Best CCR in 2025-2030 Rebreather Markets

[Mas.]

They left the non-military market 20 years ago. Why would they reenter it? And even if they did reenter the civilian market by the time they have to...

Was just saying hopefully i will ask the same question next year and will get any response like:

Johnson Outdoors/ Scubapro just announced plans to offer the same Dräger CCR but for civilians. Maybe somehing like when Head Sports decided to offer a Dräger Dolphin CCR by acquiring rEvo III of Mares.

Or aquire Halcyon all toghther and offer their Symbios CCR or any other M&A to tap into the CCR market in the future. Like Scubapro offering SF2, AP Inspiration, Poseidon Seven+, JJ-CCR or any other units.

I am hoping the trend of big companies continue for making CCR more mainstream. As this will benefit the industry and safety overall.

 

[Mas.]

"A Recreational Rebreather"

To follow-up on this: the market is simply far too small to support a large corporation. You get maybe 1-2000 divers per year enter the market, if that, and the number is going down. Maybe half continue past mod1 instead of selling their units? I think Rebreather forum 4 estimated the total market at about 30 000 people?

Yes, but dont you think this current CCR market of just 30,000 has potential to grow to hundereds of thousands if the big players like Scubapro decided to make it mainstream.

 

[DiveLikeAMuppet]

Yes, but dont you think this current CCR market of just 30,000 has potential to grow to hundereds of thousands if the big players like Scubapro decided to make it mainstream.

Most divers struggle with actually going diving - as in putting their own gear together and jumping off a boat to swim around without the Omnipotent, Omniscient & Omnipresent Dive Master, just in a buddy pair (no judgement, was one of them). That's not a market that will be able to perform CCR pre-dive checks or understand what does it mean when a unit fails a pos/neg check - neither can (no offence) a lot of the hobby market DMs or instructors. What you will get if you try to grow the market is a lot of bodies and a lot of units for sale.

 

[Mas.]

That's not a market that will be able to perform CCR pre-dive checks or understand what does it mean when a unit fails a pos/neg check - neither can (no offence) a lot of the hobby market DMs or instructors. What you will get if you try to grow the market is a lot of bodies and a lot of units for sale.

Look at the number of aviators how it grow in last few decades from nothing into millions when big players decided to make it mainstream. They can change training practices and can enforce the culture at least for hundreds of thousands of technical divers.

 

[Mobulai]

Yes, but dont you think this current CCR market of just 30,000 has potential to grow to hundereds of thousands if the big players like Scubapro decided to make it mainstream.

No! Rebreathers are older than scuba; but waaay more complex, I can’t see what would even tempt them to take a chance on rebreathers.

Pivoting to the F1 analog: Ferrari is a dive team that occasionally makes cars to make money to spend on the team; Mercedes is the opposite
Ferrari is a tiny operation
Mercedes has its bread and butter in diesel engines not race cars

SP is mainly targeting non technical divers (even tho lots of technical divers love their regulators); it wouldn’t make much sense as a biz strategy for them to get into rebreathers

 

[Mobulai]

Look at the number of aviators how it grow in last few decades from nothing into millions when big players decided to make it mainstream. They can change training practices and can enforce the culture at least for hundreds of thousands of technical divers.

Not in the next 5 years, I wish it was sooner rather than later; maybe in 10-20y (if even) possible — it’s a matter of human behavior not equipment (not entirely, it’s the tech leap needed to account for human mistakes)

When we have reliable humidity resistant etCO2 sensors; better SoCs; unified comms protocols (non proprietary CAN busses), and SIL3 design; and better sorb monitoring capabilities, we can try and consider the possibility of it

We had self driving cars back in the early 90s, but their commercial availability is yet to actually happen (I’m not talking about Teslas lame “autopilot”).. for very similar limitations

Edit: Even then, users should actually train “traditionally” and not use such a device as a “plug and pla”, as a slight failure in equipment could have a catastrophic cascade leading to death

 

[Wibble]

I am hoping the trend of big companies continue for making CCR more mainstream. As this will benefit the industry and safety overall.

