On Wednesday, July 10, 2019 at 9:19:22 PM UTC+1, Tom Kunich wrote:
This stuff is really expensive. But is it reliable? Looking in Craigslist shows a LOT of electronic groups for sale. Though they sure aren't going cheap.

The major question is: what need did they fulfill? Is there any cable failures at the pro-level? Any sticking gears or jumping gears that are attributable to the cables?

Well, on 11 speeds the rear derailleurs do have much better indexing. While the cable shifted groups index in the brifters, the electronic groups are indexed inside of the rear and front derailleurs. This makes it certainly more immediately available to the position.

But this would certainly be something that would work just as well with cable actuation and it would make the Brifters a whole hell of a lot cheaper though they would add the problem that like the electronic shifting you have to shift one gear at a time and with the cable units you can shift multiple gears at once with DuraAce or Record though not with SRAM.

With cables it would take two cables to operate in two directions or perhaps one cable pulled on both directions - sort of in a circle.

The advantage would be that you wouldn't have to plug the things in and as is usual, eventually this sort of stuff ends up on touring bikes that do not have the capability of charging anything.

My friend downloads European coverage off of the web and he says that he has watch many (not some) failures of these electronic groups. The one that I saw in person failed on the very first ride. He didn't tell me what he did but I haven't seen any failures since.

But even watching NBC Sports which pans away from failures, I watched two very obvious electronic shifting failures today alone. And on the other stages I have wondered why they were replacing bikes rather than a wheel without even looking at a flat.

I am sure that electronic shifting will get more reliable. But again - is there any advantage to it? There can't be more than 20 grams weight advantage to the electronic stuff.

And even commuters didn't want fully automatic bicycle shifting, as Shimano proved with the "Smover" version of the DI2 gruppo, which offered not only excellent fully automatic shifting according to several programmes but also electronic active suspension. I have it on a Trek designed by their Benelux division, and it's a fabulous bike, but I don't ride it any more because the Shimano Nexus 8-speed box wasn't quite up to my hills, or indeed a bottom bracket mounted central motor.

Andre Jute
A product in search of a problem to solve?