Arc8 assures that its Evolve FS is extremely reliable

At the last World Cup in Lenzerheide, U-23 rider Jakob Söderqvist was an unexpected protagonist with a spectacular breakage of his Arc8 Evolve FS. The bike broke at the bottom bracket area during the start of the race and the incident could be seen live on the race broadcast. The brand has since been investigating what may have happened to the unit and have just issued an update.

Arc8 assures that its Evolve FS is extremely reliable

It is unusual for a brand to go to so much trouble to explain an incident with its products, but the Swiss brand Arc8 is showing that its interest in what happened goes beyond what any warranty could offer. Nor can it be ignored that the incident went viral in a matter of hours and social networks were flooded with images and videos of the incident.

The model in question is the Evolve FS. A very particular mountain bike because its frame, without shock absorber, weighs only 1.2 kg and has a unique rear shock absorption system. It is a very exotic XC because of its low weight and aggressive geometry but it has very good opinions among those who have been able to test it and its reliability was beyond doubt until the aforementioned incident.

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At the time, the Swiss brand Arc8 communicated that it was launching an investigation to determine exactly what happened to the Jakob Söderqvist frame, but it is a process that will take time and wanted to make an update to provide some information about the reliability of its frames.

Here you can read their full press release:

As many have surely noticed, the frame of U23 rider Jakob Söderqvist broke right at the beginning of the World Cup in Lenzerheide. Fortunately, he did not injure himself, but only had to end his race. This led to an extensive internal investigation, which is still ongoing. Sponsored riders, technical partners and our manufacturer are all involved. Frames are tested, used frames are ana-lysed and new frames are even deliberately pre-damaged to find the cause.

Up until the race in Lenzerheide, we had a single warranty case for the Evolve FS. With more than 500 frames sold, this is an incredibly low number for such a lightweight product. Many frames have been raced since summer 2021 without a single incident. They have been used in World Cups, national series, 24-hour races and demanding stage races like the Swiss Epic, without a single frame failure. Based on these records, we continue to believe that our product is generally extremely reliable. Nevertheless, the difficulty lies in determining the cause of the incident and identifying possible similar cases.

Immediately after the incident, we started extensive testing with brand-new frames. All frames exceeded the various industry standards. We cut and pyrolyzed frames to find any manufacturing defects. All frames followed the correct layup plan and no manufacturing defects were found.

For these reasons, we remain confident that the Evolve FS is generally a very reliable product. We understand that the incident in Lenzerheide causes uncertainty among our customers, and we are working hard to find answers to eliminate these uncertainties.

Once we have further information, we will provide updates at this location. For further questions we have set up an e-mail hotline: evolvefs-bb@arc8bicycles.com. We thank you for your understanding and patience.