A wood gravel bike, hyperlight components & more: Eurobike 2025 highlights

I walked the halls of Eurobike – an enormous five-day tradeshow in Frankfurt, Germany – and here are the most interesting things I saw, and some of the conversations I had.

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eurobike in Frankfurt Germany is a massive cycling trade show the first three days are open to business customers where brands try to sell shops and distributors on their latest and greatest and media folks like myself will come and take a peek and then the last two days are open to consumers let’s take a stroll through the halls and see what’s cool at Eurobike 2025 [Applause] [Music] so there are all sorts of cool adult bikes here at your bike but one of the things I’m most excited about is the kids bikes giant has a new range of seek bikes quite small as you can tell 650b with all proportional components you know saddle widths that are appropriate crank lengths Q factor handlebar not just the drop but even the width of these guys there are two different super cool electronic drivetrains available there’s this the TRP Vistar group that just came out and then there’s also a new I’ve never seen micro shift group on these two bikes you’ve got all-road versions here with no gravel friendly tires you’ve got road tire options prices range from the high zoot $3,200 all the way down to a more affordable $1,700 this is the new Giant Seek being a gravel channel we have to talk about tire clearance you’ve got up to 37 mil here’s a cool little bit on this seek a cable to hydraulic converter so you’ve got cable actuator levers translates to hydraulics here which goes down to the hydraulic brakes there’s another cool bit on this particular model of the Seek Road/allroad/gravel kids bike and here under the parent company umbrella giant guess who’s back stages back in business still operating in Boulder Colorado still a lot of the same people a lot of same machinery a lot of same products stages has single-sided and left right meters for road mountain bike and notably gravel seeing as how Shimano still does not make a power meter for GRX you can get one from Stages we’re at the feedback stand with the latest greatest the Pro Airlift and the man himself Doug to tell us about it now you’ve got multiple stands which I love i’ve been using the Sprint stand forever the Pro Mechanic HD I love because it’s like this frame super solid but easy to use now this
is new and improved and tell us how
all right well this is actually based on the Pro HD I think you have
yes
um and but what we did is we added a an air chamber that you can fill with a standard uh floor pump or compressor or even a electronic pump
i’m going to Yeah
oh you want to do I was going to I was going to do it while you talk about it
so we’ve got here um an E gravel bike i think this uh weighs about 40 lbs
pump it up uh you know eight or nine times and you got it all the way to the top it’s actually quite easy to do it people think it would be hard but it only takes 15 to 20 PSI to to lift a heavy bike yeah my arm hardly works at all that was piece of cake and then there’s a release valve for like either tiny little bits at a time or you can Yep if you let all the air out it’s it’s coming down i saw them work on ebikes but just even normal bikes sometimes you want to make adjustments to how high it is once the bike’s in there and this makes it a lot easier
that’s right you instead of uh opening it lifting it with your shoulder or something you could simply use the pump to raise it a couple inches
what’s the weight on this guy it seems like it could be something you can travel with uh yeah that’s you know we’re known for portable equipment so this is very portable it folds up just like our other sands and weighs uh 17 18 lbs so it’s it’s actually quite light to around yeah yeah and also with the pneumatic mechanism you don’t need to worry about washing your bike you know you can cover it with water it’s not going to
No electronics
there’s no electronics so it’s actually u we’ve been getting a lot of positive feedback on it here including an award won a year bike award congrats on that
yep yep we won we won an award on it so it’s uh created a lot of buzz here
yeah nice stuff
thanks Doug all right thanks for stopping by while the mini halls of your bike are packed with huge international companies there’s also a handmade section dedicated to some very small builders with some cool stuff let’s take a peek at some of these andrea tell me about Altitude where are you based and what do you make
yeah Altitude is an artisal bike brands so we make uh our own P components in our workshop near the Doommites in Italy so we make all this products by our hands uh we uh produce uh saddles in three different size for road bike two for gravel bike and mountain bike we introduce for this show the anti-slip saddle so with this tiny strips with um creates a little bit more friction between the BB short and southern one who wants to save more g
sure and these are already crazy light i’m just looking at the weight here is you know 72 g
yeah this is the the heaviest and this is is starting from 69 g
69 g for a saddle yeah that’s crazy also we introduced last year the our oversight pulley system so it’s K branded and uh we have compatibility with Shimano SAM 12 speed XS T2 we introduce also uh the seat post dedicated for some top brand bikes like Specialized SL8
yes and this uh this weight is uh around uh uh 110 g for the longest version
wow
so it’s very light and then tell about this the 3D printed look like titanium rails
