tyrion

Gravel Cyclist JOM says he shifts about 3000 times in a Dirty Kanza race and the effort saved by electric shifting is not insignificant.

sarhog

...and he knows how many times he shifts because the software will tell him after the ride! Add one more benny for electronic group sets.

Mojo31

That’s pretty much already here in the form of e-bikes.

Bah Humbug

Right; they just cut out the middleman and let the lever itself break in your hand. They also pinky-swear they fixed the front shifting this time, after the double-dog-swear last time.

noodle soup

"if people keep buying old stuff that works", the manufacturers actually make more money, because they aren't spending anything on R&D.

mrblue

Do you think Campagnolo will allow the EPS 12 speed technology to trickle down to Record and Chorus, or do you think it'll remain exclusive to Super Record? I would assume so, but how long do they typically wait?

Kimmo 

Actually, overshift to bigger cogs is trivial to implement mechanically; some Ergolevers have it in quite exaggerated form. It's just a bit of float built into the index spring carrier. Had to disable it on a Shimergo bike to get it to play nice with the Shimano drivetrain.

You only need it going to bigger cogs anyway.

Ferrouscious 

What's the point? To reduce the amount of skill required to ride a bike. "What a stupide idea!" you say. No, not at all. Take downtube friction shifters. Can you shift them? I bet you can. Now can you shift in a paceline? In a tight peloton? While out of the saddle? Haha, not so easy! Electronic shifting allows you to shift under higher load and from more locations on the bars. If you don't see the point, you're not pushing your equipment and, more importantly, your skill to the limit. This is "the point" of all new technology. Said the retrogrouch.

mrblue

Good point! Kind of like how all the technology we have is supposed to free us from work to focus on other things; give us more time for leisure, like riding bikes. I wish my boss saw it that way instead of seeing all the time I'm saving, by using technology, as a reason to give me more work

Seattle Forrest

​​​​​​Ultegra mechanical is really good. It's almost never worth replacing a working group set, Di2 is more of a buying (or building) a new bike anyway thing. And mechanical Ultegra is too good to replace.

Kimmo 

Well, I don't ride a whole lot of miles, but my Yaw FD seems to work just fine. I dunno, maybe my guads aren't massive enough to show up the alleged crapness.

But regardless, props are incontrovertibly due for so elegantly pissing all over the whole concept of FD trimming. If there is indeed much room for improvement of the Yaw FD, it's not a stretch to imagine SRAM will utterly perfect it for the next generation, if the difference between 1st-gen and 2nd-gen is anything to go by.

SurferCyclist

Di2 is superb, not tried other electronic gearing. Is it essential? Nope. Is it great? Yes.
Once set up never needs adjusting, super easy shifting, same time every time. Integrated with head unit can see what gear selection is which I find really useful.
As for battery charge issue, only a moron would have a problem with this, it lasts months/1000s of miles per charge and super easy to check level especially if have D-Fly unit connected.

So to sum up, I love it and will definitely have again if I change bike. Is it worth extra money? To me yes to others maybe not but if you can afford it get it.

Amt0571

My mountain bike mechanical shifters were not touched in the last 5 years and 20.000km. They shift well. That's on a mountain bike, where components suffer a lot more than on the road.

I don't need nor want syncro shift. I can do that manually without thinking. When I change chainrings I mostly always shift the RD to compensate and it's not a big deal. At least for someone who can walk and chew gum at the same time.

BTW, I see lots of people around riding with half-step triples

Amt0571

Yes. Probably some moron who never had a Li-Ion battery failure.

Things work great when new. Not so great when they age. And Li-Ion batteries, when they fail, sometimes they don't show a low battery or anything. They just shut down, suddenly.

If that happens with your digital camera it's not a big deal. If that happens in the middle of nowhere while doing a brevet or who knows what, you're in for a lot of fun.

And yes, you can carry a spare to solve that issue. They probably weigh more than the spare cable I carry with me and some people were making fun of.

