Take this as a comment from an old guy with a biased opinion. I stepped away from the cycling industry for about thirty years and became a golf professional. If you think the "latest and greatest" idea is new, go look at golf. For the last twenty years I have seen companies promise and extra twenty yards of distance off the tee box with the newest club. So given those claims I should be able to hit the golf ball 400 yards with the newest driver. Heck, the best players in the world can't do that! So again the "marketing department" is in charge and new is only new for the sake of being so. I doubt that a Twenty-niner, will perform as well as a set of 18cm tires on a road bike, but it is something new to market to the public. Smiles, MH