also for this show we showcase this uh uh concept that is 3D printed rail saddle so it’s titanium and we can uh get more flexibility on the saddle on this direction and also we have on get more comfort riding so we are exploring a new new types of design with this new technologies uh so it is a showcase also two years ago we introduced the the bottle cage that is another project but is more interesting what we can do with additive manufacturing and it’s a 3D printed cage uh with titanium also this one and this is all it comes from the builder with supports that need to be removed from uh from these pillars sure
yeah and uh cleaning and this is the final product says which around 14 g for each one
that’s incredible great technology beautiful products
thank you
thank you Andre thank you
bike Ahead Composits is a brand familiar to Europeans but perhaps not so many Americans this is one of their one piece bars their wheels you may have seen i covered some of these in my truckike video wild spokes and this guy
the super fast just won an award this year from Eurobike a gravel bike made of wood carlo what are we looking at here with the the Ornos brand am I pronouncing that correctly
well I’m not the owner
i’m uh I’m working for Ornos it’s an Italian company made in Tuskani
okay uh actually to cut it very short
sure
this has grown in Slovenia and has been worked in Italy that’s it no carbon no carbon footprint nothing coming from from Asia from the other side of the world apart of course from the components in this case
why wood it’s a natural shock so we’re talking about a nolo frame yes
made in ash that is uh two triangle joined together glued together yes that is fully machined CNC internally and there’s a I would say a a big skateboard okay sandwich yes in order to providing you this natural shock system that uh
shock absorption
so this is the perfect match no wood and gravel
okay
this is why
and and tell me again how to pronounce the the frame the All right beautiful thank you Carlo thank you very much genie tell me about these beautiful new bikes you have here it’s like carbon carbon drive internal hubs beautiful craftsmanship yes so uh here at the show we have the CDIS equipped with the rolloff
yes
um and on the other side we have the RA model equipped with a pinion smart shift um we built all of our bikes with both pinion and rolloff so the the customers can select uh which uh option they want um
which do you have on your personal bike
uh rolloff
yes because we I I prefer on gravel bikes I I would I would say rolloff makes perfect sense on MTB bikes and all-terrain bikes I’d say I would go for uh pinion
uhhuh
but we give the customers the freedom to choose and with this rolloff you’re able to control that with the ShraMM mechanical shifter
exactly so we use the GLA uh Gibbla box here which allows you to use the Stram uh shifters on a on a drop bar
now I my understanding it’s been a while since I’ve ridden a rolloff hub but my understanding was it was you know a planetary hub that was not indexed you could have you know infinite small gears but with this setup it’s index shifting exactly
okay and you’ve got the benefit of a belt
and you have the belt to worry about maintenance or
exactly or anything like this
all the all the bikes that we built are all equipped with either rolloff or pinion because our moto is to uh have bikes that are super uh require super low maintenance and yeah and are built to last a lifetime and then a dynamo front hub along
the suno hub with integrated uh lights uh with internal cable routing for front light and rear and yep
cool
um we have 50 mil tires on the on the celissa here uh to take you anywhere you want on a on the gravel paths
yeah good stuff thanks Jenny
thanks a lot
is it a crux a checkmate no it’s Meamo Silk megamo was born in Girono and we were a really well-known brand uh but this last years we were improving a lot in January and now we have a really big brand and a big range of uh bikes all located to performance we want to to go really into the premium and performance um area and since in Jirona there’s a really important movement that’s gravel uh we wanted to have a racing gravel bike that’s our silk uh we just launched it 3 years ago and we are continuously improving uh this year the new uh the news of this bike is that the handlebar is more focus is more narrow and is more focused to competition we’ll have five different sizes of the handlebar and you can choose if you want this one or either the old one depending of your way of of racing
and then and then tell me about the west if you would please
sure
uh so the west we used to have uh also the west um in our catalog but this year we changed all the frame set okay because we wanted to give a little bit bit more of performance but in adventurous uh way so it’s our adventure and bike packing bike uh but also really fast and affordable for all these people who want to enjoy gravel without uh having to race or to feel more like a a robot bike sure so this is little little more relaxed but you can still ride it wherever you want
exactly and you can put a lot of bike packing it’s prepare the frame set and the carbon to uh have more weight and then uh the new of this year is that we have as well integrated handlebar this is the old handlebar that it’s more relaxed but you can also add the other one
okay and what is the the rough price range for the bikes
uh we start in uh 2,00 500 yes
and then we can go up till 8 9,000
okay uh euros yeah it depends we have like a five uh between five and six different setups in each one
