From a simple idea to an advanced high-end product. It all started in 2015 during a beach race in the province Zeeland, The Netherlands.
The race started with about 25 km of Dutch beach, followed by a long stretch of tarmac over the famous Oosterscheldekering (which is part of the Dutch Delta Works). The last section was another 8 km on the beach. The challenge was to finish this race as fast as possible. Like many other cyclists, I took some CO2 cartridges with me, which would allow me to inflate my tyres from about 1.0 bar to 2.5 bar by getting off my bike just before hitting the tarmac. This would significantly reduce the rolling resistance on that section and would help me to keep up with the front group of cyclists… But, in the end I chose to not inflate my tyres: filling such large beach tyres with single CO2 cartridges proved to be almost impossible and way too time consuming. Being able to keep up with the fastest cyclists proved equally impossible…
I asked myself why there wasn’t a system that made it possible to increase or decrease the tyre pressure while cycling
During this event, I asked myself why there wasn’t a system that made it possible to increase or decrease the tyre pressure while cycling. After a lot of flat tyres and slightly leaking tyres during new trips and races I decided to investigate the possibilities to develop such a system. It all led to a long story. Things that seemed to be harsh weren’t and things that might seem easy turned out to be difficult. The most difficult thing? Finding the right development partners and engineers with a wide range of experience in the field of mechatronics, pneumatics, and wheel technology. Eventually we also took this hurdle, resulting in the highest skilled team of cycling fanatic engineers you can imagine…
All of this results in a very compact lightweight system, composed in our high-end GRAVAA wheels, ready to adapt your tyre pressure on every terrain. It’s completely integrated, you can’t feel it, see it, or hear it. Furthermore, it has no interference with the rest of your bike: it will just do what it needs to do, adapt your tyre pressure on-the-fly, very fast, and extremely accurate without limitations.
Read more about our technology here.
