I’m a big fan of Alex and really appreciate the way he breaks down engineering topics. His analysis in the recent video is solid, and a lot of his points about carbon spoke interfaces are absolutely valid.
That said, as you mentioned, the wheel system he focuses on—the EXAR (Magene Brand) carbon spoke interface—isn’t what most riders see in the current market. It’s a bit of an outlier. The vast majority of carbon‑spoke wheels today use captured or more “common‑style” hub interfaces, similar to the long‑standing DT Swiss draw‑through design.
Brands like Nextie (and many others) are basically building on that established architecture, and from an ownership perspective, that makes a huge difference. Those hub designs tend to be more maintainable, parts are easier to source, and the risk of spoke/hub interface failure is significantly lower compared to the systems Alex highlighted.
I’ve been riding carbon spokes since 2021 across both road and MTB, and I’ve formed some opinions of my own along the way. They’re not perfect, but the more conventional hub/spoke systems simply aren’t having the issues demonstrated in the video.