okay great stuff thanks
depends of the components
thanks for the tour Sarah
you’re welcome
happy birthday Eddie eddie Merch of course one of the godfathers of the Belgian Mafia here in the Ridley Belgian Cycling Factory booth got some other fun colorways capri Sun if you’re my age you remember this i don’t think you can poke a hole in the frame with a plastic straw the way you could a Capri Sun pack you know how big gravel is all the kids are going gravel even old Eddie yeah
the rock shocks Rudy on this guy transmission capable with a red Explorer the Eddie Mks Corsa Straussburg tie eddie Mk Straber was one of the one of the first gravel bikes I rode back before clutches were a thing on gravel bikes remember judging how bumpy the ride was at the end of the day by how much grease I had on my sock because the chain was just bouncing all over the place smacking the chain stay smacking my ankle how far we’ve come now clutches are a thing red’s got a couple KZO models the fast is the race bike and the adventure as the name implies is the adventure bike this bad boy is dressed in the new Rival Explorer 13-speed 1046 and a crank with a hole in it you can look at my review of the Rival and New Force Explorer groups in the link below and then the latest greatest the Ridley Aster RS fresh from Unbound i got the integrated one piece cockpit that is becoming increasingly common in gravel and this guy with the increasingly less common two by GRX wired 11-speed there’s that clutch we’re talking about might not keep the bike clean but might keep your ankle socks clean latest Shimano JRX 1 by DI2 wireless is here of course you can check out my video on that in the video description link down below basic story is that there’s a lot of the same carryover these are the 12speed Di2 levers that came out last year with 2I rotors calipers the same crank is the same cassette is an XT cassette a 1051 and then this is the new piece the one by derailer Bluetooth amp plus check
check check marios welcome to Eurobike you just arrived
thank you where where are you coming from and how did you get here yeah we just graveled here and we are coming from Austria actually from Lake Constance Bans it’s the small city in in Austria and yeah we did it in 2 and 1/2 days so not too fast but still a nice nice ride every day yeah nice time to enjoy it yeah I’ve stayed in Briggins for when your bike used to be there in Sure
yeah so it’s a different vibe here so tell tell me about the bike you’re on an e-gravel bike here Simplon
yeah yeah it’s a new e-gravel bike with a TQ HBR60 engine um it does yeah like the name says uh 60 N of torque um with a pretty small battery actually so it fits our bike with a we have like the same one with the same silhouette um without engine and that was um the actual plan with the bike
make an ebike that doesn’t look so much like an ebike
yeah yeah
and uh the engine is super silent so it’s really nice to ride and also um we figured out on the ride it’s super easy to ride above 25 kilometers per hour which is a little bit
That’s the cut off over here
yeah yeah and then how many different settings do you have
um from support from the engine yes
it’s three different but um they have a pretty nice app so you can still adjust like the support you want in each mode like how responsive it is how Yeah how much new meter it gives you um yeah so how many kilometers was it from Bergensson and and were you camping outside
yeah we 400 it’s 400k
400 km yeah nice and we we slept at the hotel
okay
that’s my kind of to keep it
that’s my kind of bike packing
to keep it a little more relaxed so every evening we had like a nice shower in a nice bed so we were fit again for the next day and um yeah show yeah the plan was to to test like how much um energy do we do do we really need
yeah and we saved the energy so we both um um never charged during the day okay
the engine originally can do 300 but it does 200 in this setting and it’s I think it’s enough for for this light type of bike it’s in the we have like different configurations and in the lightest one it’s um 12 1/2 kg
okay so it really really rides well okay
are you guys riding back home also or are you going to catch a ride back
no no we we we will take the train back cheers man good to know you
cheers i am a bike are you are you now pedals wheels i guess it counts here at the Gravel Club some Cyclite add-ons and some 3T bikes you got the extrema Italia up top with who is this passenger puppy dog with a puppy dog lid cycite bag on that and a few cylight bags on this Racemax Italian which do indeed look quite light [Music] robert what is the Gravel Club looks like I want to join
oh you should you should it’s uh the Gravel Club is a kind of a organized but loose community that’s uh existing in different areas in Germany where we bring the activity to the people or the people to the activity through community rides events bike packing overnighters and stuff and and also coming here to to conventions and uh just being present to you explain what we do for example
and then do you have to be a member a paying member to join these rides or
not you could yes for some if you want some of these advantages advantages that we have behind the uh membership
okay
but the all the events the tours that we make is all for free
i see
for everybody
and they’re always social rights as well okay they’re not drop rides or competitive
things and membership benefits are things like discounts with your partners like type of thing
or maybe uh early bird tickets to specific stuff and uh how many cities or towns are you based in now
