how close are we to peak mountain bike??

I'd say that there are places for improvement, but we're pretty close. Tire/rim interface, puncture resistance, sealant are probably the next "major" thing we'll see improved.

I can drive my car 100k miles without servicing it's suspension once, I'd say bikes still have plenty of room for improvement. Not apples to apples I know, but still.

I also think there is more to be done with suspension as well, both in terms of suspension pivots on frames and suspension tuning too.

Comparisons with cars are a bit misleading. A Maxxis Minion isn't equivalent to even a high end all season tire, it's like buying a slick racing tire or rally tire. Consumer cars are built for comfort, convenience, and reliability, not outright performance.

There's no way we're even remotely close to done. Are most people satisified? Fuck yes, bikes are more durable and reliable than ever.

However, as long as there is a market for new products, we'll never stop seeing innovation. Add to that advancement in materials sciences and nanotechnology, and bike evolution will never end. Will some of it be pointless and stupid like headset cable routing? Definitely. Some could be potentially game changing like steering stabilizers, and lighter, more efficient gearboxes.

Whether people want it or not, I bet we'll see way more electronics on bikes. Makes sense for e-bikes that already have batteries. Things like integrated tire pressure sensors; even on-the-fly tire pressure adjustment could be possible. On-the-fly wireless fork and shock adjustment. The list goes on.

If you think bikes are "perfect" already all you have to do is look to the past to see that nothing is ever done evolving.

We recently reached what appears to be the end of a major upheaval in bicycle design. Let's say the last 10 years or so was the time period. I don't want to say "this is it," but I doubt there will be a large-scale return to taller, shorter geo or much more expansion into lower, slacker geo from here.
Components may be the next hotbed for innovation, and we may have just seen the revolution begin with the SRAM transmission. Will Shimano come up with something better? What about brakes? Tire compounds? 

Still quite a way to go to get to perfection. External drive trains with most of weight on the back wheel is a major flaw which leads to asymmetrical spoke dish and less than ideal suspension performance. 
 Geometry isn't settled with chainstays needing to get much longer in sizes L and above as well as seat tubes needing to get much shorter now that we have 240mm droppers. 
Still getting flats and having tubeless ready tyres rather than tubeless tyres sans latex which still burp is ridiculous.
Stock forks that need servicing every week to maintain minimum levels of friction needs to be drastically improved.
Frames that don't fall apart with hard riding would be nice too.
MTB is already super expensive yet the brands that make and sell them to us seems to have little interest in building high performance and durable bikes.  

Ebike motor with integrated gearbox. Then we are there.

As long as there's a Marketing and R&D Dept they will always be working towards something. I also think it's human nature to look for greener grass, so we'll constantly be on the ascent to the peak. It's funny I was out of the game for about the last ten years, what I left and what I came back to was VASTLY different. It really took some time for me to wrap my head around how things have changed. For context 27.5 and carbon DH bikes were pretty much the latest when I stepped out. I'd say for the most part every advance I see has been good, outside of headset routed cables! :-) I can say I'm certainly looking forward to the future. 

well here we are (new pinion goods from eurobike)

https://www.vitalmtb.com/photos/features/eurobike-2023-day-1/pinion-mgu…

Headset stabilizers are not game changers, they actively make bikes harder to ride. 

How are we defining perfect? Do we have to stop at hard science as it exists today? How much speculative science do we allow? Can I speculate an ebike with a 10kw fusion powerplant instead of a battery with 3D-nano printed carbon, where every fiber is laid down individually (and made of graphene) so the whole thing weighs 20 pounds? 

Does "bike" mean the whole device, or are we separating out components from the frame?

If we only allow current, actual science and very conservative predictions on future engineering breakthroughs, I think we are close. Geometry has plateaued.  After geometry, the next most important part of a bike are the tires. Rubber compounds don't have much runway left in development, and bike tires aren't that far behind in technology from motorsports, which are on the cutting edge. True electronically controlled suspension, not a dumb automatic lockout, can increase suspension performance. Compression and rebound orifices can be controlled by speed & position sensors. However, current suspension is really, really good, and there are only marginal gains there. Bikes can get lighter, but from a handling perspective once you drop under 30 pounds an enduro-style bike actually starts handing worse. Durability would be a great thing, and the two are related. 

