An alternative vision to the this made-in-USA Chris King story is provided by this review of carbon frame manufacturers at the Taipei Bicycle show. There are tons and tons.
Begin article:
Taipei Cycle Show in Pictures Part 1 – Carbon Frames
T
he Taipei Cycle Show spans 5 floors and two locations – the two largest floors are the first and the 4th floor at the Nangang Exhibitional Hall. The first (pictured above) is devoted to bicycle parts, and the 4th is for complete bikes and overseas exhibitors. There was a common theme on both floors: carbon frames…they’re EVERYWHERE.
Hope the pictures give an idea of how saturated the supply side is for carbon frames. There are many, many more booths I didn’t bother to stop by to snap a photo of – after seeing so many carbon frames they just start to all blend together…
With this surfeit of East Asian carbon frame manufacturers having made carbon frames a commodity, eventually someone is going to realize that the first using these techniques to design and manufacture a carbon tandem frame model in 3-4 sizes is going to have a monopoly. If the manufacturing cost to produce a carbon half-bike frame is $200-400, then a tandem frame would be at most....$1500? Done right, a CAD-designed, modern carbon manufacturing technique produced carbon tandem frame would immediately be the
best tandem frame, and it could probably be priced like the $4500
2014 Cannondale RT-1.
Like this, only carbon:
A carbon tandem equipped like that available from your LBS for about $5000 would undercut the rationale for a carbon
frame for $8000, or a $12,000 titanium IsoGrid tandem, etc. The tandem hobby would be a lot different if that ever happened.