Aeroscale Wants to Show You How Many Watts You're Wasting in Real Time
Aeroscale's Wasted Watts Tracker promises real-time aero data on the road. At $1,899, it's cheaper than a wind tunnel—if the self-calibration claims hold up.
Aeroscale's Wasted Watts Tracker is trying to answer a question most riders don't ask until they've already spent a couple thousand dollars on wheels: how many watts am I actually throwing away right now? The system uses two bike-mounted modules—a rear RTK GPS unit for centimeter-level altitude tracking and a front Pitot probe for airspeed—plus a smartphone app to measure real-time losses from aerodynamics, rolling resistance, and drivetrain drag. It's marketed as plug-and-ride, no calibration rituals, no weight inputs, no rolling resistance guesses. Just install it, pair it, and start changing positions or swapping kit to see what the numbers say. The RTK correction feed is what makes the altitude data clean enough to trust outdoors, which is critical because bad elevation tracking can turn outdoor aero testing into noise. Early Kickstarter backers get lifetime access to that feed; after launch, it's $9.99/month. Without it, the system probably doesn't work as advertised.
At $1,899 on Kickstarter (retail $2,499), it's cheaper than a wind tunnel session but still a hard sell unless you're the kind of rider who tests tire pressure by feel and wants the receipts. A two-hour tunnel visit runs about $1,200–$1,500 before travel, and you get one snapshot. This thing lives on your bike. The tradeoff is obvious: you're buying into a startup's claims about sub-1-watt accuracy and trusting that the self-calibration algorithms actually work in the real world, not just in controlled demos with sponsored riders. If the data holds up and the app doesn't turn into a battery-draining nightmare, it could be genuinely useful for dialing in position changes or figuring out whether those new wheels are fast or just expensive. If it doesn't, you've got a very expensive rear blinky mount.
michael
