Nowadays manufacturers advertise wide tire specs as if they dominate in every aspect. Is that really true? Manufacturers always say like this: You can use wider tires. Even with the same 30c tire, when you use it at 25mm instead of 21mm, the tire expands more to the side, and as this happens, more air volume goes in, improving ride comfort. Even with low pressure, they say, because there's so much air volume, the shape is maintained while ride comfort improves, and rolling resistance becomes lower. But did you know?
Think carefully about how these claims contradict each other. Rolling resistance becomes lower means the tire shape doesn't change, which means the tire can't act as suspension, and that contradicts the claim that ride comfort improves. Manufacturers ultimately force lower tire pressure on consumers to resolve this. It may look like low pressure is a magic solution for everything, but it's not. Rather, the tire expands to the side and the tire height becomes lower, so the range of deformation possible for the tire decreases, and ride comfort actually gets worse. And when sudden force is applied to the tire, it can collapse in shape due to the low pressure. When sprinting hard or receiving strong force suddenly on a downhill—they don't mention at all what happens when these effects occur. Manufacturers hide this and appear to be ahead in every way, gaslighting consumers and making them keep buying products. I think the trend going forward will be road bikes with around 35mm tire clearance coming out again in 2 or 3 years. At that time, 32mm tires will be usable with wide rims, and 35mm tire clearance will become the trend. Manufacturers will say like this: Lowering fatigue provides better effects in maintaining speed. So increasing tire size is better, and they'll sell it through advertising. And another thing is that manufacturers pushing hookless specs strongly need to increase tire size to establish hookless specs more firmly among consumers. It's a way to solve the problem of tire bead unseating from hookless rims when using high pressure. It can unseat at high pressure, but if you go wider to 32mm, you can use slightly lower pressure, so this phenomenon will become rare. So they can reduce costs and push hookless specs that can be sold at a premium. Increasing tire size can be the fastest problem solution, so companies pushing that approach will want to increase tires up to 32c. Bicycle manufacturers will follow suit. No matter how much you tune a bicycle, you can't expand the clearance to 35mm, so ultimately people will have to buy new bikes.
I'm curious what kind of thoughts you have—do you really believe what manufacturers say?
