Review Diving the Avelo System

[EdMcNeill09]

I see this sort of like electronic versus mechanical shifters on a high end bicycle groupset. You get incremental improvements in shifting abilities in exchange for additional complexity, loss of flexibility, and higher cost.

For the very top end groupsets, electronic shifting is winning out, but the price delta is only 10% to 20%. Not the 500% to 1000% to go from a BP/W to Avelo.

I was fortunate living in San Jose when I did. I bought my last bike from a friend of a friend of a friend who rode for Team Jelly Belly. Dave McCook was a sprinter. I bought a 2015 Orbea Orca from him. It was the very first time I rode a "super bike". It was an epiphany. I immediately understood why people would fork out over 5k for a bike. It was amazing. That bike climbed like a mountain goat.

When the penny drops for people on Avelo it's not dissimilar. I can totally dive standard scuba and do so several times a week. I expect the cost to rent Avelo from a local shop will become quite reasonable over time. This is where the bike analogy no longer tracks. Where bikes need to be properly fitted to the rider to optimize the experience. Avelo is quite simple to grab from the shop, fit it properly, and then go diving. For a lot of people this will be the affordable way to go.

 

[nadwidny]

: One of my few concerns regarding the Avelo System is that divers trained early and mainly using Avelo may have poor traditional diving skills. If they needed to use traditional equipment due to unavailability of Avelo, they may be poorly equipped for routine diving, perhaps exacerbated for an unusual or emergent event.

Yeah, like all 40 of them who were never going to be long term divers anyway. Just some casual vacationers that got sold something while they were strolling along with their MaiTais looking for something different to do. This thing isn't going anywhere.

 

[Wibble]

Am a little puzzled at the most common use case for recreational scuba. This is a typical cattle boat at a warm resort location carrying a lot of divers — 20 divers at the last location I dived at. You get on the boat and sit at your station where there’s two ali80s. You tip out your dive kit, strap your BCD and regs on the first cylinder, grab some weight from the buckets, check gas and you’re done.

Ali80s are pretty ubiquitous as they’re cheap, reliable and resilient to being thrown around. Fills are quick and 200bar/2900psi if you’re lucky.

Between dives you switch cylinders around. A simple task of depressurising the regs, undo the yoke, release your BCD straps, lift the lot off the empty cylinder and on to the full one next to it. Install the regs, adjust the BCD, check gas and you’re done.

In Europe the standard cylinder is a 12 litre steel pressurised to 200bar/2900psi (=about 85cf of gas), ali80s are very rarely used. Same process even if you’re diving from a RIB.

With the Avelo system one would hazard a guess that the process would be the same, albeit with more complexity as the lower water valve needs connecting(?).

The main difference with the Avelo system will be the capital costs for the boat operator. Avelo system replaces bulk purchasing 100 ali80s at around $100 each that will withstand a lot of abuse. These are commonly available from several manufacturers around the world. Add to this annual bulk testing and a standard high capacity compressor to fill many cylinders concurrently.

With the Avelo system, the boat operator would need to purchase many relatively fragile and complex proprietary Avelo cylinders at 10x the price of bulk purchase ali80s. These would need careful handling (unprotected carbon fibre) and gentle filling (a pause for cooling, probably two stage filling) up to a much higher pressure. Maintenance questions remain regarding checking the bladder and rinsing the water outlet valve, also the proprietary gas valve+bladder wouldn’t be cheap. BCDs are not the bulletproof cheap and reliable jackets, but fragile Jet Pack harnesses that have a “battery” which has to be checked, replaced and charged.

This means the tank monkey back room staff have a much more time consuming job to prepare for customers.

Bottom line, the Avelo system is considerably more expensive for cattle boat operators in a market that is very price sensitive. If a standard two-trip two or three times a day dive boat proposition is $100 per diver, the Avelo equivalent must be at least two or three times that to cover the higher capital and running costs.

Customer divers on holiday are after a few days of diving. 3 days at $100 =$300 on normal scuba kit, or Avelo diving at $600+++. Couples, family… that’s expensive.

“Just better diving” is very expensive for such a marginal benefit.

