Founders' update - 2025/26 edition
We sent this email to our cycling community on 28th December 2025. You can receive future emails from us by subscribing at the bottom of this page.
Hi there,
Just a short message as we begin to wrap things up for 2025 and reflect on the year that’s been.
We are still a small, community-based project and still get plenty of joy out of the conversations we have with others in the sport and the technical side of developing great products.
If you follow us on our instagram, you may have seen we have given away a few items to build some wider awareness. We are also supporting a few cyclists at the top of the sport: helping them get the edge to win hill climbs, crits and longer time trial events.
We’ve been working on some new products to slowly expand our small product range. A carbon wheelset is overdue. It's feeling a bit two steps forward and one step back. We've been experimenting in the workshop with a pearl T700 and T800 carbon fibre rim. Working through how we optimise for toughness and reliability, while ensuring they have that responsive edge that is a stalwart of the best end-end rims on the market. Our goal is to match that, and then some.
We’ve made solid progress on our spoke selection. We have chosen the Sapim CX-Ray Aeros. In our view, they get the balance right between performance and longevity. Their high-tensile stainless-steel construction ensures excellent durability and fatigue resistance, while the bladed, flattened mid-section delivers meaningful aerodynamic gains without extra weight.
Crucially, the CX-Rays retain the natural elasticity of stainless steel. After some experimenting, we found that controlled flex from stainless steel is a major advantage over ultra-light carbon options. In our tests, we have found the opposite with carbon spokes which tend to create wheels that are extremely stiff with almost no ability to absorb real-world impacts. This excessive rigidity often leads to the wheels pinging out of true more quickly.
We’ve managed to get a bit further with a lightweight integrated stem/handlebar which builds on the design principles of the ever-popular x Pro. More to come on that soon. All going well, we will launch in the spring.
Thank you to those of you who continue to write in and make this such a pleasure to run. If you’ve got some of our kit on your bike, please continue to share your bike photos with us (hello@litebike.cc). We’ll put the very best on our website.
We hope you all have a fantastic Christmas period and we’ll be in touch in the new year.
Best wishes,
Lukas & Laurence
Co-Founders.
