Apart from their incorrect assessment, as Maxence notes, I also don’t understand the phrase “due to being developed for unicycles”. Does that imply that on unicycles, rim weight matters less than on bikes? I wouldn’t think so!
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I would say yes, weight is less of a factor on a 36er then on a bicycle. The reason a 36er is such a pleasure for road riding is because of the flywheel and gyroscopic effect of the wheel and the more weight results in more of this effect. There is good reason that a geared 24” that has similar gearing to a 36” is not as nice to ride as a full size 36” wheel.
On a bicycle the added weight of the wheel has no beneficial effect as it can on a unicycle.
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Weight distributed on only 1 wheel vs. 2 wheels is what he means I think.
I believe a big reason why unicycle wheels are heavy is that they tend to be developed quite conservatively with abuse in mind, but even if they pushed a bit more towards lightweight, just riding along a bike wheel sees less stress than a unicycle one.
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I had another interpretation of the sentence of Maxxis. For me it means that the unicycle is a small market, so small series, so it is expensive to produce. If they apply the usual margins of the cycle industry to this type of product, the prices go up. For there to be consumers, the final price must remain contained.
In any case, this is a very interesting article. We can see that what is necessary to move forward is to associate a tire manufacturer, a rim manufacturer and the 36" bike distributors (and unicycle distributors but we are the least important, and we are the ones who need it the most) to work together on the projects.
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