I touched on this briefly in another thread; here’s the comment I am referring to:
To expand on that a bit: I don’t currently see a strong reason not to run carbon spokes on road or gravel wheelsets. In those use cases, the loads and impact risks seem well within what current carbon spoke designs are meant to handle.
Where I’m more hesitant is MTB. At this point, I wouldn’t recommend carbon spokes for mountain bike wheels unless they’re strictly race-only setups. MTB wheels face a much higher risk of spoke strikes from rocks and debris, which could compromise the epoxy structure and eventually lead to failures. Combine that with the fact that MTBs routinely see large impact loads from drops, jumps, and hard compressions, and the margin for error gets pretty small.
As for why Enve (or others) aren’t selling carbon-spoked wheels yet—it’s likely less about feasibility and more about timing. It could be a marketing consideration, inventory constraints, or simply waiting until the tech and failure modes are better understood before committing to a production product.