Joseph Shimandle
What? No tire pressure monitors or air bags?
Kingsfield58
Beautiful! And good to see Campy giving Shimano a run for its money. It will be worth buying just to keep this Italian David from disappearing under Japan\'s unstoppable Goliath. And them there\'s SRAM...
Mr Stiffy
Dumb, Dumb, Dumb..... properly lubricated cables, and an indexing system is about as necessary as it gets.
Batteries, motors and a CPU on a bicycle gear changer......
And what do you do when the derailer and gears digest a stick and the chain jumps off the cassette and jams between the frame?
Manual shifting?
\"Nooooooooooo - ain\'t got that no more have we.\"
Bill Bennett
oh great, bikes are going the way that cars have, putting crap on that breaks because they can, must be why my cars are an'83 Audi URQ and a daily Driver of an '89 Audi Avant and my bike is a GT RTS 2 and yes everything works on fine on all of them..
Gadgeteer
\"Italian David\"? Kingsfield, I think you really need to re-check your history. There was a time not that long ago when Campy was the undisputed king of racing components and Shimano was a distant also-ran. The beginning of the end came around 1984 when Shimano introduced their redesigned Dura Ace, the first indexed shifting system that worked reliably and consistently, along with amazing durability, gorgeous finish and modern design. From there, Shimano kept up their drumbeat of continuous innovation. Campy was slow to respond, coasting on their laurels from years of unchanged Nuovo Record and Super Record designs, and their early systems didn\'t work as well, which is why Shimano came to dominate the market.
Stiffy, you remind me of the retro-grouches who said in the 1980s, \"Who needs indexed shifting? A good cyclist feels his way through the gears.\" Maybe you didn\'t bother to read the sentence in the article: \"Should riders run out of juice on the road, a RIDE BACK HOME function will allow them to manually adjust the rear derailleur.\" Manual shifting? Yes, they do have that. Maybe their engineers aren\'t quite as stupid as you think.
Calson
I had to stop and think whether the date of the article was April 1 as it is hard to take this seriously. A manual super record derailleur weighs 155 grams so this motorized unit with its battery weighs \"only\" 4 pounds more. NO racer or bicycling enthusiast is going to pay a premium to make their bike 4 pounds heavier.
Cyclists often pay hundreds of dollars for a component that will make their bike a few ounces lighter like the $215 Campagnolo carbon fiber seat post that provides a 4 oz. weight savings, or pay an extra couple thousand dollars for a carbon fiber bike that weighs 3 pounds less than the steel frame bike.
The direction in cycling innovation of late has been in making the bicycles more aerodynamic as the effort to overcome wind resistance goes up exponentially as the speed increases. Weight reduction reached a plateau years ago with the carbon fiber and titanium materials used for bike frames and components.
If the weight penalty was one pound instead of four pounds there might be a market for this product among wealthy senile cyclists. As it stands now this is a product that will quickly fade in oblivion.
Stewart Mitchell
I am waiting for more word about the string drive bikes. The starting price is a few thousand dollars. If it works, the price should drop and will dominate the market.
Burnerjack
\"....And the 2011 Rube Golberg Award goes to... (envelope, please...) Campagnolo!! Guys! C\'mon up! Take a bow! \"Obviously, the bikes of late have gotten just WAY to light and reliable. It used to be \"Cocaine is Mother Nature\'s way of telling you you have too much money\". Now Campagnolo can help you the same way. \"...And if you call in the next three minutes...\"
Gadgeteer
Calson, read the article again. The ENTIRE GROUP weighs 2 kilos. That includes brakeset, crankset, bottom bracket, hubs, cassette, etc. Next time, don\'t be so quick on the keyboard to proclaim doom for something you don\'t know much about. As with Mr. Stiffy, why do so many Gizmag commenters think they\'re brilliant compared to professional engineers who actually get products onto the market year after year rather than just sitting at their keyboards and criticizing?
Mr Stiffy
@ Gadgeteer Well I am brilliant - I am just sick of the the high tech bullshit. If I had my way the Tour of Frog Munchers, would be on old 200lb Chinese rickshaws, that have the aerodynamics of a drogue chute and have 2 really fat American tourists - who insist on stopping at every Mc Donalds along the way....