The only place where I think there is huge room for improvement without bringing up sci-fi technology is COST. Bikes are too expensive. Maybe innovation in fabrication & manufacturing can get us back to $3,000 premium mountain bikes. 

Current homepage poll suggests no immediate pressing needs are out there (which doesn't mean that somebody won't come up with a solution for them!)

sam hill 2006 world champ and charlie hatton 2023 world champ, basically same bike? #weaglewouldgo : )

Reject modernity, embrace tradition

Yes and no. I think we've reached a pretty significant plateau in terms of what I would call "real" performance-based innovation, which is where I predict it's going to start getting weird. Plateaus create stagnant markets, and companies do weird things to survive in stagnant markets. I think we're going to see a lot of "innovations" in the MTB market as opposed to what I'd call real innovations, where companies create problems and then sell you the solution to those problems. One-piece stems and handlebars, headset cable routing, PF bottom brackets, even the new Trek SuperCaliber are great examples of products that introduce complexity and improve nothing but sell because they're bold and new and exciting.

The Apple iPhone would be a great example of this in a different market. What's the difference between the iPhone 13 and the 14? Hell if I know. Why would I want to spend $1200 to replace my 13 with a 14? Once again, hell if I know. So Apple does a bunch of shady stuff to make customers replace phones that should be perfectly good otherwise. I said 13 and 14, but I don't even know what number they're on anymore.

Personally I think geo alone is still pretty far off. 

Size Large Reach should be about 505 mm

STA should be about 78'.

BB's need to get higher for Gosh sakes by 10-15mm. Adjustable for people that only pedal dirt roads would make sense to me.

HTA about 63.8'

Size L should be Mullet.

Dropper posts should be built in like the EightPins and the lowest position should just clear the rear 2.5 x 27.5" rear tire.

We might need shorter stems in the 0-30mm range. There is not a motorcycle made that steers with an extended lever like you are steering a d*mn little outboard motor boat.

Chainstays need to be longer. In fact much longer. I'd aim for about a 455mm on a size Large. This is needed to offser the long front centers and the short stems and maintain front wheel traction and chassis balance.

All of this can be done with current technology.

As far as future advances, very small combo motor/ transmission units are likely the future of AM/ Enduro riding as they just make sense from an unsprung weight perspective as well as a reliability perspective. You really don't need much power to make an Enduro bike climb notably better and to just reduce the suffering. Full power e-bikes are just so much power.

Might want to contact Yutong if you want a bus. (you are also missing stack being a big issue, Long reach is compensated now by short stack, hence alot running high bars on big reach bikes)

Chainstays and mullet I can agree with, We are seeing a relaxing on reach especially on Large's because over 488ish is quite long and makes it harder to move weight around(based on the average 6 ft rider on a large)
 

I think what we need is Adjustability of sizing, Headtubes that can accept reach adjust, adjustable chainstays etc

When a brand releases a Bike that has adjustable reach/HTA, I can move the Chainstays rearward by up to 15mm, a Progressive chip for the shock, flip chip that compensates for mullet or even use drop out adjustability (this could be anther option of chainstay length aswell)
Im happy to pay sworks pricing for that frame because the bike can be what i want it to be.
(id like to point out the new fuel EX is pretty close but lacks a couple of things)

pretty much

We'd probably all be surprised at how much room there is left for improvement in suspension. The majority of bike companies didn't start using data acquisition or accurate models of suspension performance until relatively recently. When your test riders are telling you the bike is "stable" or "not hooking up" or "pinballing through a section" or "sitting too deep in the travel" having some numbers to benchmark their input is extremely valuable. Plus, there's a relationship between suspension and geometry that often goes overlooked. Bikes are a system. When people say that high pivot bikes feel twitchy mid-corner or unpredictable in slow speed tech, that's the suspension compromising the geometry and altering the riding experience. If we're just now getting a good understanding of suspension, we still have lots to learn about the suspension-geometry interaction and how they affect ride feel. 

