Electronic Shifting

[Samuel D]

Since all Lithium batteries have a good recharge life of 500 cycles they should last me into my 70's!

Lithium-ion chemistries age badly and die after a few years no matter how you treat them. In this application (long periods of high cell voltage, occasional deep discharges, high temperatures on sunny days) you won’t get anything like 500 cycles at useful capacity out of them.

Synchronised shifting, that you claim to be a killer feature, is no advantage to me. I would turn it off to know where the chain is. When I want a synchronised shift, I’ll command it myself.

It's never going to be cheap. Get over it! But if 105 di2 comes in about £600, and an upgrade kit for 350, you'll start finding it on every entry level carbon bike and from there it'll spread to become a de facto piece of equipment.

Oh, it will be cheap. Mark my words. I’d guess £400 within five years. It would be cheaper sooner if Shimano didn’t have the luxury of milking early adopters while its couple of competitors get their game together.

[meic]

or an F1 car for nipping down the shops.

Except that most of the cars which are presently nipping down to the shops, "need" an OBD2 diagnostic port and can be accessed with this type of hardware.

[SpannerGeek]

Of course this will all change again next year when di2 goes wireless to compete with SRAM, who incidentally have TWO batteries, one in each mech which can be swapped out if one goes flat.

I have to carry around TWO batteries for each control . .. and another battery for the mech itself . . . = SIX batteries per bike.

Maybe I'll just stick to finger power.

The world has gone mad . . . stunned silence . . .

I love the fact that absolutely no one has even Googled Sram etap! 'ELECTRONICS ARE BAD! JUST LIKE DISC BRAKES WERE! SHOCKER!' I can pretty much guarantee the same people will be extolling the virtues of self same systems in a year - 18 months time, when they can afford it.

The set up comes with one battery each per derailleur. That makes... 2 in total! They are exactly the same and so interchangeable if one goes flat. Unlikely as that is as SRAM claim 3 months battery charge. That's 4 charges per year! That's two batteries, not six..

I've a colleague used Etap for distance touring and has just returned from cycling from Milan to Cape Town, via all those hairy, dusty, technology free African countries, without even a whisper from the wireless drive train. If that's not proof of concept, I don't know what is.

[meic]

JUST LIKE DISC BRAKES WERE! SHOCKER!' I can pretty much guarantee the same people will be extolling the virtues of self same systems in a year - 18 months time, when they can afford it.

MY disc brake goes on and comes off my bike depending on what I think that I and the weather are doing.

I could spend money on electronic shifters right now if I chose to but why would I do that when I have previously invested a few hundred quid in cable shifters that still function? It would only make sense to switch over to electronic gears, if I was going the whole hog and buying a new bike.
Like many others on this forum, my existing few bikes will easily see me through my years.
In eighteen months, I may be looking to replace my chain, cassette, rings and rims, not my STIs.

[[XAP]Bob]

Super capacitor and an EM pickup power source, simply add a magnetic quick-link...

Problem.... Moved.


If its wireless the. What powers the buttons?

[Brucey]

Of course this will all change again next year when di2 goes wireless to compete with SRAM, who incidentally have TWO batteries, one in each mech which can be swapped out if one goes flat.

I have to carry around TWO batteries for each control . .. and another battery for the mech itself . . . = SIX batteries per bike.

Maybe I'll just stick to finger power.

The world has gone mad . . . stunned silence . . .

I love the fact that absolutely no one has even Googled Sram etap! 'ELECTRONICS ARE BAD! JUST LIKE DISC BRAKES WERE! SHOCKER!' I can pretty much guarantee the same people will be extolling the virtues of self same systems in a year - 18 months time, when they can afford it.

The set up comes with one battery each per derailleur. That makes... 2 in total! They are exactly the same and so interchangeable if one goes flat. Unlikely as that is as SRAM claim 3 months battery charge. That's 4 charges per year! That's two batteries, not six..

If you had just two batteries as you describe, the result would be 'no shifting whatsoever'.

The 'shifters' don't work on fairy dust, they have batteries too, exactly as Graham describes. These are CR2032 button cells. SRAM say they ought to last for a couple of years; I say 'humpf' to that. I have found that replacement CR20xx batteries vary enormously in quality and longevity. In addition to that once the device they are powering is more than a year old and has seen the usual condensation inside it etc, even good batteries will typically last only a few weeks in such devices, because even the tiniest deposit/piece of crud in the workings will introduce a battery-sapping parasitic discharge.

SRAM claim ~1000km 'range' from their main batteries. You would only get away with charging them four times a year if a) the batteries work as described (unlikely IME, for all the reasons Samuel describes)
b) your horizons extend to doing little more than 2500 miles in a year and
c) you don't mind the batteries actually going flat mid-ride so that 'you know when to charge them' (unlike Di2 there is no warning, it just stops working I think).

You can perhaps judge how well the ETAP system is selling by the price it commands. The groupset was (at launch) about £2K complete with the boring old mechanical bits. You can presently buy it for little over half that amount, despite the fact that it is 'still the only game in town' if you are a techno-junky who must have wireless shifting.

Yup, it Is pretty much instant landfill; it is not just pointless for the vast majority of cyclists, it represents the antithesis of the ethic that makes very many people ride a bike in the first place.

cheers

[Stevek76]

The target market will be people who have bought into 11 speed shimano mechanical, all shimano have to do is price it cleverly, stop supporting 10 speed shimano and they're away. Modern cycling marketing is all about upselling existing customers. All the naysaying in the world won't change that. And Shimano excel at it.

