lockout system, the wheel has to go over that tree root, right. And if you've got any decent speed, likely you're bouncing over the tree root. And so your wheels off the ground and you're losing traction, right? With Live Valve system. It's firm, you've got the same pedaling firmness that you do on the mechanical system, as you're approaching that tree root. You strike it, it opens. And now you're pictured the suspensions kind of going through the tree root rather than over the tree root. Right? Your wheel stays on the ground, you don't get bucked out of your cadence. You go through the tree root on the backside before you put that next pedal stroke down. It's firm again, right? And you go now, extrapolate that to you go over 30 tree roots like that on a climb, even though it's not unreasonable. And you get a sense for what the system is doing in terms of the speed and what the computer can do that you just, even if you tried to do that, for every bump, you probably wouldn't, but in reality, you're just like, I'm not even gonna bother. I'm just gonna deal with it for this scenario. I think this example is simple, obvious example kind of illustrates the benefit of the system.
Jens Staudt:Go faster, uphill, go faster downhill with more comfort.
Everett Erickson:Yes.
Chris Cocalis:Yeah. And that
Everett Erickson:And you're not worrying about it. Yep
Chris Cocalis:Yeah. And it really interacts well with the DW link system because it's all about square edge bump performance and traction. With the anti squat and the DW link the way it It maintains traction going up climbs, well, that goes away, if you've just locked out the system. And that's one area where the Live Valve really interacts quite well with DW link when people say well, if your bike pedals so well, why do you need Live Valve and Everett's example is is a perfect one of being able to have that suspension working when you want it. And most people don't think about that on climbing scenarios but it that's one area where a longer travel bike like a Firebird really is awesome on technical climbs because the rear wheel digs in it gets incredible traction. And
Jens Staudt:The best of two worlds. it's not doing it if the suspension is fully locked out. And so at the same time you can have even better pedaling performance and all that traction on the climbs.
Chris Cocalis:Absolutely.
Jens Staudt:Thank you guys. Thank you for your time. That's a wrap, and we look forward to what the future will bring for the system.
Everett Erickson:Indeed. Thanks, guys. This has been fun.