 

[Germie]

Rebreathers are not so accessible to the general holiday diver.

And you think the avelo is?

 

[hammet]

I was fortunate living in San Jose when I did. I bought my last bike from a friend of a friend of a friend who rode for Team Jelly Belly. Dave McCook was a sprinter. I bought a 2015 Orbea Orca from him. It was the very first time I rode a "super bike". It was an epiphany. I immediately understood why people would fork out over 5k for a bike. It was amazing. That bike climbed like a mountain goat.

When the penny drops for people on Avelo it's not dissimilar. I can totally dive standard scuba and do so several times a week. I expect the cost to rent Avelo from a local shop will become quite reasonable over time. This is where the bike analogy no longer tracks. Where bikes need to be properly fitted to the rider to optimize the experience. Avelo is quite simple to grab from the shop, fit it properly, and then go diving. For a lot of people this will be the affordable way to go.

Every recreational sport typically adopts new technology after trickling down from professional or extreme athletes. This is technology developed specifically for recreational users. Hence the apprehension by both expert divers here on this forum and probably also by non expert vacation divers who want to be like the cool kids. This is why so much money has to be plowed into this venture... It is not a "natural" adoption of new tech. It has to be forced.

 

[hammet]

Am a little puzzled at the most common use case for recreational scuba. This is a typical cattle boat at a warm resort location carrying a lot of divers — 20 divers at the last location I dived at. You get on the boat and sit at your station where there’s two ali80s. You tip out your dive kit, strap your BCD and regs on the first cylinder, grab some weight from the buckets, check gas and you’re done.

Ali80s are pretty ubiquitous as they’re cheap, reliable and resilient to being thrown around. Fills are quick and 200 bar if you’re lucky.

Between dives you switch cylinders around. A simple task of depressurising the regs, undo the yoke, release your BCD straps, lift the lot off the empty cylinder and on to the full one next to it. Install the regs, adjust the BCD, check gas and you’re done.

In Europe the standard cylinder is a 12 litre steel pressurised to 200 bar (=about 85cf of gas), ali80s are very rarely used. Same process even if you’re diving from a RIB.

With the Avelo system one would hazard a guess that the process would be the same, albeit with more complexity as the lower water valve needs connecting(?).

The main difference with the Avelo system will be the capital costs for the boat operator. Avelo system replaces bulk purchasing 100 ali80s at around $100 each that will withstand a lot of abuse. These are commonly available from several manufacturers around the world. Add to this annual bulk testing and a standard high capacity compressor to fill many cylinders concurrently.

With the Avelo system, the boat operator would need to purchase many relatively fragile and complex proprietary Avelo cylinders at 10x the price of bulk purchase ali80s. These would need careful handling (unprotected carbon fibre) and gentle filling (a pause for cooling, probably two stage filling) up to a much higher pressure. Maintenance questions remain regarding checking the bladder and rinsing the water outlet valve, also the proprietary gas valve+bladder wouldn’t be cheap. BCDs are not the bulletproof cheap and reliable jackets, but fragile Jet Pack harnesses that have a “battery” which has to be checked, replaced and charged.

This means the tank monkey back room staff have a much more time consuming job to prepare for customers.

Bottom line, the Avelo system is considerably more expensive for cattle boat operators in a market that is very price sensitive. If a standard two-trip two or three times a day dive boat proposition is $100 per diver, the Avelo equivalent must be at least two or three times that to cover the higher capital and running costs.

Customer divers on holiday are after a few days of diving. 3 days at $100 =$300 on normal scuba kit, or Avelo diving at $600+++. Couples, family… that’s expensive.

“Just better diving” is very expensive for such a marginal benefit.

I think the endgame is for avelo to become the defacto dive operator at every major resort. Each resort would have one tech who should procure and maintain and upgrade all systems as necessary and have eventually have their own training "agency". Resorts will contract out to avelo and have no responsibility or liability for their diving centers. Divers trained on the avelo system will only dive in the avelo system making it desired and proprietary.