The relationship between bike and suspension could also improve. If you're a bike company, you could design the best suspension linkage in the world in a vacuum. If your design compresses the shock at 90mm/sec during a light g-out and 200mm/sec during a huck-to-flat, you need a shock whose damper is designed to work for those shaft speeds. So you go to your OEM suspension manufacturer you can't break contract with and it turns out their shocks hit the blow-off valve at 125mm/sec. Or maybe they don't even do dyno testing and just build shim stacks based on what looks right. Either way, your design is going to ride poorly because the shock has the wrong tune. Legend has it that Push targeted Evil and Santa Cruz when it first released the 11-6 because Push was able to identify that both brands were making bikes that had very good suspension designs, but were let down by RockShox tunes that simply didn't work for the application. 

Significant improvement could come from accepting that bikes are incredibly rider dependent. There's still debate on whether long or short reach is better, or what's the best suspension design, or how high your bars should be; as if any of that could possibly be objective. As a consequence, a lot of riders look for speed on geometry charts but they don't look for speed in their riding position. Dak Norton runs his bars unreasonably high, but it works for him, because he knows his riding style and his setup reflects the way he rides. If Loic set up his bars as high as Dak he's gonna lose speed, because it doesn't fit his riding style and it doesn't work with his bike setup. Most riders still tend to think of bikes as "fast bikes" or "slow bikes" but they don't consider how that will change with riding style. Do you ride the front end or do you lean back and drop your heels? How centered is your weight in flat corners? How likely are you to pump or pop a bump? There's a million questions like that, and the answers inform whether you should be on VPP or delta, or on a size M or L, or run 740mm or 800mm bars. 

In 1997 I bought a Barracuda XXXC, I was adamant mtb tech would not get any more advanced than this bike, they designed it in CAD for gods sake!

25 odd years later, how wrong was I.... things will always develop (in a good or bad way) to some extent, materials, manufacturing processes, reliability, geometry etc.

Where I think things will head in the short term, chainstays will get longer again (thank god) and E-mtb tech will advance at a rapid rate.

I still think geo will get wilder, but won't be a massive leap like we have seen in recent years.

/nostradamus

I think we have reached the marginal gains stage of improvement at this point, maybe in the way that road bikes seem to have.  Sure, there will be things that improve the rider experience, but I think we have reached a point where a bike from today will likely still be acceptable and shred-able in ten years barring any “standard” changes that render parts irreplaceable.  I don’t think there will be as vast of a difference as there is between bikes from ten years past.  But since we all get to throw in our two cents, there are things that seem to be selling points rather than improvements to the end user experience, for example, headset routed cables/housing. Argue aerodynamics, clean looks, or keeping it out of the mud and grit if you want, but it just sucks. A $250 labor charge for a $15-$30 headset bearing is not a better user experience, it’s just trying to sell you a new Scott…

Sincerely,

A recently retired bicycle mechanic who’s a little angy about certain things. 

Suns, if I rode the bike you just described in Texas I would hate my life.

Go grab you bike from middle school and give it a spin. My Kona stinky with no rebound dampening and gazzalodis makes my current ride feel pretty dang close to peak. 
 

But to play the flip side there is always room for marginal and occasionally radical gains. Drivetrains and tire systems seem like the low hanging fruit to me. While I’m not keen on batteries on my bike, once you are on a electrified system you can talk about something way different like  magnetic braking systems. 

I think the biggest innovations in this sport will not be the bikes but culture, trail resources, and community building.  
 

biggest innovations in terms of bikes is I expect the big brands to start making some really affordable and high quality bikes for kids.  I Expect budget parts to get more affordable.  The same way a zee drive train was very affordable 10 years later I expect shimano deore to only get more affordable in time as wages increase and other tech is competing against it.  Expect cues to start getting used by product managers especially in the more value oriented brands.

as far as high end bikes they’ll get lighter with new materials (especially e bikes).  Also a lot more customization whether it’s built to order bikes like atherton or a good variety of adjustments like a specialized.  I also expect crank length and bb height to become size specific the same way chain stays have become.

