Raleigh Bicycles has teamed up with Powertap, and announced three 'off-the-showroom-floor-ready' models that come complete with power meters.
All three models – the endurance oriented Capri Carbon 3 (US$2,700), Revenio Carbon 4 (US$4,500) and race ready Militis 3 (US$4,300) – will come with Powertap G3 rear hubs and GPS enabled Powertap Joule head units. According to the Powertap website, Raleigh has "cut out the chase" of choosing a power meter by including everything with the bike.
Dirk Sorenson, director of marketing of lifestyle brands at Accell Group, the parent company of Raleigh, said: "With performance bikes, we see a lot of people wanting to gain more information from their rides. They want to know their power output, track rides on Strava, download their information and analyse it. We didn't see anyone providing a good option for that."
Each power-enabled model will feature a 28-hole G3 hub, strung into a 23mm wide Weinmann Momentum SL rim.
Brain 'Sally' Forbes, the "Raleigh marketing guy" told BikeRadar that the Powertap kit was left off some of the higher-end models in order to keep prices down.
Raleigh is the first bicycle brand to spec affordable production bikes with power meters, however with their growing popularity and increasing number of options, we anticipate that more brands will follow suit.
The power-enabled Raleigh bikes are available now in the US; UK and Australian pricing and availability are yet to be confirmed.