Road Cycling - Campy: electronic shifting in 2005

click on the smiley-----> :cool: (http://www.campyonly.com/rumors/new_electronic_record.html) to see the article

Call me old fashioned but I don't think I ever want to respond to the question "want to go for a ride?" with "No, I have to recharge my bike". :crash:

Yeah, I think that with electronic shifting, there could be some problems like the battery going dead and stuff.

I also hate electric bikes, they defeat the purpose of man-powered machines. Neither do they help improve your fitness, nor do they let you enjoy yourself by having the sastisfaction of powering your own bicycle.

They think they can hit high speeds! Rubbish! I think my cousin who is a year old can travel faster on her tricycle. The other time, I saw a guy on his electric bike, which appears that does not have brakes. He hit a young girl and did not even stop to help her up. It wasn't right at all. They should either set laws for electric bicycles or just ban them.

Back to electronic shifting, I won't really support the idea. I see no need for them since the might only just help to shift better. I prefer the frustration of being not able to shift properly than to push a small button to change the gears.

I don't like it... but then, I can remember when I was a mountain biker and suspension forks came out -- didn't like those either, at first... And I imagine that there were old fuds who looked at those newfangled downtube shifters in the 1940s and thought "they'll never get me to switch from my rod derailleur..." Who knows? This may be a dead end, and it may be the future...

IMO, this "fixes" yet another part of the bike that is not currently broken. As it stands, riding my bike is one of the few places I can go to escape the need for the almighty electron to do my work for me. My other one has sails!:D

Progress for the sake of progress?

Will this really add any quality to riding?

Shimano's version didn't seem to turn any heads and my guess is Campy's won't either.

Well as Velo said, who knows how the future will play out, seems kind of silly now, but 10 years from now what will happen? Imagine 10 or 15 years ago what the "norm" was on a road bike, and see today how much has changed. Out of all those changes I would bet a whole lot of them met with the same initial reactions.

Now what I don't understand is the real benefits of this? Is this going to be for the hard-core racer? What are the weight penalties going to be? Look at a Campy Record rear derailleur, what is it comprised of that would be replaced with this system? Basically we're going to pull out the springs and replace them with motors. But then we have to add in batteries which will negate any possible weight savings. Why don't they figure out a way to make use of the energy used to turn the cranks and use that instead of batteries? Now that would be a little more innovative in my eyes.

What happened to Mavic's system Mektronic? I read a few reviews of it, but they basically all said the same thing...it has just a ton of "cool factor", but it has so many negatives that the reviews ended up luke warm at best.

Andrew

If they got it to the point where it could be set for fully automatic and intelligent shifting, that would be intriguing. With a pressure sensor in the seat to determine if you're sitting or standing, and strain gauges in the cranks to determine how hard you're working, it might be feasible.

I've always felt that there was something not quite right about racers using battery-powered drivetrain equipment, but presumably it will be the rider's own pedal power actuating both front and rear shifting.

The biggest functional benefit I see here is something Mavic implemented: the potential ability to shift from several hand positions, such as at the levers AND at the end of an aero bar.

all,

you can refer to my thread about Mektronic here

http://www.bikeforums.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12748

Bump.


In the year 2000............there will be flying cars!