our story

Telepathy started with the idea to push the limit of what was possible in current mountain bikes. We had always wanted to make a bike, but we didn’t want to make just any bike. We wanted a better bike. It had to be better, if it was going to justify all of the effort we would come to spend on it.

We happened upon the idea to create the highest pivot ever, not by wanting to do something extreme, but by considering the merits of current high pivot designs. At the time, the complaints about high pivots were that they cornered and jumped poorly- they weren’t playful. Nobody disputed that they were smoother in rough terrain.

So we asked the natural question, can we make a high pivot that is fun to ride? Our simple engineering brains distilled this problem into two variables- smoothness in rough terrain and cornering. Smoothness was obvious- the more you go back in terms of axle path, the more smooth. The question was, how to quantify cornering? The natural answer is the cornering radius, and just like skis, the cornering radius is proportional to the length of the bike. Now on a normal, i.e. non Telepathy bike, the wheelbase will get shorter as the suspension compresses, resulting in a decreased cornering radius. This is what leads to oversteering and unpredictability. We have gotten used to this changing cornering radius, but it is a source of variability that our technique has to compensate for. By eliminating this need for compensation, we could create a bike that handled more intuitively and was easier to corner.

Our engineering problem had thus come into clearer focus. If we wanted to create a better cornering high pivot, we needed to do two things (1) create the most consistent cornering radius possible to give the rider the best control, and (2) promote a weight balance between front and rear wheels that evolved in such a way during suspension compression to maintain traction. Namely, we wanted to get rid of the need to aggressively shift rider weight forward to maintain front wheel traction at the beginning of a corner.

The constant cornering radius goal naturally leads to a parallel wheelpath, the question was, what does it do to the weight balance? Because both wheels move up and back, the contact patches move backward in relation to the rider. This results in more weight on the front wheel, without requiring any change in body positioning by the rider. There is our automatic traction. Importantly, this front wheel weighting will only happen when the bike is being compressed, such as from the radial acceleration in a corner, shifting weight forward just when you need it.

Having encountered an axle path that would give more consistent handling and better front wheel traction, we were quite surprised. In design, usually one encounters a tradeoff between the various variables. Making one better will often make another worse. By optimizing our bike for consistent handling, we had in effect improved the traction and decreased the learning curve of figuring out the weight balance on new bikes. Things don’t usually get this good, so we knew we had to try it out in the real world.

The only question left was the geometry. We decided to pair our SYNC LINK with a shorter reach and higher stack to prevent going over the bars and provide a more comfortable riding position. Given the extremely smooth suspension, we have no need for adding stability through excessive reach, and prefer to put the rider in a comfortable upright position.

Now having designed, built, and ridden 5 iterations of our SYNC LINK, we our ready to share our project with the world. We hope that you will get to experience the benefit of mind reading handling for yourself, but we also hope that you might take some inspiration from our story. What started as a crazy idea, now, looking back, would have been crazy not to try. The world is full of good ideas, floating on the breeze like dandelion seeds. Whether it is mountain bikes or something else entirely, we hope you will plant yours. We can’t wait to see what it grows into.

Cheers,

-Matt Lessmeier

Co-Founder, Telepathy Bikes