With CTR supporting the Kraken motors, are the Falcons discontinued now?
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Pretty sure yeah. Vex is currently burning, they are probably going to disconnue the VEX pro line altogether. And with Krakens running on Talon FX, why would ctre supply vex now?
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I’ve yet to see any official statement from CTRE or VEX (not that I’d expect one from VEX) stating that the Falcon 500 is discontinued. That being said, I think the unspoken assumtion right now is that it’s discontinued 
.
I would hope (and kind of expect) CTRE to continue supporting Falcon’s through their software libraries for the foreseeable future.
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Source?
No clue if or when additional Falcons will be available. It’s funny to see this still up on the landing page for Vex Pro…
I know companies are shy about making promises of an stock availability until it is in hand but has anyone receintly asked CTR or VexPro if they intend to have Falcon 500’s for the 2024 season.
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So the branding changed, my guess is that they will still be producing them, which I don’t have an issue with because of supply chain concerns. I don’t see why they would update the branding if they didn’t plan on continuing to make them, I doubt they didn’t know that other suppliers would be releasing their own products.
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No source, I used just logic
In CTR’s website for the stock status of the falcon 500 it says from the 5/17 update
“We are not expecting any additional inventory from our manufacturing partner before late 2023. Look for availability during the 2024 pre-season later this year.”
And then on the 9/1 update, it says, “There is no ETA for Talon FX/Falcon 500 availability at this time.”
Logically, Falcons aren’t coming back
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CTRE directly supports the Talon FX with software, not the Falcon 500 itself. As long as the Kraken X60 is using the Talon FX, I think the Falcon 500 will be supported.
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I do not see them discontinuing it, IMO. I can’t say for certain, CRTE is likely to have contracts with both vendors and I’m sure there are clauses drafted to include X years / runs of the respective products, this is just general business practices. And unless there is an exclusivity clause within the contracts, I see no reason why Falcons and Krakens could not be produced simultaneously for years to come. Bearing obviously renewals of said agreements on any of the parties.
Now that being said, This is DIFFERENT than saying a product is “Dead” in the eyes of the consumer. And this opinion or view can be made for many reasons. But that can still be true and the product may not be discontinued.
As long as there is still a demand for the motors and it is still a profitable product for BOTH parties involved with it’s development / mfg, likely the partnership and sale of said product will continue.
I’m excited for the new and novel failure modes a V4 may introduce.
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There’s a big difference between “not coming back” and “no ETA”…
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I believe the silence is deafening and tells us what we need to know. With 2 major competitor announcements and still crickets from VEX, that implies to me that they are done with it.
Not a guarantee, but pretty bad marketing if they really are serious about continuing it.
So I think the silence is because no matter what Vex would post here, even if they did everything correct, it’ll just be another thread the devolves into bashing on them.
Not that I agree or disagree with this approach, but that’s my thought process as to the radio silence.
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Even if they aren’t officially discontinued, nobody has any reason to expect to be able to actually get their hands on any.
How many teams have to get burned on this for how many years before people internalize that falcons are the football, VEX is Lucy, and they are Charlie Brown?
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Also, now that the Kraken is out (with the exact same motor controller as the Falcon), assuming it does what it says (I have faith in WCP), what benefit does a Falcon have—between being $20 more expensive & whatever issues arise (I do not have faith in VEX)?
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The removable shaft is the one thing it has going for it, but no one has made custom V3 shafts as far as I know. And if you want that and more, the NEO Vortex has you covered pretty well.
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The removable shaft has issues though
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I suspect that if Vex decides to continue with it, they will release a v4 version that hopefully fixes the v3’s issues at a price that undercuts the Krakens. This is the only way I see Falcons still making sense in the current market: Lower resource teams would surely find value in a reliable $150ish motor with an integrated controller and better paper specs than the NEO line.
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As far as I can tell, 2024 phoenix 6 makes no distinction at all between the falocn and kraken. Id therefor assume theat the TalonFX in each is atleast functionally identical other than likely some minor firmware differences.
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