I doubt it. The point of aero wheel set up is to mimic a wing section (classic ref here if you want to explore). For the speeds we operate and assuming a particular nose shape from the tire then you end up with a quite fat and curved wheel with no flat spots for calipers. The round off of the butt end of the rim is to obviate the 'Kutta condition". this allows the wheel to stall softer and gives you better cross wind performance. It also probably smooths the flow on the ascending side of the wheel. The drag from the disk itself would be relatively low except in large crosswinds > 10°. The piston housing would probably be more of a flow disrupter. This could be mitigated by careful design. There isn’t a lot you can do with calipers or the cable routing and the constraint on the rim shape will hurt you badly.
FWIW the optimum shape would have the thickest crossesection in the region of 12-15% of the tire/rim length. You can see that in the provided ref at the start. HED, bless them, spotted that early and got the patent on it. I kinda doubt the patent would survive a challenge on the grounds of originality. Seeing as it is clearly indicated in early NACA work back in the 30’s and 40’s. However I doubt anyone will challenge it.
If I was throwing money at a Aero bike, the new Factor One would be up there, the crimson version is a thing of beauty.
Completely over priced, but it looks immaculate and turns heads.
But, I currently have a S3, and I have promised myself my next bike wont be a ‘Aero’ bike. It will be a Tarmac or Ultimate. Comfort & handling (especially in windy conditions) over that small aero gain for me.
'Tis nice… but I have this thing at the moment about bike colours; I am bored silly with white, black or red as the only options. Hence was sorely tempted by Orbea. In the end I got the yellow s3. Still a bit too much black on it .
I’d rule out the Aeroad for now. Its a ~6 year old frame design, and aero bikes have come on leaps and bounds in comfort terms since then. The difference in ride between the old (2013 design) and new (2018/19) Propel is astonishing, and the Canyon is still very much from that older generation of bike.
Maybe, I guess it depends how optimised wheels are around not needing a braking surface. I might be a bit out of date, certainly most if not all of the earlier versions of disc brake wheels were basically just the same shape as the rim brake version. Can’t find it now but I’m sure I saw some testing to the effect that the last rim brake iteration of the Venge was more aero than the new disc brake version.
Not a recommendation, but this is more of what company/bike to avoid.
Parlee, even though they are good bikes, the service from the company is horrendous.
I had to wait over a year for a cover that was cracked, no communication from the company.
The company sent me to a bike shop that does not even sell Parlee’s. I had to pay for bike fitting, which was a complete waste of time and money since they do not sell the bikes. The company offered a credit, but has not honored it.
So, in summary:
AVOID Parlee.
For sure the product ramp up would just use the existing rims to keep the time to market and NRE down. So there would not be a significant difference between the rim and disc version of a particular unit as the manufacturers ran out their product lines. In which case then yes the rim brake version is more aero. I think that we are getting past that phase now and we are seeing effort being put in to genuinely exploit this design space. Hence the move in the pro ranks to disc TT bikes (Off the top of my head argon18, Cervelo and Spesh all went there… I am sure there were others). Seriously how often do you brake on a TT? Why bother then? The TT bike is not such a big seller that it is a commercialization pitch to us riders in the same way as the road bike is. The biggest users would be tri and they have their own set of rules. Ergo the drag can be and is being optimized better with that form factor.
The enabler of this technology, for want of a better word, is the removal of the braking surface of the rim. That allows you to have the thickest part of the wheel tire combo there. This is the optimum location.