it’s Berlin Hamburg Munich Dston Cologne Anova
an not yet maybe maybe soon fitlock
with Fitlock yeah we do some community stuff okay
i think about seven seven regions in Germany and Salsburg in Austria as well
okay cool thanks Robert
yeah thanks
airport ready or Eurobike booth ready evok does all kinds of cases this guy looks like it’s set up for integrated cockpits you don’t have to disassemble that to get in the bag the trusty US pack with no dancing monkeys now has some fresh styles bad and plaid tan and if you believe the wall 0% on a Continuing [Music] in the pups on bikes theme turn has the rough house carrier for your pup front and we need something bigger dog house mini in the back stuff he’s not included turn e folding bikes these Powered by Bosch powered by Bosch pup approved nina SQ Lab makes a lot of great ergonomic products how do you start the fitting for saddles
so the first step is always to finding out which saddle size you need and the steps to finding out the right saddle size is first off measuring your sitbone distance which we do with this chair right here and then adding a value for your individual sitting position and so the final value that we have will be the saddle size that you need and then after that we can have a look at the different saddle models
and saddle saddle position is how far forward your torso is where you’re upright like a city bike or lean forward like a race bike
yeah exactly so we can see this also at this pelvis model here so when you sit very upright your body weight mainly lasts on directly on the sitbones but the more sportive you sit the more your body weight will last more on these sitbone branches so in very sportive sitting positions like triathlon you actually sit almost on the pelvic bone and so that’s why because this goes like smaller towards the pubic bone that’s why a saddle in an upright position needs to be wider and in a sportive position needs to be slimmer
sure and important is that your back pockets are empty
okay
and then you can just sit straight on that paper okay so just sit in the middle of the paper yeah then you can put your feet on the bar make your back very straight and pull down yeah okay good so now we can see how the sitbones push through the paper i can turn it around so it’s a bit more visible so we can see both of your sitbones and what we do next is
just mark them so we can sure be sure we measure from middle to middle so what you can also see here is interesting so these impressions are of different sizes so this could either be because in that moment you maybe sat in a specific position but this could also be a hint that maybe you have like different leg lengths or maybe um an uneven hip and that is also something that is always important to see because this can also greatly influence the comfort you experience on a saddle and so esculab saddles also do have an additional solution for like uneven anatomy which I will explain also later when we review the saddles
so first of all let’s measure so your sitbone distance is 10 cm and then to find out the right saddle size we will add a value for the sitting position because
plus two
um and this is our classic gravel saddle with the new product range for 2026 we’re also introducing this with a what we call Santara cover so this is similar to an Alcantara leather but it’s just a different material but it has the same look and the same feel but in general the concept behind this saddle is that you have two steps on the saddle and the purpose is that you sit with your sitbones between these upper two steps the upward risen back of the saddle helps you to really have a fixed sitting position so that makes it very comfortable on longer rides or also on climbs and it improves the power transmission to the pedal and then the second step makes sure that the saddle nose is a bit lower and then together with this small dip in the middle we can make sure that the sensitive areas are really relieved and we don’t have any issues there and then additionally we have the active system at the back this is something all of our saddles also have this allows the saddle to move minimally from side to side and it is inspired by the movement of our hips that we have when walking because our spinal discs they don’t have an individual blood supply they are only supplied by movement and so when we sit for long times on a saddle that doesn’t move that’s when back pain can can also become an issue and as I said before additionally this active system can help make it easier for people to find comfort who have uneven hips or leg length differences anything in anatomy that can be um helped out by this additional movement great thank you Neurark you’ve been to a few bike shows sold many bikes now you are here at Eurobike talking about a whole new type of product what is what is spoke what is the next generation of connectivity
spoke is a safety ecosystem using vehicle to X or vehicle to anything in terms of communication in the internet of things world okay we enable a driver to see a rider on their dashboard and a rider to see a driver on their smartphone Garmin Wahoo etc through our app chip to chip system
yes is faster more GPS location accurate yeah so it locates the driver and the rider 10 times per second and then in the cloud looks at an algorithm that’s you know safety awareness you know to enlighten both parties or safety critical to warn both parties both audibly and visually of your trajectory your speed and and to avoid a conclusion which cars are currently using something like this
