So the lugs are machines? And it’s bonded aluminium tubes? My worry over whatever ‘lifetime’ actually is wouldn’t be the aluminium but whatever epoxy is in those joints and how long it’s going to last. Still they must have some faith to be launching it in a higher travel bike pitched at bike park riding.
I don’t think people realise how often they’ve been in something that’s assembled using bonded aluminum. Manufacturers of cars, aeroplanes, boats etc have been using the process for quite some time. It’s been used in top level motorsports for yonks, but I obviously the service life is pretty short in that use case!Eg Iirc the Elise had been using it since it’s first iteration. Merc, BMW and Audi use it on some of their cars AFAIK, and they can’t really risk a large court case and the reputational damage of bits of chassis falling off. As to Aston, and as much as everything else breaks all the time on their cars, the chassis are usually one of the things that doesn’t fall apart.
Kerr’s failure was due to a bit of an iffy design and a cock up, it’s an outlier. I’d have no qualms whatsoever about riding a glued together bike.
I would, however, have qualms about riding something this ugly, heavy and expensive:p My Ripmo AF is ugly and heavy, but it cost me less than the frameset for this (at pretty much full RRP) – i appreciate the manufacturing is not comparable, but I can’t overlook that for the significant price difference.
