Shimano wants to make your bike as smart as your car
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Shimano wants to make your bike as smart as your car
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Re: Shimano wants to make your bike as smart as your car
#2>this is the future of bikes, where computer, components, and lights work as one to improve the ride.
oh god. no.
Re: Shimano wants to make your bike as smart as your car
#3I'm not sure who's seriously interested in most of these features, fun factor nonwithstanding. One of bicycles' strengths is simplicity of critical elements, notably the gear switching. How do they make sure that the electronic system doesn't die on the rider when the battery goes flat? How do they deal with increasing slack in the lines?
Who really benefits from turn signals? Unless they are mounted on special stalks, it's going to be difficult to understand them anyway.
Other ideas are somewhat useful, like the car detector, or adjustable lights - I already thought about relating headlight power to speed or ambient light in 2011 (shameless plug: when I started working on Jazda - https://rhn.github.io/jazda ). But the power benefits of that may still balance out with the additional electronics needed.
Re: Shimano wants to make your bike as smart as your car
#4The grumpy old man in me likes my bike to be as mechanical as possible, I don't want to remember to charge my shifters, power meter, gps, etc. Maybe that's why I still ride a 1989 Trek 1200 with down tube shifters and biopace chain rings.
Re: Shimano wants to make your bike as smart as your car
#5>this is the future of bikes, where computer, components, and lights work as one to improve the ride. oh god. no.
>this is the future of bikes, where computer, components, and lights work work in harmony with the thief to steal your bike as efficiently as possible
Re: Shimano wants to make your bike as smart as your car
#6I'm not sure who's seriously interested in most of these features, fun factor nonwithstanding. One of bicycles' strengths is simplicity of critical elements, notably the gear switching. How do they make sure that the electronic system doesn't die on the rider when the battery goes flat? How do they deal with increasing slack in the lines? Who really benefits from turn signals? Unless they are mounted on special stalk…
Turn signals can help folks that have to bike up a hill and want to indicate they are turning. :)
For the rest, I agree it increases the failure likelihood, but it is probably heavily mitigated in some cases by the fact that most of the power can be generated by the biker. These are not large gears, so the shifting capabilities probably don't require plugging in. And they should "fail to on" such that if they go dead on power, you just can't shift. Can still use the gear you are in.
Re: Shimano wants to make your bike as smart as your car
#7Bicycles are one of the few remaining non-trivial, non-electric machines that ordinary people use.
I'd prefer to leave them alone.
Seriously, I have a hard time thinking of many machines that fit that description.
Re: Shimano wants to make your bike as smart as your car
#8Anything you strap to a bike has to be reliable. If there is one thing you can say about mechanical systems it is that we know how to design them so they last the lifetime of a bike (wear parts excluded), anything electrical or electromechanical will have a shorter life than the equivalent that uses only mechanical parts. Just look at your average bicycle light set, even after I don't know how long we still can't make a set that lasts more than a couple of years.
The key to mechanical longevity is maintenance, a bit of oil and a bit of care and this stuff will last a lifetime. How many electronics bits and pieces do you know or do you have that have lasted > 20 years? > 30 years?
Case in point a friend has a Shimano bike with electric shifters. Super nice bike, but super fragile. One trainride and a very thin and fragile cable got lodged in the gears.
Several long hours of work later I have it working again (this only happened last week), oh, and never mind the $45 crappy little cable with custom plugs which gets plugged into an in-frame patch panel that is just about impossible to get to. I don't see any advantage over my mechanical stuff, in fact I see a significant disadvantage. Electronics and bicycles don't mix well unless you are prepared to make things bullet proof and that will price them right out of the market. So I don't see this as a viable path, a novelty, something on very high end bikes but not something that will stand the test of time.
Re: Shimano wants to make your bike as smart as your car
#9My (mid-previous-century, tech-free and entirely disconnected) bike is already way "smarter" than any modern "device". Precisely because its overall (non-)complexity is an exact fit for the role it's designed to perform. And, while long out of production, any reasonably competent bike mechanic on the planet can make expert repairs to, just from a quick visual inspection (and a catalog or two to order compatible parts from).
Re: Shimano wants to make your bike as smart as your car
#10Bicycles are one of the few remaining non-trivial, non-electric machines that ordinary people use. I'd prefer to leave them alone. Seriously, I have a hard time thinking of many machines that fit that description.
Most bicycle people including myself feel that way. However, what I like about this attempt to make bikes safer (ie turn signals and the like) is that it might make people who don't feel safe on a bike actually ride their bike. Bikes for everyone!