Originally Posted by
corrado33
Interesting. According to peterwhitecycles.com, the only difference between the alfine and nexus is that the alfine is designed for disk brakes where as the nexus has roller brakes. He actually says that
Why then would they choose the mount the alfine without the disk brakes on that bike? Admittedly Mr. White was talking about the 2011 version of both, have things changed?
It could be that the Nexus isn't available in the bright silver that they made a point to highlight. Also while I'm not sure it's still true today it was only the premium or "red band" version of the 8 speed Nexus that was equivalent to the Alfine internally. Not all Nexus 8 speeds were.
It might also just be as simple as what they were able to source at the cheapest cost. Perhaps even the available spoke counts are different between the Nexus and the Alfine.