Originally Posted by
crhilton
Sure it is, because you found one of a few bikes that actually fell below $2k with Rival on it (and it's not even rival, it has tektro brakes: I didn't say anything because it's only 12.5% of the group). It fell 10% below. There are road bikes people buy all the way down to $900. So your bike misses half of the range of bikes Rival is missing on.
That's a big group of bikes. It's a very big group.
The article indicates that apex will have trigger shifters for flat bars as well. That tells me they hope to get on high end flat bar road bikes.
It didn't sound to me like SRAM was planning to sell Apex as low as it needs to be to compete with Tiagra, but maybe they're planning to give much better deals to manufacturers. So, to clarify: We're talking about Tiagra and Sora bikes, although I have little hope that Apex will compete with Sora. The bike you referenced would probably come in 105 on the Shimano side, might even have a random Ultegra part thrown in.
this isn't going to sound nice, but wtf are you talking about?
You go from talking about sub $2k Apex bikes to $900 bikes that don't come with Rival.
Nowhere does SRAM say what group they are specifically competing with. It's been inferred by this thread from Sora all the way to possibly Ultegra. The bike I referenced would be 105/ultegra at that price point....competing with Rival.
So you'd expect a lower price point for Apex competing with.....105/Tiagra.