Thanks. But I am still gathering information.
Maybe Dräger, Scubapro or Head Sports or any other big companies have something in the pipeline for this coming few years, how would you know without asking. I am still gathering information.
There is nothing wrong with asking if there are any big parent company offering rebreathers this year.
In car racing world, this is like asking which big parent companies will offer high-class racing units this year? The answer will be something like Mercedes and Ferrari.
When it comes to safety testing or any other considerations, Some might think Mercedes have much more at stake to lose than a small local race shop of 5-10 engineers.
This might appear to you, the question will exculde all other 50 small workshops who doesn't have big parents. That is ok. We still have to gather this important piece of information and then decide to ignore or not.
Economy of product line is not an excuse not to gather information. If any big companies planning to offer rebreathers, we need to know this important information.
Hi Mas,
NP: wasn't meant to sound petulant
The rebreather market is probably similar to the very early days of motoring when there were dozens of tiny enthusiast companies working out of their blacksmith forges, or something like that. There's a massive market size difference from automotive, even amateur racing, than diving.
Take the UK for example. A population of circa 70m people with a history of aquatic dabbling. At its peak, the British Sub Aqua Club (BSAC) had a membership of around 50k people. Obviously there's orders of magnitude more people who'd "dun their paddy" on holiday, following the DiveMaster around a warm reef. In the UK there were a lot of dive boats diving on the myriad thousands of wrecks around our coasts.
Of those, the rebreather divers would be just a few hundred active divers. The Ambient Pressure Diving (AP) Inspiration (a.k.a. The Classic) was first sold in 1997. According to ChatGPT, the estimate is that AP have sold 25,000 units. JJ, the rebreather most people would recommend these days, has only sold 3,000 units. Hence I'll stand by my "miniscule" market statement.
Those numbers are way too small for the big players. ScubaPro will sell tens of thousands of regulators a year worldwide for the broader recreational diving market, ditto all the other large manufacturers.
When buying a rebreather, you select based upon a whole plethora of reasons, the main one being whether it's fit for the purpose you want to use it for, but mostly how well it's supported where you dive. In the UK, AP Inspirations are legion, most dive boats will have many Inspos diving in the 40+m/130ft range.
My personal choice for a Revo was based upon the engineering and design of the unit. I like the dual scrubber, the simplicity of the design, that no specialist tools are required (OK, the BCD button extractor!), that there's lots of redundancy (two separate computer monitors), the oxygen orifice, the enclosed lungs and the relative compactness of the unit. Most of all, I love the small amount of Sofnolime it consumes, mostly just one 1.3kg/3lb scrubber needs refilling.
But, and this is essential... The box is only a part of the story. You absolutely MUST get trained to use the rebreather unit as it really is out to kill you. The market won't let you rock up with a wad of used $20's and buy one; they will only ship it to your instructor prior to the booked course. AP won't even sell you spares unless you register with them and show your certification card -- so many people died.
There's quite a few new units which will appear on the market within the next year or three. For example, the new "SideWinder 2" which is a sidemount unit and the new Halcyon Symbios chest mount rebreather. There's been a recent FX-CCR chestmount rebreather; also the DiveTalk Go chestmount rebreather; the Triton chestmount has been updated.
Because the rebreather market essentially consists of "men in sheds", there's a surprising number of different units that are currently available, probably more than 20 different units! Most of these micro manufacturers will be building a handful of units per month. Most of them share certain components such as regulators (Apeks), computers (Shearwater), mouthpieces (Drager), bailout valves (Shrimp, etc.).
There's even companies such as
TecMe.de that makes loads of spares;
Narked at 90 supplying specialist cables, etc., etc.
It's a fun place to be
