I think this is must read for every ebike liker....

[Ken M]

It's interesting that I've written some forum comments that questioned the merits of ebikes striving so hard to look traditional while intuitively understanding there is a point that a design actually leaves the space that most people would feel a design remains a bike (the reason that I'm not a big fan of the motorcross motorcycle looking products with cranks when in reality they do not even attempt to allow the rider to effectively provide input power). This article is not so much about a new Shimano gearbox as it is about the paradign shift that ebikes are beginning to touch to bring more buyers into an industry that had stagnated (always cared too much about weight and tradition)....

Vosper: Shimano’s new gearbox + e-bikes = the future of just about everything

What this potential replacement for the venerable derailleur drivetrain tells us about disruptive technology, the concept of net novelty, and the future of the entire cycling industry.

www.bicycleretailer.com

 

[Deleted member 4210]

doesn't Rick and BRAIN usually target their audience to bike retailers ?

No doubt though, adding a battery and motor to bikes will open the door up for a lot of innovation, and very possibly quite a few new use cases for bikes, trikes, electric dirt bikes, and all sorts of human powered/electric assisted lightweight vehicles. I think we are at the very tip of the iceberg in terms of the innovation, and all the fun technology that can now be added to a bike, or trike, with the existence of the electricity storage, courtesy of lithium batteries, or even new material batteries likely to come from the dispersed and increasing demand of these vehicles, and even auto's. Expanded use of electric drive trains, different types of drive trains, safety lighting, sound (on board stereos like we have now on motorcycles),other audio, maybe even on board electric tire pumps, and more video safety equipment, LIDAR, and whatever the human mind can think up. It flips the entire principal of adding weight (previously a deterrent to regular bikes), as you only need to add more battery and power, and maybe up to 20 or 30 lbs of added weight, wont make too big of deal. 50 lbs ebikes are fairly manageable, and other vendors haven't been shy about running the weight up to 70 or 80lbs. Well instead of just heavy frames, maybe the weight comes from better technology or new safety stuff, or like the gearbox from shimano, to add more distance, or make it easier to climb steeper hills, or do more off-roading, where previously you needed a 200 to 300 lb motorcycle, or dirtbike to accomplish the off roading.

Rather than referring to it as disruptive ( an over-used, perhaps even abused, term since the year 2000) maybe just call the 'e' in ebikes (or e-assist), an enabler of more innovation and new uses for the old fashioned 'analogue' bicycle or trike, or maybe even new types of vehicles we could not have imagined previously ? Just sayin'...

 

[Ken M]

I tend to like the innovations that optimize the human and e-motor aspect of the product. The "life-style" product retro racer mopeds we are seeing are good uses of electrical drive systems but are typically horrible to pedal (ie pedals are on them only to lay claim that they are ebikes). At least Rad has the riser seat on their new retro e-moped to allow decent rider geometry.

It's clear based on a lot of the forum responses you see on EBR that a lot of buyers consider themselves "cyclists" so they like the integration of the batteries and motors so an ebike looks as traditional as possible but I've thought that was is not real innovation (that's just spending design $s to hide that it's an ebike but anyone with a brain synapse can easily spot an ebike.

I hope the industry doesn't consider putting on-board stereos as innovation as anyone can just attach a smart phone to any ebike and play MPEG music files. I do like the idea of video on the bike but that's just going to make it easier to assess fault of an accident not make the bike safer. Good lighting is available but many ebikes still have lighting that is less than 400 lumens which is really the bare minimum for effective front lighting if you ride at night. I personally have no clue why some ebikes are putting blinkers on them when they are not fast enough to ever really share the street with cars (better would be just a great rear safety light). A good rea

I'd like to see innovation of the motors such that instead of grease on the gears have a oil bath so the gears are always lubricated optimally. Heinzmann has an oil bath rear geared hub motor that should get more attention in the industry but I think the mentality of the industry is that ebikes are still disposable after 3-5 years.

I think the fact that if you have a survey of what people want to say see on an ebike display it's shocking how much irrelevant information some people want on that display. Like they think it makes sense to put all the ride diagnostics you can get on a service like Strava on the ebike and display it. Then they want to see the controller and motor temperatures real time instead of just knowing the ebike has a system that prevents over-heating.

How many of us ebike riders still have the mindset that a lighter ebike is a better ebike regardless of how it's being used.

 

[FlatSix911]

It's interesting that I've written some forum comments that questioned the merits of ebikes striving so hard to look traditional while intuitively understanding there is a point that a design actually leaves the space that most people would feel a design remains a bike (the reason that I'm not a fan of the motorcross motorcycle looking products with cranks when in reality they do not even attempt to allow the rider to effectively provide input power). This article is not so much about a new Shimano gearbox as it is about the paradign shift that ebikes are beginning to bring more buyers into an industry that had stagnated (always cared too much about weight and tradition)....

Vosper: Shimano’s new gearbox + e-bikes = the future of just about everything

What this potential replacement for the venerable derailleur drivetrain tells us about disruptive technology, the concept of net novelty, and the future of the entire cycling industry.

www.bicycleretailer.com

Great article... thanks for sharing.

The functional limitation is not the technologies themselves, or their provable benefits, but the market — and the industry’s — willingness to accept them. Leaving e-bikes aside for a minute, look at how slow the industry was to take up mountain bikes and AheadSets, let alone all the kvetching and moaning going on to this day about wheel sizes, disc brakes, and component interchangeability with 50-year-old standards.

It comes down to what design legend Raymond Loewy called MAYA theory: Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable. If you’re not familiar with the name, Loewy is known as “the father of industrial design” and creator of everything from the iconic Coca-Cola bottle shape to the layout of Skylab’s crew living quarters. So when Loewy talked about the limitations of net novelty in design, designers listened, and still do.

1960’s Bowden Spacelander, which missed the “too vast a departure” element of the MAYA principle.
Design for the ages, total sales of 522. Image via Creative Commons license by Brooklyn Museum.