As I said last page, shimano still sell and support 7 speed freewheel and square taper bbs. There's a long long way between 105 and everything below before it's finally 'curtains for mechanical'.

I get the impression that your price bracket is so far at the top end you've no concept of what the low end actually is (which was the original question on this thread, when/if will electronic shifting become prevalent at the mid and low range).

For electronic shifting to really start to catch on it's going to have to get inside the £1000 cycle to work limit. That means at most the same price as current 105 mechanical but likely tiagra. You do get 105 at that price bracket but usually only where other components and the frame have been compromised to get in the price bracket. I really don't see shimano wanting to trickle electronic down all that fast while they're both still working on perfecting the system and while they're still extracting larger amounts of money from people for it. As you say Shimano excel at this. Particularly for road groupsets below 105 they basically have no competition because neither SRAM nor campy go lower than that price point.

As for the batteries, leave the bike outside in the sun on a hot day while having lunch at the pub and you can probably kiss a % or 2 of the total capacity away right there. Li ion batteries are rubbish like that, you don't have to put them though charge cycles for them to lose total capacity, they manage it by themselves quite happily and manage it faster the further they're kept from the ideal storage point of ~50% capacity, cool and dry. There's a big difference between short term reliability and long term lastability.

I'm not anti electronic shifting, I'd be quite happy with it on my mtb were I looking at getting a new one and if the price is reasonable (happy to let the early adopters pay for the r&d) but I see no reason to put it on the commuter/utility etc one at this point in time, even if it were available for the price of the sora/alivio/microshift mix it currently is.

[bigjim]

For those of you who recieve the CTC magazine June/July 2016 edition. Page 61, D12 Destruction. Richard Halletts useless, IMO, reply is interesting.

[Samuel D]

Maybe some kind soul with the magazine would share this titbit with me/us?

[The utility cyclist]

Even with all these losses in hot days left out, more losses due to cold weather, losses due to not storing at x %/conditions, people forgetting to charge/not bothering etc. batteries provide enough power. As an example but clearly by no means evidential I use a 18.4" laptop, I have done so for 4.5years, it still gets 3 hours on its battery, a massive drop of 14% from new.

If we are talking 500 cycles, even with drop-off over a given period of time and 50% of the given 'range' over those 500 cycles that's still hundreds of thousands of miles more than 99.99% of cyclists will cover in a lifetime, those few that do cover longer mileages are very much more likely the type to ensure their kit is in good order (whether by their own hand or not), and if one gets caught out battery's can be swapped out, or carrying a spare just like you might with a light, because y'know, folk on bikes do that right?

There is no real world data posted abotu Battery quality choice/quality. I have CR2032s in several devices including a computer that is used daily and that has to power a display, that lasts for 4-5 years (I've had it over 10 years and used in all conditions so I know roughly how long a battery lasts). anecdote, is not 'evidence' is nothing but, personal experience of buying inferior batteries does not represent everyone/the masses.

Is there evidence that shifters will suffer sufficient condensation to deteriorate rapidly the batteries inside?

It's clearly not pointless to a fairly significant chunk of people on bikes that enjoy such, people who MAKE A FREE CHOICE.

it represents the antithesis of the ethic that makes very many people ride a bike in the first place.

No, it really doesn't; electronic shift DOES simplify some things, which some find desireable, I'm sure you have experienced the benefit of many such inventions that would have seemed pointless, instant landfill etc etc to another.

[Keezx]

I have CR2032s in several devices including a computer that is used daily and that has to power a display, that lasts for 4-5 years (I've had it over 10 years and used in all conditions so I know roughly how long a battery lasts).


In a computer the CR20xx cells are charged continuously.....

PS I wouldn't even use electronic shifting if there was no cost penalty.
I've met the effects of Murphy's law too often.....

[bigjim]

Maybe some kind soul with the magazine would share this titbit with me/us?

Basically it's some poor guy on the letters help page, complaining that his 10 speed Ultegra electronic rear mech has packed up and he has had to spend £550 up to now, without the chainrings, so he is trying to get the original 10 speed chainrings to work with the new 11 speed kit. Complaints to Madison have fallen on stoney ground. The answer he recieved off the technical "expert" was to spend even more on a set of 11 speed cranks to "enjoy the delights of electronic shifting". Cheers. You really need him. Does not sound too delightful to me.

[DaveP]

[ it is not just pointless for the vast majority of cyclists, it represents the antithesis of the ethic that makes very many people ride a bike in the first place.

Hear ! Hear!
Not to mention that its a severe case of fixing something that ain't broke.

To be perfectly clear, if I were seized with the desire to spend a Grand or so on a powertrain I'd be looking at a Rohloff system. Why buy into planned obsolescence?

[mercalia]

Came thru central London on way home from a few days in Sheringham. Liverpool St to Victoria stations. ANd saw all the rat bikes that commuters use, lots and lots parked up. dont think electronic shifters will catch on with that brigade

[jb]

Brucey says a bike should remain as simple as possible and that this is somewhat the whole philosophy of the bicycle, well I tend to agree but to play devils advocate the thing with electronics is that once you've perfected a system it becomes a sealed unit which is then treated as a single component. You have an input and you get an output same as a bowden cable. If it should fail the unit is replaced, so on the surface what you have is a simple system.

This exact same thing has already happened with lighting. What was two wires a switch and a filament is now a sealed box containing hundreds of transistors resistors and capacitors required to run an LED - yet they are regarded as vastly more reliable and effective than the simple lamps of yesterday.

Bikes of the future with electronic shifting and other features will to all intents and purposes look and feel very much more simple and sleek than their mechanical cousins IMO and they will become the norm.