 

[Wibble]

The marketing strategy will be both interesting and novel. Effectively they need to create a demand in a market where "generic" scuba gear and price rules the roost. That means appealing to non-expert divers to 'demand' the dive shops provide Avelo to the cool kids.

There's so much wrong with that...

Firstly, there's a small benefit for half decent fixed buoyancy which every experienced diver would not understand as they just control their buoyancy. Any "look I'm so cool in this amazing Avelo Jet Pack" will be hard for any non or novice diver to understand and will court disparaging comments from experienced divers who all chime in with "so what" as they don't see any benefits but do see the costs.

It's almost as if it's a sports clothing brand selling fashion items -- Nikey trainers are just expensive shoes to most people; highly desirable bands to the marketing victims.

Secondly, the market is full of generic scuba gear from many manufacturers, thus there's plenty of competition and the market works which is why costs are pretty much the same everywhere. Avelo is attempting to usurp this and substitute well-known technology with proprietary technology (with limited benefits) that is expensive. Very expensive.


Good luck!

 

[Belzelbub]

This is why so much money has to be plowed into this venture... It is not a "natural" adoption of new tech. It has to be forced.

And to solve a problem that regular divers don't have. Buoyancy control starts with proper weighting. Undoubtedly, this is a challenge for new divers. It is NOT solved by the Avelo system alone. Avelo requires a certification in order to be able to use their system. Part of that certification includes getting weight correct. I could see a minor benefit on some dives as you wouldn't need to adjust buoyancy as you change depth. But, the minor inconvenience of manually adjusting is not worth the $4K+ price tag, at least not to me. And, apparently, most divers on this thread.

The marketing strategy will be both interesting and novel. Effectively they need to create a demand in a market where "generic" scuba gear and price rules the roost. That means appealing to non-expert divers to 'demand' the dive shops provide Avelo to the cool kids.

Yep. They need to create demand where there isn't any. Divers haven't been exactly demanding this solution to a temporary problem.

One key to their strategy seems to be inflation of the numbers involved with a standard Scuba kit.

Per their website, they state the average diver carries 75 lbs in total. Of that, they state that 14-36 lbs is in ballast. I very rarely use AL80s anymore, but those weight numbers seem quite high. The most I've ever used with an AL80 and a wetsuit was 18 lbs. And that was purposely over-weighting a bit to make aquarium cleaning work a bit easier. By contrast, they report the Avelo system as being 45 lbs with 0-6lbs in ballast.

My current kit with a wetsuit is usually a HP 100, standard BC, and a wetsuit. I add at most 8 lbs, but probably need only about 6lbs (The HP100s are relatively new to me). So with that, we are talking a tank empty weight of 32 lbs, 8 lbs of ballast, ~7.5 lbs of air, around 7 lbs for the BC, and about 2.5 lbs for a regulator. All of that gives me about 57lbs, but it's unclear on Avelo's website what is included in their numbers. Might have used the high end of ballast for the standard system and low end for Avelo system. In the weight of my kit, the weight of air and weight for regulator would still need to be accounted for on the Avelo system, so that's about 10 lbs that would be considered constant with either system.

Their marketing is all around constant buoyancy and reduced weight. Reduced weight is impossible to quantify just by looking at their weight chart.

 

[jadairiii]

I think the endgame is for avelo to become the defacto dive operator at every major resort. Each resort would have one tech who should procure and maintain and upgrade all systems as necessary and have eventually have their own training "agency". Resorts will contract out to avelo and have no responsibility or liability for their diving centers. Divers trained on the avelo system will only dive in the avelo system making it desired and proprietary.

Except, the carbon fiber pressure vessel will not hold up to the daily "beating" an Alum 80 gets at resorts/dive shops. Carbon Fiber is not, and was never intended, for that kind of "abuse".

 

[Wibble]

Except, the carbon fiber pressure vessel will not hold up to the daily "beating" an Alum 80 gets at resorts/dive shops. Carbon Fiber is not, and was never intended, for that kind of "abuse".

Example, SCBA used by firemen are carbon fibre cylinders wrapped in padding with a tough exterior to protect the contents. You rarely see the cylinder out of its jacket.