You can’t. Rebreathers aren’t like that.

To go diving a-la PADI follow-the-leader around the reef, which most divers do, you need minimal equipment and rudimentary skills. Countless thousands of “cattle boats” make a good living herding their divers around.

As mentioned above, rebreathers need the skills to prepare and operate safely. They’re also far more difficult to dive requiring a lot of practice to monitor and control buoyancy, especially on the ascent.

Rebreathers have considerable running costs. They need Sofnolime ($250-ish for 20kg in the US), pure 100% oxygen (for closed-circuit, i.e. most rebreathers), diluent (air or trimix). Oxygen cells need to be replaced annually (ish). There’s lots of cleaning and disinfecting, servicing, following checklists, etc.

Rebreathers come into their own for deeper dives with mixed gases and decompression. They’re particularly good in caves too. Deep wrecks are amazing. They’re fun shallow but not easy to control.

However, rebreathers are pretty pointless for shallow short dives where recreational divers from the cattle boats lurk. Pretty reefs will definitely not like hordes of uncontrolled recreational rebreather divers crashing down on them.


So you’re not going to see mass-market rebreathers happening any time soon. Not even if Musk said “I’ve a couple of billion dollars to invest”.

 

[Pavao]

Do you know any big companies planning to offer CCR this year?
What exactly is wrong with my question?

People keep asking you about the motivations/use of unit to answer your original questions, I think it has been answered, and please correct me if I’m wrong, but from the information I gather here, you’re looking for a unit that is going to be well supported in the market for years to come, because you want to advise your friends kid who wants to become a CCR instructor which unit will be wise to invest time in developing that career, right?

This immediately raises the issue of someone looking to teach (CCR) and isn’t even CCR trained, I say this because it hints at the idea this kid has not gone through the process of selecting his unit at the diver level, most of us select our unit of choice based on a number of criteria’s which revolve around the unit quality and suitability to our needs, from there, divers can become instructors of said units for logical reasons, it seems the tail wants to wag the dog here.

But lets put that aside, it was just an observation, and answer your question above.

The issue I see here, is that you believe the market longevity of a product is higher with a bigger company than a smaller one, with the example of Scubapro mentioned several times here in the thread, imagine they decide to go into the rebreather market, I highly doubt their unit wouldn’t be loaded with proprietary Scubapro parts, including their own computers as one such example, this would immediately put them at a disadvantage in the market, people want shearwater, Scubapro has been fighting (and losing) to get the tech diving market for their computers for decades now.
Another reason, a bigger company can afford to “dip their toes” in the market with a new product and would not hesitate to pull the plug on such project when the marketing department decides it’s not producing the results the corporate company wants to see.
In contrast, the smaller company focused 100% of its efforts on that market only, will have a much higher incentive to ensure their product stays in the market.

This is not to say your reservations towards the smaller company isn’t without merit, but I believe it is a bit misguided as far as the specific product discussed here and it’s niche market, not to be discounted.

There’s more that can be said about the choice of small/big company in which unit to go with when one has a teaching career in mind, but hopefully I’ve opened the door to otherwise unthought questions you can now ask yourself.

 

[rjack321]

Yes, but dont you think this current CCR market of just 30,000 has potential to grow to hundereds of thousands if the big players like Scubapro decided to make it mainstream.

No this has been tried over and over again to make a "mainstream appeal to the masses rebreather" and the market does not exist
Hollis tried - failed & discontinued unit
Mares tried - failed & discontinued unit
Drager tried - failed & discontinued multiple units

If Hollis, Mares, and Drager all failed, Scubapro will also not create 100,000 SCR nevermind even more complicated and expensive CCR divers in any of our lifetimes.

 

[Mas.]

People keep asking you about the motivations/use of unit to answer your original questions, I think it has been answered, and please correct me if I’m wrong, but from the information I gather here, you’re looking for a unit that is going to be well supported in the market for years to come.

No. That question was simply asking about CCR offered by big companies only because I believe this peice of data is important for me to know. If possible, I also would love to keep my knowledge about CCR offered by big companies up to date every year as the CCR market will keep changing.