For people who don't want batteries on their bikes, I feel like we're close/ reaching the end. Seems a lot of innovation is going into integrating electronics onto bikes ie suspension, drivetrains, and ebbs.

While I don't think we'll ever get to something that is worthy of the word "perfection" I do believe most of the gains are in the bag. To be fair, I feel strongly most innovation is marked by rapid improvements over a relatively short amount of time followed by much slower innovation over much longer periods of time. We like to think innovation is linear, but that is rarely (if ever) the case. Software/hardware is perhaps the big exception here, but I'd argue that is because there are often huge breakthroughs against the backdrop of Moore's law that allows for something that feels linear year over year. 

Back to bikes, one big data point to suggests we've plateaued was Jordan Williams winning on the "old" Demo. At the pointy end of the spear, with so many good riders out there - especially on the Specialized team, you have to believe if the new bike was even 4% better Williams would consistently get beat by either Bruni and/or Finn. I can give a number of other examples, or even dig into the archives of Strava (cringe) to showcase how I really haven't gotten statistically faster despite being on the latest/greatest for a number of years. 

We're in a period of optimizing everything and (hopefully) applying economies of scale to make great stuff less expensive. Where I see a real amount of progress, especially for the bike dorks like me...

*Custom fit. Bikes that are far more balanced fore/aft for a particular riders taste, size, style, etc. Less guessing. More math when it comes to bike fit ***for descending***. 

*Mousses. It won't be just like the moto mousses, they are too heavy, but I do think we'll see some kind of airless system that works in the next decade. (for enduro/DH)

*Suspension that is really specific to a rider. Technology on the suspension side isn't going to improve too much, but it will be more customized to a particular rider. See point one. 

*Durability. To be fair, I don't think incentives are in the right place for this one and the editorial environment really isn't wired to reward truly durable products (IE, you can ride it for 5+ years with routine wrenching). Until there is apt pressure from the market, the industry is going to continue to be very "throw away" but there is certainly room for more durable stuff over a long time horizon. 

Most other innovation will be "nice to haves" but hardly something that'll result in an experience on bike that makes you feel more connected to the sport. 
 

About gearboxes

"The only real difference is a small amount of clearance"

You are forgetting 2 big downsides of derailleur systems: extra unsprung weight and friction clutches. For gravity riding removing those negatives will easily outweigh a bit of extra total weight and reduced transmission efficiency. Your suspension will track ground noticeably better! Ebikes are ofcourse another place where gearbox is king, since you already have a motor full of reduction gears. Why not make them do the shifting?

I  also really wanna see spherical shock mount bushings become standard. It's a terrible idea to make a shock deal with sideloads and it's making so many shocks fail in different ways. Especially when suspension companies are trying to minimize seal tightness to reduce friction. There's not much room for flex before the internal seals start to burp and your oil foams up

So yeah, gimme gearboxes and spherical bushings please. At least for gravity stuff

Ultimately, 10 years ago MTBs were effing terrible, yet most riders thought they were fantastic.Now those same riders think it can't possibly get any better, again.

Coming from an MX background, it was extremely obvious to me what an ill fitting cluster f*ck my first '14 MTB was. Although a solid 75% better in 2023, they still have a ways to go just on the basics of geo.

Yup that's such a clever design for sure! Could be really nice for many bikes.

Here's a cool test about unsprung weight: https://m.pinkbike.com/news/nicolai-shootout-derailleur-vs-gearbox-2017…

"but on the downs, it was another–better-–beast. The gearbox bike was so much quieter – almost silent, offered so much more grip and inspired so much more confidence when heading into gnarly sections"

"the Pinion bike was nearly three seconds quicker over a 3.5-minute track. Huge."

It's just one test but physics are physics. Any weight at rear axle will be quite bad for suspension performance, but adding weight to front triangle can actually calm the bike down in a nice way.   

That said I would only use gearboxes for gravity bikes and eebs unless someone comes up with a magical gearbox with less drag :D

That's also why we don't really see gearboxes: dh bike market is quite small so most bikes don't really need them. Maybe eebs will bring a change