Over drinks the other night with my friend Dave, owner of Toga Bikes we got to discussing his new Specialized road bike that just arrived tricked out with Shimano’s electronic Di2 group. And that’s when Dave dropped this mind-bomb on me.
“I said to my daughter [who is now three years old] ‘do you want to see Daddy’s bike?’ and she said yes. So we went to the basement and I showed her the shift buttons. She pushed a button and the derailleur makes a noise and she giggles. She pushes it again and it makes another noise and she giggles again. And do you know what? She’s going to grow up thinking that that’s how bikes shift. She’s never going to know that a derailleur uses cables. Her very first memory of shifting a bike is an electronic system.”
Tomorrow is here folks–the iPod has replaced the CD, the Kindle is replacing books and electronic shifting is going to replace mechanical. It’s already started.
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i am trying to overcome an urge to fight the future at every step.
i will fail, and continue to shift with my Suntour Cyclone MK II while carrying a four pound hardcover book in my bag while listening to the hum of my tires buzzing the pavement instead of an ipod.
i wonder how many years before cable shifting actually becomes truly obsolete?
Did he then show her a motorcycle, so she would grow up thinking that bikes would not need to be pedaled in the future?
I’m good if kids don’t know cable, just use AppleTV with Boxee.
Di2 may be Shimano’s Betamax. You heard it here first. And hip young kids are really into vinyl and turntables now.
Call me a retro grouch but I’m thinking nope. I am actually a guy who grew up in the age of indexing, but still prefers friction in most cases, but electronic shifting? Please, I ride a bike for the mechanical simplicity of it all. The electronic gadgets can stay at work, commuting and playing is for a good old fashioned cabled bike.
I’m still disappointed that no-one has ever retro Campy’s MTB gruppo into urban.
I have yet to see these but it sounds cool I am all for technolgy
Hate to tell you retro grouches, it’s happening, whether you like it or not.
@lantius - You get that a motor cycle isn’t a bike, right?
is a retro grouch the same thing as someone who doesn’t believe in fixing things that are not broken?
@ David - it may be happening, doesn’t mean I’ll ever buy it.
@ emor - nope, that’s just loving cycling.
I like being able to maintain my own equipment and knowing that short of massive physical failure (frame breakage) I can field-repair just about any component on my bike. Is moving a little lever so difficult that we need to pay a heap of money so that we don’t have to do it? If so, why ride?
You can field repair the Di2 just fine. Should something go wrong, it stays in gear. You can change the gear manually and essentially ride the singlespeed.
Asking if moving a lever is so difficult is a direct parallel to the invention of automatic transmissions in cars—who needs it? “Standard” will always be manual transmission.
It’s also parallel to the switch from friction to index. Who needs that, right? I mean you can get any gear in friction you want just by moving a little lever up or down on the downtube. Why would I want my shift levers and my brake lever to be the same thing? I can field-service a friction shifting system, if something goes wrong in the housing of my combo levers, I have to replace it.
Of course that brought better shifting, faster shifting, the ability to increase the gear range and less tinkering with the bike. Same thing with electric.
Integrated shifting was pricey too when it first came out. But a few years later and you can’t find a friction shifting bike ,and I don’t think you’ll find a ton of people who wish their bikes had it.