well we’re partnered with Audi okay
so they’re putting in all their cars next year okay
and with the Stellantis uh family of vehicles which should be Jeep Cherokee Chrysler Plymouth Dodge mhm on a much smaller but similar scale I’ve noticed my Garmin now will alert me not just to things like other vehicles or steep turns coming up but dogs animals like I’ve been riding on bike paths I’ll get an animal warning alert i don’t know how that has happened but like that’s that’s just a very small obscure example of connectivity I’ve seen recently
so um our system is not dependent though garmin uses and no nothing bad about them but they use lidar radar cameras like like autonomous vehicles do yes and and this technology is chip to chip over a radio frequency that the FCC has cleared only for safety critical communications and we’re authorized to communicate there so what that means is we don’t need line of sight so the rider could be coming off of a dark alley or a side street and you don’t you can’t see them but you’ve seen them on your dashboard and the rider sees the car
so So the driver’s eyes or the car’s eyes don’t need to see it just radio frequency all right thanks Blair keep up the good work
thank you
ry I’m familiar with TPU tubes i keep them in a lot of saddle bags as a just in case they’re nice and small and super light i’ve not seen a TPU tube with sealant
tell me tell me the story of
Yes yes we have create a sealant just for the TPU material okay
so the normal ones don’t don’t work with with TPU
yes
and this one is perfect for TPU and uh yeah basically is the same principle of tubless tire
yes but the benefit are I think higher because when the the sealant in the in the tub style dries up you have to dismount everything clean it and put new sealant here uh the sealant stay in the in the inner tube so when it’s dry up you just need to dismount the tire add a little bit of water massage it and uh you can reuse the the original uh tubasant is it you pronounce it next or how do you how do you say NXT nxt is
Okay so NXT you’re proposing as uh a substitute for tubas so just using that all the time not as not as a backup solution
yes i see yes yes yes also we produced the the inner tube in Italy we have the machine to extrude the tube so we can make a different thickness of the of the tube for example this is the the lighter lightest 29 g but we have also the middle one 45 g for the road one of course and the biggest is uh around 10 something g so it’s very very thick and strong we have this new product for this year and it’s uh basically uh the the inner tube but without the the valve so you can uh put it in your pocket without the valve and it’s very very uh light and the volume is lower uh and you just need to to buy the the valve and you can mount it on uh on the on the tube so when the the the the inner tube uh is uh is is off you can dismount the the valve and put it in another a newer uh
in another tube okay yeah it looks like you have ridden all over the world roughly how many kilometers you think you’ve ridden
hi Ben about 70,000 that is a
I’m not really good with numbers so Dennis is my husband is sitting here and he could tell you exactly numbers but roughly that’s what we did and we started originally with normal bikes yes and we have been so heavy loaded because we’re also filming photographing we’re sleeping in tent we’re cooking by ourselves so in the end of the day we said we can’t do it anymore with normal push bikes we need to have ebikes and this was at a time when we started to go with ebikes around that everybody would ask how do you load it so this was a big challenge finally we did it even through Mongolia
yes through the deserts and we at this time we also had our dog with us in a trailer but unfortunately our lovely boy is not alive anymore this has nothing to do with cycling it was just he was an old boy and so he died of old age
but I I’m always talking i didn’t I don’t let you ask something
how many countries have you been to what what are what are some of the countries that you’ve been to
this is only a a blink of the country so these are the countries we cycled
and it’s not like it’s not like you fly in and then you further not flying anymore
you don’t fly anywhere you only ride
we started in Germany so this is our
Yes
ma country yes
but actually we are world citizens so we are home in the world amen and this we cycled but also we were on foot traveling with backpacks at the moment we have as well an expedition vehicle
okay
so what we also love to do is to be with our expedition vehicle and the ebikes
and do smaller excursions and big excursions because it’s not too easy with the Akus so actually we wanted to go back to Thailand but how do you bring the Aquus back so this is a big thing yeah so it’s good to have the vehicle but our vehicle wouldn’t support us during the driving so it just would bring us somewhere and from there we would start and do everything but what I really wanted to ask you as well I would love to mention our channel well I was about to say if people want to follow
I I show you I show you Dennis’s back so this is Dennis my husband don’t let you stop so our can channel is Dennis Katza on YouTube
you don’t need this in the middle so just say Dennis Katza on YouTube all right and this is a sentence we all know our planet is alive
so we are living creatures on a living planet and I would love to tell everybody who is watching it enjoy every day enjoy every minute of your life get out and do something
amen enjoy the ride you’re going to have like