Liam's off-road tech predictions for 2024

An early glance into 2024

Liam Mercer

Dec 18 2023

Even though the bike industry is facing difficulties at the moment, the cycling technology race is showing no signs of slowing down. If 2023 is anything to go by 2024 looks set to be yet another bumper year for some massive tech releases as prototypes transition into fully-fledged products. Here’s my latest look into what future tech we might see in 2024.

Fresh wireless shifting from Shimano

Throughout 2023 SRAM took the lead in the drivetrain arms race with the release of the XX SL, XX, and XO Transmission drivetrains, and then released the cheaper GX version a couple of months later. 2023 was a hell of a year for the US drivetrain giant as it also announced its Eagle Powertrain e-MTB drive system, albeit years behind Shimano, along with its new Stealth brake lever design.

With SRAM taking full monopoly in the mountain bike wireless shifting market, Shimano’s silence is deafening. But that’s understandable as the brand has had numerous difficulties to contend with, the most recent being its somewhat fragile Ultegra road cranksets.

Shimano has been busy though, working hard on the new EP801 motor and e-bike-specific XT Di2 drivetrain that brings new features such as Auto Shift. With that in mind, Shimano’s very own mountain bike wireless groupset must be on the horizon – the brand has, after all, produced semi-wireless shifting for its new road griupsets. While we don’t know exactly what it may look like, the Japanese brand has patented its own direct-mount derailleur. This does things a little differently by including B-tension adjustment. Very interesting indeed.

Is 2024 the year we’ll see mainstream adoption of cable-integrated handlebars of mountain bikes?

Integrated cable routing has been inching nearer and nearer up the bike, with internal cable routing initially guiding cables from the head tube to wherever they pop out. In recent months, cable routing that runs through the headset has become increasingly common, to the dismay of many. Yes, it looks nice but how practical is it?

Something that’s setting the industry up for cable-integrated handlebars is SRAM’s latest Code and Level Stealth brakes, and the new Shimano CUES levers that look to point the cables towards the bar. While this does make for a tidier cockpit, the intentions are clear – to guide cables into the handlebar.

For the end user, this means a cleaner cockpit but it could lead to a huge pain in the neck when it comes to changing something as simple as stem spacers. But let’s not get hysterical. If and when cable-integrated handlebars come to fruition, surely designers will conjure up a useful way around this kind of issue.

We’ll see more Eagle Powertrain-equipped e-bikes

This is a safe bet but when SRAM announced its e-MTB motor, it only came powering four bikes: the Nukeproof Megawatt, the Propain Ekano 2 CF, the Transition Repeater, and the GasGas ECC. All of these are pretty heavy-hitting enduro-focused e-bikes. In the world of e-mountain bikes, that’s a small selection and, without a doubt, SRAM will want to up those numbers and spread the love to a greater range of e-MTB types.

New fork tech from fox

Ignoring the new trail and cross-country shocks we saw earlier this year, it’s been a little while since Fox brought something fresh and fork-flavoured to the market. The last new release we caught a glimpse of was its 32 Taper Cast gravel fork. However, the brand did bring a new crown to its 36 in 2022. While its GRIP, GRIP 2 and FIT4 dampers are still very good, the last time we saw an update to those was in 2020 along with the release of the 38. So it’s been a few years and 2024 is a big one for Fox as it marks its 50th year in the biz and it makes sense the brand will have something cool in the works to celebrate the occasion.

There has been a new cross-country fork spotted on the elite-level circuit and it looks pretty cool, featuring what looks to be a 3D-printed rearward fork bridge. With it already on the race scene, that’s surely due to blast onto the market soon.

Triple clamp forks on more than just downhill bikes

The bikes of enduro mountain biking are already revered as quiver killers due to their general ability to go up a hill as effectively as they can go down and a number of them are compatible with long-travel dual-crown forks that are mostly reserved for downhill bikes. Those that can run these forks are the likes of Yeti’s SB165, YT Industries’ Capra, and the Canyon Torque.

To say that we’ll see a bike with a triple-crown fork from stock is still a bit far-fetched, although I’d love to be wrong. But I believe that more brands will offer bikes with compatibility for big-travel forks and more people will ride their bikes as such. Especially e-MTBers.

Wireless suspension lockouts

We saw that Pauline Ferrand-Prevot’s Pinarello Dogma XC HT was kitted with some kind of electronic lockout for its SR Suntour fork, and we locked eyes on Loic Bruni and others from the Specialized Gravity team covering up their bikes. In both of these genres, lockouts make an awful lot of sense as they help riders maximise every watt.

For cross-country mountain biking, this is a given. Teams and riders are looking for any way to drop the kilos and getting rid of cables altogether is one way of doing so. For downhill mountain biking, this also lowers the weight but it can increase reliability.

750d probably won’t pick up

When Moots partnered with WTB earlier this year to unveil the experimental 750d, a larger wheel size for gravel bikes, the company caused a massive stir with many shunning the idea through the distaste of ‘yet another standard’. As much as I love to embrace a new idea, this one wasn’t without its backlash. And, of course, a Moots bike doesn’t come cheap and tyre brands have to develop new tyres given the current climate, the case of ‘if it ain't broke, don’t fix it’ will ring strong. Moots stresses that this is just an experiment so it’s unlikely we’ll see any more of this for at least a good while.

For this to pick up, adoption of the new wheel and tyre size will need to be much larger than just one bike and one tyre but we’ve seen it happen once with 26-inch, 650b and 29ers, so who am I to say that it won’t happen again?

Celebratory Olympic Games stuff

Brands love an opportunity to celebrate an event with cool-looking products and with the 2024 Olympic Games being held in Paris, it goes without saying that we’ll be seeing some cool colourways at the very least. That already makes 2024 quite exciting.

Scott is no stranger to this, giving Nino Schurter a new bike with a fresh colourway every other weekend, it seems. So if Nino manages to wrangle a spot in the 2024 Olympics, Scott will no doubt unveil a special bike for the GOAT.

Author block

Liam Mercer

Since beginning his mountain biking career while working as a resort photographer in Greece in 2014, Liam became a freelance contributor at off.road.cc in 2019. From there, he’s climbed the journalism job ladder from staff writer to deputy technical editor, now finding his place as technical editor.

Partial to the odd enduro race, heart rate-raising efforts on slim-tyred cross-country bikes, hell-for-leather e-MTB blasts or even casual gravel jaunts, there’s not a corner of off-road cycling where Liam fears to tread. With more than 40 bike reviews under his belt and hundreds more on MTB, e-MTB and gravel parts and accessories, Liam’s expertise continues to be cemented and respected by the industry.