Allen Sports, a company with roots in a 1967 bike rack patent, now sells a $299 Bluetooth-monitored suction cup bike carrier called the Smart Suction Go. The device literally sticks your bicycle to your car's exterior and reports on cup integrity via a wireless connection to your phone.
The product enters a niche already occupied by SeaSucker, which has built a loyal following around suction-based bike transport. Allen's move signals that a nearly six-decade-old mechanical hardware company sees connected monitoring as the answer to the obvious question every person asks when looking at this thing: will it hold?
Whether Bluetooth sensors can actually close the trust gap on a bike bouncing down a highway at 70 mph is the real story here. Read the full piece at The Verge to see what separates Allen's approach from SeaSucker and whether the smart monitoring changes the calculus on a concept that still looks alarming at first glance.
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