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Automatic shifting - welcome to the future
http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2014/10/bioshifts-automated-shifting.html
This looks incredibly impressive for a prototype. Loving how it can be manually overridden at any time like car cruise control. This would be epic in TT scenarios, the bike would guarantee you hit your FTP numbers so long as you kept pedalling, ensuring the most efficient combination of rings to do so.
I await the usual electronic shifting nay-sayers to explain why all this isn't necesarry 
, but in all seriousness this is surely the future for Di2 style groupsets.
If you're new please join in and if you have questions pop them below and the forum regulars will answer as best we can.
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18 comments
Practically every commuter I pass on my ride to work is in the smallest cog at the back and the small ring at the front* so this would be genius for the commuter market.
*I guess they just clicked to let the spring take the derailleur to the end of its action, not wanting to press hard to go down a gear. Well, something must explain it. Look out for it, it's ubiquitous.
I'm a huge fan of technical advances, it's these kind of advances that reminds that the Earth isn't flat. I don't understand why anyone would criticise something that wasn't really their cup of tea.
I may never use the system (although I'd like to at least try it out), but I do like knowing that there're people out there inventing and developing systems that may or may not not ever prove usable. That fact someone had the thought to develop it is good enough for me.
'In my case Strava's guesstimate figure is within 10 watts of a powertap. '
Wildly out in my experience. I've had 20 minute segments around 150W out - shorter ones up to 600W out.
None of the 'guestimate' systems work well on short efforts. But measure the average over longer efforts, algorithms like the one found in the Cycleops PowerCal are surprisingly good:
http://www.dcrainmaker.com/2012/11/cycleops-powercal-in-depth-review.html
Shimano had an auto-shift groupset for a while. One of their city/commuter groupsets, think it was called Nexus Auto-Drive. It was OK actually. Basically just kept you at a constant cadence and shifted gear according to how much force you had to put through the pedals to maintain that speed although it had a manual over-ride too.
Never really took off - after all how difficult is it to actually push a button or a shift lever?! That said, I know of quite a lot of beginner cyclists who never change gear as they're afraid of what it'll do or (in the case of one customer we once had) because he "didn't like the noise of it changing gear". Which begged the question of why he'd bought as bike with 21 gears...
A clever as it is I don't see the point.
1.If you're training seriously within power zones (with a view of racing as I can't ever see this getting past the UCI), then you'll turn up to race and be floundering not getting used to shift when you need as you'll be used to the bike shifting for you.
2.If it's for new comers/commuters etc., then the tech is going to be out of their price range at the moment (and probably will be for a long while).
How is it going to make cycling a bit easier?
If you're going to make use of it properly you're going to need to do some kind of FTP test, other wise the system is pointless. So you get none of the benefits.
If you're doing an FTP test then you may as well put in the extra 0.1% it takes to learn what gear to be at what time.
Something like this just looks to be a way of getting people into bad habits, the same as compact chainsets.
Clearly no one bothered to read the piece. The system doesn't requires an FTP test, it's just a great example of a use case that would work extremely well.
It's not exactly rocket science to do an ftp test, and a cycle computer will be able to make a pretty good guess just from recording a few hours riding. One could easily imagine a production version that 'learned' from your riding and continually adapted. Strava can alread work this out reasonably accurately from ride history. And on the contrary, the system would encourage good habits rather than bad - how is more efficient, faster cycling for a rider of any ability bad?
Your remark about compact chain sets is so clearly trolling I'm not even going to bother...
One of the things I dislike most about road riding is the snobbish attitudes to technical progress. Show a triathlete a better way to train and they're all over it, show a road rider and they lecture you on how Merckx never needed it.
As to the cost question, we've already seen electric shifting and power meter costs fall enormously the past few years, a trend that is clearly set to continue. If anyone thinks this stuff won't be on midrange bikes in 10 years time, they're mad.
I assume you mean power meter? A cycle computer won't tell you anything for FTP
The end result would be a good habit I admit, but it encourages a reliance on this to achieve it.
No it's not, myself and a number of riding friends went from compacts to mid/standard over the last few years, and some back.
Though on the whole we all found going mid-standard taught us all better gear selection, using the inner ring more than just the outer and cross chaining etc.
Might be a small sample to judge by but the majority of us all ended up better riders for it, but that digresses from the point in discussion here.
There's technical progress, and then taking away any 'intelligence', racing isn't just about who's fitter, but a combination of that and who's smarter.
It's possible to guesstimate power and therefore FTP without a power meter, especially if the rider's weight is known, Strava etc already do this well enough for a system like this to work from. In my case Strava's guesstimate figure is within 10 watts of a powertap. The guesstimate accuracy sucks for short measures, but over time tends to average out. In other words, fine for a reasonable FTP number. Cyclops also do a heart rate strap that advertises itself as a power meter over ant using their own algorithm to guess power. It's also surprisingly good at getting the average power for a whole ride pretty consistently.
