I think I heard one of the usual talking heads predict “fall” but consider it unknown and I don’t expect an authoritative answer until it hits the market
Hi there,
Any idea by when I can order a Zwift Ride with trainer to Switzerland?
Thanks,
Johannes
Hi @Johannes_Riebl welcome to Zwift forums.
The Zwift shop ships within the US, UK and EU at this time. We don’t have plans to expand outside those regions at this time, but Wahoo sells Ride in some countries where Zwift does not (like Canada and Australia). In your case, I don’t think Wahoo sells in Switzerland either.
If you choose to purchase one of our products via a friend in another EU country, or a freight forwarder to receive your shipment in an unsupported region please be aware that Zwift will not cover the costs associated with fulfilling the warranty outside of our supported regions.
Did wahoo just kill potential sales of a ride only option by announcing that they’re not developing virtual shifting for kickr v4 and v5?
I was extremely disappointed by this move from wahoo as a V5 owner with play controllers
1 Like
pretty much yes. Given the core is older than those models seems like they are trying to drive more sales.
Zwift could be fancy and attempt to do virtual shifting in game is the other option but i doubt they will do that.
They killed more sales by saying they would do it and then not doing it. If they’d just announced at the beginning that it couldn’t be done on V4/V5, and explained why, they would have sold more trainers and preserved their relationship with their customers better.
That was my understanding about the core, all the reviews say it’s a V4 on a cheaper chassis, so their claim doesn’t seem to hold water.
I’ll certainly not be paying out for another premium tier trainer ( on my 2nd kickr now) when budget kit seems to be better spec’d
Only true if you’re follow the all too common “be cynical about everything” model. Maybe Wahoo and Zwift actually did exactly what they said they would - asked the developers to look at whether it could be done, assessed the answers and looked at the possible impact of other things like any need for future software fixes for any issues on those platforms.
I don’t know how much memory the different models have - but I wouldn’t be surprised to discover that its very not much. I work on a custom hardware product that’s approaching a decade old. And I’ve seen the sort of decisions that have to be made around new features and eking out the last few Ks of remaining memory.
2 Likes
I agree, that’s what I think happened. I don’t think there’s any conspiracy here, their only error was saying they could do something they could not do after they looked into it. We don’t have enough internal knowledge to say that they could make it work but chose not to.
Wahoo didn’t say they could. They said they were working on it.
Their FAQ page used to say -
Will virtual shifting be available on other KICKR models?
We are working to enable virtual shifting for KICKR v5 (2020) and KICKR v4 (2018) in the future.
That’s what gave so many people hope, which they translated into certainty that it was coming. Which isn’t a surprise. All I can say is it would have been better for them (hindsight) if they’d made a weaker statement about the possibility of it happening, just said they were looking into whether it might be possible. Personally I’m not fussed about it, but I understand why some damage was done to the relationship with customers who cared about that.
I don’t blame wahoo at all for this. Virtual shifting shouldn’t need to involve a firmware update, that’s only necessary because zwift have decided to tie it to their own hardware.
Indievelo has a software solution that works with any smart trainer and has better functionality.
The Elite Square virtual shifting apparently works with any smart trainer that supports the FE-C protocol, which is most of them. Doesn’t matter what virtual cycling platform you using. Again, a better solution than what zwift have come up with.
If wahoo were involved in the decision for zwift to go down the firmware path that would change things for me, but it pre-dates zwift and wahoo selling each other’s hardware.
I find it hard to imagine the tech side a 6 year old core is superior to that in a 3 year old trainer though, especially when it’s widely accepted the core is a V4 on a different frame
There is probably a bigger financial hit to developing it for legacy trainers that they won’t recover.
Will this be available internationally and when? In Singapore for example?
I looked at this product mostly because I wanted to check if it could fit my whole family (to avoid needing to swap betwen 4 or 5 bikes on my trainer).
But Zwift Ride is unavailable in a bunch of countries (including mine, Norway), unless you manage to:
- Connect to a VPN server in a country they ship to (otherwise, the product page won’t even be reachable).
- Find a forwarding service from that country to your own country.
- Accept that there will be no warranty or anything like that.
Not cool.
And anyway, my two oldest kids are 21cm too short for the “rider fit range” listed.