Launched as a brand at last year’s Eurobike, Exept has quickly grown into a two-bike brand. The original All Road, which we’ve tested, showed off their ability to create full custom monocoque carbon fiber frames. Now, they’re applying that to a new aerodynamic road bike called, simply, the Aero Platform. They say the idea wasn’t to create the most aero frame, but to create the most aerodynamic package of bike plus components plus rider. Here’s how they’re doing it…
They used a 3rd party form to validate the design with CFD, which ended up altering a few of their original ideas. We’ll get to those, but the biggest idea was to create an aero frame that was fit to the rider, not just try to fit a rider to an aero frame. If you’ve ever seen a sick triathlon bike made ugly with stacks of spacers and weird layouts, then you know why this matters.
Since it’s custom, they’re looking at two things…rider position, because that’s more important than the frames aerodynamics, and gets you in the best position between long distance comfort and aero. The second is, they can maximize aerodynamics around that position so you don’t end up with a weird fit and spacers just to get comfortable…because that destroys the aerodynamics.
Front wheel gap allows air to move through in a cross wind, as opposed to tires that are tucked up too close to the downtube and create a sail.
Seat stays are pointed perfectly straight forward to help reduce the low pressure area behind the rider. They wanted air to fill in the gap behind the rider as quickly as possible. Why? Because when it doesn’t, that low pressure area wants to “pull” the rider back, something we know as “drag”.
Both wheels have plenty of room to breathe, allowing air to flow past them easily.
Extensive shaping is found on nearly every surface, and it’s all designed to reduce drag.
Looks and aerodynamics are one thing, but the target weight of 950g is equally impressive.
One last cool thing? The seatpost uses a flippable shape, so you can run it as a set-back or set-forward design. Swap cockpits and the post around and you can easily move the bike from road to triathlon and back. Exept starts production in early 2020, but you can play with their online configurator now. Check out our factory tour to see how they’re made and how they develop their custom sizing.
