After several steps of successful commercialization of 3D printed bicycles, Superstrata and Arevo are now selling 3D printed carbon fiber bicycles and electric bicycles online through the Superstrata website. Customers can visit the online store and purchase a personalized carbon fiber bicycle 3D printed using Arevo’s unique technology. This development is of great significance to additive manufacturing (AM) and the entire carbon fiber 3D printing.
In August of this year, Arovo announced that it had received US$25 million in Series B financing to enable it to launch its latest carbon fiber 3D printer Aqua 2, which can produce up to one cubic meter of continuous carbon fiber composite materials at 4 times the speed, which is faster than the company’s previous The system is ten times faster. Silicon Valley bicycle brand Superstrata then launched a successful crowdfunding campaign that allowed the company to raise US$7,227,867 from nearly 5,000 backers to use Arevo’s technology to produce its first carbon fiber bicycle and electric bicycle
Through this event, the company was able to bring its products to the market and has now opened an online store. Customers can use a custom configuration platform called Superstrata Studio, on which they can enter their own measurements, and choose riding styles and preferences, colors, designs, and other options to purchase personalized bikes. According to Tuan TranPham, Arevo’s Chief Revenue Officer, Superstrata is a powerful demo product for the company: “We want to show what we can do and the scale we can do so that we can find partners who can serve. We want to print some complexities. The thing. It’s a product you can’t use traditional 3D printers or composite manufacturing processes to produce.”
Maneesh Jain, Arevo’s vice president of engineering and operations, echoed his point: “Superstrata embodies the most exciting aspect of additive manufacturing to date: an innovative, fully customizable design that can be combined with robotics and The cutting-edge technology in the field of materials science achieves large-scale and rapid production. This project reminds me of my excitement when I was working at Tesla. “That’s right. The production of carbon fiber reinforced parts is time and labor intensive. Previous automation methods were mainly limited to the aerospace industry, where companies can afford expensive stacked equipment. Now, many start-up companies have developed methods for 3D printing parts using fiber-reinforced materials. Although Markforged may be a pioneer in this field, Arevo is bringing the first batch of 3D printed carbon fiber products to the market on an unprecedented scale. This is not only very important for carbon fiber 3D printing that has just emerged from infancy, but also for the entire 3D printing. Just as our readers already know the importance of AM, it still has not fully penetrated into the field of end products. So far, hearing aids and invisible aligners are still the killer applications of 3D printing.
If Superstrata’s bicycles can provide better products than other traditionally manufactured bicycles at the same price point, then they may be able to prove the value of 3D printing in bicycle production. For electric bicycles, their prices are absolutely competitive, and the price of Superstrata electric bicycles is $3,999. However, they provide a level of customization that other electric bicycles on the market cannot provide, and are lightweight enough to withstand the bulky batteries associated with these vehicles. Although Superstrata electric bicycles weigh about 24.2 pounds, most electric bicycles weigh between 38 and 70 pounds.
Comment: Although unlike hearing aids, luxury bicycles do not belong to the basic medical equipment category, so it is difficult to imagine how they can achieve the level of success that these products have. Nevertheless, Arevo wisely chose the demo product to enter the market. So far, Superstrata claims that in addition to consumers, it has also launched special edition bicycles and has received support from major brands. These versions include the iconic Japanese superhero Ultraman, etc., and Time Warp, one of the world’s largest electronic music festivals. In addition to these specific brands, Arevo itself has received support from its investors, including GGV Capital, Defy Partners, Alabaster, Khosla Ventures, and In-Q-Tel, an investment agency of the CIA.