Realistically though, how long is it before power meters are standard fit on some cranks? SRAM already bought Quarg, and there are Shimano patents floating around for an as yet unannounced Shimano crank with integrated power meter. Once these pieces fall into place, the rest is just cycle computer software.
I find both of those to be just too guess like, you're deriving things from a metric that is open to far to many other variables.
I totally agree there, they're bound to be there soon.
You'll be able to buy a DA group with a Di2 option, a power option, a Power+Di2 option and so on.
I just personally don't see the need for it, perhaps I'm looking narrowly through my perspective, but getting gearing right is a technical skill, and is of importance in cycling, something you learn and put time and effort in for, the same as your endurance/speed.
I would certainly agree with that for cycling as sport or enthusiastic recreation - but for 'cycling as transport' I think it carries less weight.
Even for the more sporting side it would seem to have some potential benefits, even if only in education. As one example, you mentioned earlier you were in a group who had some issues with cadence control and weren't using (or couldn't use) the small ring on compact sets properly * - something like this sounds like something that could have been used, perhaps if only for a short period of time, to help with understanding how to use the full range of gears more efficiently maybe ? This sort of thing properly makes more sense for competitive riders to be sure, not convinced it's worth it for more casual riding.
I understand that for some of you, the 34T front may not have fitted well with your cassettes / riding conditions to make good use of them, and that a mid or standard might work better in some cases - but i'd also be extremely surprised if a compact really was the problem for all those who found a 36T mid a good fit...
I'd be up for trying it out if I had an electronic group-set and it could be rented and plumbed in non-destructively, purely for what it could show me about precisely these sort of issues - where I might improve efficiency - I think that might be quite interesting, but I doubt i'd actually go out and feel I had to buy one, even if I could afford it.
* I see quite a bit of 'big ring riding', often along with massive cross-chaining, and I sometimes wonder if it's not partly down to some mis-guided machismo or perhaps just long-ingrained habit. Not saying that's the case with you or your friends, don't know any of you, but i've heard from people who quite openly say they just "don't like going in the little ring". Hey ho, each to their own.
I see this too, and am probably as guilty as any other. On a big ride, when your tired etc, I imagine you might start making poorer choices as well. I think such a system would 'educate' you as to what the most efficient cadence/effort for a given stretch is, and arguably improve your riding on other bikes without the system. One could have this on the training bike, then switch it off/remove for race day. In reality I don't see this being much different than the 'racing by numbers' we have with today's power meters in time trials.
Another interesting direction is to allow the groupset to predict gear changes in advance, using map data in a cycle computer. If it knows a big gradient switch is ahead, it could move to the small ring in advance, for a smoother shift. I believe some new car gearboxes have started doing this, for example to hold a gear longer before shifting down if the road conditions ahead would be better suited.
The system could also be configured to work like the Wahoo Kickr - you could program in specific power intervals or follow a set training program on the turbo trainer, the bike adjusting the difficulty as required, and it would work with any turbo.
I feel the great feature about this system is that it can be overridden whenever you like. You don't have to stick with its choices, just shift again if you want a larger/smaller gear. Best of both worlds really.
Once mass production is in place and connectivity is standardised electrical derailers and electronic shifters will be cheaper to produce than all but the cheapest mechanicals.
Hmm, what to do with us newcomers eh? If we're a bit unfit then chain us to a turbo trainer until we can output a steady 300w? Perhaps mandatory gear selection education? Can't have the lazy or unfit using something to make breaking into cycling a little bit easier, we might beat your best sector time on Strava - how dare we...
Honestly...
I think I'd rather do the shifting myself. I don't really want an algorithm telling me what gear I should be in. Also, I hope it's banned from racing. The article says, "helping you to avoid situations where you’re out of optimum because you’re too tired/lazy/distracted/whatever to shift the bike to a more appropriate gear," which proves beyond reason that it's for idiots, the lazy and the unfit.
Well don't buy one then - not that you can't do the shifting yourself with this when you want anyway...
Well then you're not the target market then..
I'd hope so too, even though it's hardly suitable for a quite a chunk of road-racing - but I can see things like sequential shifting coming in.
..and maybe for people in training especially, as mentioned, for recovery rides ? How about something similar for people who don't want to arse around with gears, e.g. older/younger new-comers, some commuters - quite a lot of mums I know for a start... and anyway, anything wrong with helping people who aren't currently 'fit' enough (by your standards) to start cycling ?
That said, it's not for me either, I don't think, but that's not to say it doesn't have some benefits for some. Cheer up for Lords sake....
The first automatic shifting system I remember was seen back in the late 1970s.
Looks like an obvious progression; I can't wait. I think we'll have sequential shifting for road bikes (as with XTR Di2) very soon and it's all really exciting. Yes, there will be some who bemoan the move from friction shifting, but cycling is a technological sport (as are most) so why not embrace it?