Cervelo recently came out with their newest Tri/TT bike the P5. In my mind it's their first significantly different bike since the P3 (I view the P4 as a slightly modified version of the P3). With this bike you can see that they pretty much started new and looked at everything fresh. One of the things I like about this bike and a few of the newer Tri/TT bikes is that companies are looking at the bike, rider, and accessories as a whole system. This means they're not just designing the fastest frame, but realize that someone will have to be able to fit on it, that they will need to carry water and other accessories with them. Having the fastest bike on the market doesn't do you anything if there's no an aerodynamic way of having water accessable to the rider.
One of the biggest innovations on this bike is the hydrolic brakes, which allow for tighter bends in cable/hydrolic line routing than cables. Hydrolic brakes will likely also give more stopping power than many brakes on Tri/TT bikes (something that have been lacking in many). Probably the biggest concern with this is going to be cost (they'll cost quite a bit) and servicing (are they going to be easy to work on, will there be any issues travelling with them).
Like other recent Tri/TT bikes you could clearly see that the designers and engineers were weighting integration, adjustability, and ease of use. Designing everything for a certain bike might give you the best final product, but what about replacement parts, and being able to change specic parts if a customer doesn't like that item. The other end of the specrum is essentilly designing just the frame and using standard parts (aerobars, seatposts, brakes, forks etc) to go with it. This provides the greatest amount of flexability, but probably isn't going to be the lightest or most aerodynamic product.
This is also the first Tri/TT bike that I've seen specifically designed to have a water bottle mounted between the riders arms, I'm not sure this is necessarily better or worse than the Specialized Shiv integrated water bladder, but I'm really glad to see companies looking at different methods to keep hydration easy available and aerodynamic.
Cervelo took a different approach to making the bike work for triathlons and time trials. Recently Trek designed their Speed Concept as a bike that would work well for both and that accessories could be attached to it for triatlons (storage primarily). Specialized created to completely separate bikes the Shiv TT for time trial and the Shiv for triathlons. Cervelo signed one frame that uses different fork/brake fairing set ups, one that's legal for UCI and one that's not for Triathlons. Again I don't think this is necessarily better or worse than what Trek or Specialized has done, but it does illustrate that more and more things are being thought about with the design of these bikes.
For a very in depth review check out TriRig.
One of the biggest innovations on this bike is the hydrolic brakes, which allow for tighter bends in cable/hydrolic line routing than cables. Hydrolic brakes will likely also give more stopping power than many brakes on Tri/TT bikes (something that have been lacking in many). Probably the biggest concern with this is going to be cost (they'll cost quite a bit) and servicing (are they going to be easy to work on, will there be any issues travelling with them).
Like other recent Tri/TT bikes you could clearly see that the designers and engineers were weighting integration, adjustability, and ease of use. Designing everything for a certain bike might give you the best final product, but what about replacement parts, and being able to change specic parts if a customer doesn't like that item. The other end of the specrum is essentilly designing just the frame and using standard parts (aerobars, seatposts, brakes, forks etc) to go with it. This provides the greatest amount of flexability, but probably isn't going to be the lightest or most aerodynamic product.
This is also the first Tri/TT bike that I've seen specifically designed to have a water bottle mounted between the riders arms, I'm not sure this is necessarily better or worse than the Specialized Shiv integrated water bladder, but I'm really glad to see companies looking at different methods to keep hydration easy available and aerodynamic.
Cervelo took a different approach to making the bike work for triathlons and time trials. Recently Trek designed their Speed Concept as a bike that would work well for both and that accessories could be attached to it for triatlons (storage primarily). Specialized created to completely separate bikes the Shiv TT for time trial and the Shiv for triathlons. Cervelo signed one frame that uses different fork/brake fairing set ups, one that's legal for UCI and one that's not for Triathlons. Again I don't think this is necessarily better or worse than what Trek or Specialized has done, but it does illustrate that more and more things are being thought about with the design of these bikes.
For a very in depth review check out TriRig.
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