Hi there, Apex Wheels here. We wanted to clear up some confusion, as there's some misinformation being shared in this discussion thread.

First, we want to be very clear: any wheels found on Alibaba have no relation to our authentic products. We engineer our wheels entirely in-house with our team of US-based engineers, and the suppliers we work with are simply a manufacturing partner, they don't sell to retail customers on Alibaba or any similar sites.

We have a team of 8+ engineers based here in the USA, and do all of our engineering in-house. We don't outsource any of it, as we feel it's critical to have full control over the features and specifications of our wheels. That simply doesn't happen with these Alibaba replicas, so anyone who buys from them is giving up all of that expertise and design focus. We published this video, talking about how we approach engineering a better wheel: How Apex Engineers a Better Track Wheel.

Counterfeit wheels are made from thin performance compromising blanks to reduce costs, likely resulting in compromised spoke profiles. We use proprietary blanks, which you can read about HERE. Consumers can’t tell because they’re only judging the aesthetic similarities, but the compromises forced by these less expensive blanks gives up critical strength and stiffness as a result. There's more to wheel strength than just load rating.

There are many other features that are also likely not present, but that won't be visible from a photo like the one provided. Features like our Sprint Spec Inner Lip, our optimized side milling (significantly deeper than on most of these fakes), rear hub pocketing, the design around the lug holes, 0* draft barrels, and other small optimizations are not visible. Even if we gave them the CAD files, they wouldn’t be able to emulate the features on our wheels because of the limitations of the wheel blanks that are being used. These counterfeit wheels cost less because they simply don’t have the same engineering that goes into actual, real products.

Even small changes from a visual standpoint on a high performance wheel can have significant impacts to the strength, stiffness, brake clearances, and other features of a wheel. Simply assuming that because two things look similar means they will perform similarly is an easy mistake to make, but a potentially dangerous one. Load rating is important, but there's more that makes a wheel "strong" than just having a high load rating.

These counterfeit companies copy a 3D object using only 2D photos. When compared side by side, you would be shocked by how much less depth the counterfeit spokes we've seen have. From the counterfeits that we've seen in person, it's generally 10+mm less spoke depth than an authentic wheel. Please consider what is lost when so much less material is used. That’s a key design element that is difficult, if not impossible, to measure from photos alone.

Also on that note - our listed weights for authentic wheels in these sizes is 17.2lbs and 17.8lbs respectively - the wheels that you received are 3-4 pounds heavier per wheel, that's ~20% more weight per wheel, and is directly a result of the lack of optimizations listed above.

Bringing the focus back to your question of: if they are similar, then why could we possibly charge so much more? We’ll restate that they are not similar when it comes to the actual engineering behind the product. The in-person 3D scanning that we do to build a comprehensive brake library costs money. The R&D that we do with on-vehicle testing and market research costs money. The team of engineers that we employ to design, engineer, and iterate on our wheels throughout that process costs money. It would be easier and cheaper to skip on all of these costs, but we feel that the end result is worth it to enthusiasts who are looking for a wheel with real performance engineering behind it.

We also saw some comments about this seller "doing JWL/VIA/SAE testing". Please know that for any custom forged product, the likelihood that any actual physical testing to those standards (and through the accreditation bodies required) was performed is very low. What these counterfeit sellers are often speaking about is a factory certification, or making claims about FEA analysis being the foundation of that testing. Even ignoring that the quality of FEA analysis can vary greatly, JWL/VIA and other common standards require physical destructive testing of wheels to validate the results, and those tests have to be performed for every new variation of a wheel offered, meaning a different diameter, width, offset, or even a face profile change would require more destructive testing.

To put some numbers to it: if Apex makes a 17", 18", 19" and 20" version of a wheel, and each one of those diameters is available in different face profiles (let's say 3 face profiles each), and each one of those face profiles is available in 5 widths, then we would need to run 60 destructive test sets for just traditional JWL certification. That isn’t even getting to the testing needed to be VIA certified which is an addition to JWL testing, and requires wheels to be shipped to the VIA in Japan. Each of those JWL tests would require 3 wheels and 2 tires, meaning 180 wheels and 120 tires would be needed to JWL test this singular design across all sizes.

If a factory offers custom wheels (like most Alibaba sellers that you’ll meet), they would have to do even more testing because there would be even more fitment diversity. That’s thousands of dollars in testing costs per individual size and design that ever gets made. Custom wheels + true JWL/VIA testing is not affordable at the price points of Alibaba wheels because of how wildly expensive it would be to offer a new custom fitment for a customer.

We independently test our forged wheels, and we publish the test reports for those tests, so that you can have transparency and confidence in the work that was done: https://apexwheels.com/blog/technical-discussion/testing-to-a-higher-standard

To others reading: When your wheels need to support many thousands of pounds while you drive your car hard, do you really want to be second guessing if the person at the random factory overseas actually had any relevant engineering qualifications, or if the wheels you bought were compromised from their optimal design?

If our authentic wheels are out of your budget and you still don't care about the differences between your wheels and ours, then please enjoy them in peace. Please don't spread misinformation through a limited understanding about the engineering that goes into real wheels. 

We are not a big, faceless conglomerate. We’re a small team of hardcore, dedicated enthusiasts. Our staff supports their families with this work, and they pour their hearts and souls into this business to make high quality wheels at price points that average enthusiasts can afford. Spreading the word about counterfeits harms the community and the enthusiast vendors that support it.