SurferCyclist

I was referring to the many people who over the years have complained that one of THE big problems is the battery "unexpectedly" runs out/goes flat because they didn't charge it and are left stuck in big ring or something rather than a total failure of a battery which is another matter. I've had my Canyon with Di2 for 3 years and not one glitch or anything. If the battery should pack up for any reason then it's a risk I'm willing to take for years of trouble free cycling.

Amt0571

When a battery is old, it can happen than it runs from apparently full to flat in a few hours instead of 1000 miles or whatever the Di2 battery lasts. Even if you just charged it. Batteries degrade over time.

But that's not the only possible failure. Electrical contacts, when they age, they tend to fail. Anyone who has messed up with old computers has surely encountered issues when a computer doesn't detect a RAM module or a graphics card, and you remove it, mount it again and it works... for a few days / weeks.

Then there's the motors, which will wear down with time / vibration, and you can't see to inspect their current state. Who knows where they're going to fail?

Maybe you replace your bakes on a yearly basis and don't care about that. I tend to keep my bikes for at least 10 years, and I definitely wouldn't like having to call someone to pick me up because a derailleur has gone haywire in the middle of nowhere and I can't climb with whatever gear it has decided to stick to.

I mostly ride alone and like being self-sufficient. I can't account for everything, but I'd like not to introduce additional things that can go irreparably wrong in my rides. It's extremely strange for a mechanical derailleur or shifter to break catastrophically unless you fall and hit them with something.

Kimmo 

Syncro is the bomb. It just makes sense to outsource such a thing to a microcontroller, no question.

As for half-step triples, you won't see any modern ones until it becomes a thing.

And it will, sure as maths, buddy. It's the last bit of low-hanging efficiency fruit to be had. How long do you reckon they can keep adding cogs to flog a new feature?

Amt0571

Syncro may be the bomb for you. Its a useless gimmick for me. I don't want anyone to shift for me on a bike. Especially on the front. Sometimes I shift one cog to compensate, sometimes I shift two, sometimes I shift none. Syncro can't account for this.

I'll keep waiting for half-step triples which, by the way, could also be done mechanically if they became a thing. Let me doubt though that manufacturers are going to introduce a system that needs more parts and is more complex. Especially considering that the target audience has already gone 1x on MTBs and seems incapable of managing two shifters at once on a road bike.

Branko D

Electronic gearing is pretty cool, really.

It's not cool enough for me to justify the price premium except on a TT bike where being able to shift from both positions is just big and really worth it. I'll be probably getting it when it filters down to 105 & Tiagra level instead of being a premium feature. While mechanical does have a few advantages especially for the mechanically savvy user, the "it just works" functionality of electronic is more valuable for the vast majority of people. Predictably, the future is electronic shifting with only the really cheap stuff being mechanical.

noodle soup

SRAM R&D has had well over a decade to figure out how to make hydraulic brakes work well in 110F heat(unsuccessful), so I have little faith in their problem solving abilities.

noodle soup

Like 105 & Tiagra?

vespasianus

Well, that was the joke of the post...

Kimmo 

You think maybe there might be different folks on brakes and drivetrain? They probably have more than a couple of engineers, right? But only more than a tenth of Shimano's if they're lucky.

Just sayin, Yaw is a sweet innovation. It's one of those things that seem incredibly obvious in hindsight; could've happened in the friction era. Oh, and SRAM was smart to use way more cable pull than Shimano on the back, because a little more shift effort is a pretty good trade for better signal to noise, finer adjustment and no frayed cables.

But do I think they can design a FD cage as well as Shimano? No way. Shimano came out with Hyperglide 30-odd years ago; they're way in front overall.

Sy Reene

Agree that electronic should be cheaper than mechanical. However, not sure when or why the bike manufacturers would ever want to acknowledge this in their lineups -- right now, Di2 and eTAP models sit at the top and surely bring in the highest margins. Di2 came out over 10 years ago; there's been plenty of time for Shimano if they wanted to have already released a '105' level Di2 version, while at the same time I'd have to think by now, they've certainly recouped their R&D on electronic shifting (R&D often being the excuse used for why things cost what they cost).

noodle soup

It's not a question of the size of their R&D department, it's a question of competence.

I can mod SRAM/Avid hydraulic brakes to allow them to function properly, why not SRAM?