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Ten years ago, I would have agreed. I don’t anymore. We’ve talked about this a lot in this thread, but bike design, and engineering more broadly, has become increasingly commoditized. Amflow’s bikes are not good just because the motor is good. They are good because we already know what works. Geometry is free, and there is not much left to protect on the kinematics side. I'm not saying there is no gains left to be had, but draw the line. Rate of change matters. They made a bike that is good for most riders, and if they want to go...

I think this is the thing that has changed most over the last 12 to 24 months, maybe longer. The idea that you need a Western brand to “vouch” for a product’s quality feels like it is starting to break down. A lot of our stuff has been made in Asia for a long time, but historically it was still driven by Western product management, with engineering coming mostly from the west, but also from the companies making the stuff themselves. What seems to have shifted in the last few years is China’s ability to understand the core user and...

What I would argue at this point is that waiting for a gearbox ebike is not like waiting for a next gen gpu. A next gen gpu is a generational thing, it was like waiting for Transmission to drop to see what it's like before buying a bike. More or less same old with some tweaks. Waiting for a gearbox ebike is like it was waiting for PCI Express PC platforms to replace AGP graphics slots as that opened up a whole new paradigm in the PC space - future compatibility essentially up to today, multi GPU setups, etc.). True...

Nvidia is in a very unique situation where everyone's panic buying its stuff so as not to be "left behind", before they've thought about why they need it or how they're going to use it. It's bizarre.

For years people have been asking for MGUs from SRAM and Shimano and there has long been speculation that those brands didn’t get involved because they didn’t want to undermine their own market share of expensive, high wear components. In doing so they’ve left their flank wide open for a Chinese company to swallow up the drivetrain market while solving issues riders have complained about for decades. Horrific miscalculation from the drivetrain cartel.

What do you mean by "better?" XTR uses fancy patented Hyperglide+ shift ramps because it's designed to shift fast under high loads. Transmission uses shift gates because it's designed to shift smoother under high loads. I currently have bikes with both hanging on my wall, and I think they both do exactly what they claim to do. If I had to loan one of my personal bikes out to a ham-fisted body builder with big thighs and no idea how to shift, I'd loan him the Transmission bike. Editor's note: it's worth mentioning the other side of that coin, where...

I’ve designed this little 3d printed adapter, to use the Clik head onto the OneUp pumps: https://makerworld.com/en/models/2469641-oneup-x-clik-valve-adapter#pro…

So your theory is that there's nothing special about the Avinox hardware, and the only thing makes their bikes faster and more powerful is software? Curious if anyone else in here agrees with that analysis, especially anyone who knows more than me about electric motors, batteries, power management, etc.

Thank you for the kind words! Glad to hear you enjoyed the podcast and the history bit in particular. Yes, I do think the DJI and Gobao motor gearbox units are going to shake things up, but the gallows humor joke I was making is that no technology change is ever truly complete in the bike world, where there are still new bikes being sold with straight 1 1/8" steerer tubes, friction shifters, 26" wheels, and freewheels. Which is why I predict there will always be derailleurs even on ebikes, either because the ecvt is too expensive for certain price...

I know it can feel like the phone is listening to you but that would break a bunch of laws- actually what’s happening is your friend is interested in a topic, companies have mapped your social circle and know you both hit the same WiFi network/voluntarily gave them your location, so they can make a guess that you spoke about x thing that they’re in to. A lot of data driven marketing is about linking up data sets like this, arguably it’s more skeevy than directly listening to you but there we are.

I love that you think gearboxes will become ubiquitous on ebikes and will entirely replace mechanical derailleurs and electronic battery-powered derailleurs and electronic hard-wired derailleurs and autoshift derailleurs and internally geared hubs, instead of becoming one more option among a confusing sea of options and pricepoints, like everything else in the bike industry. If only it were that simple.

Laser cutting hardened steel results in pretty significant stresses due to the thermal differential. I’ve never seen steel come off the bed, hardened or not, that was flat after being cut by a laser. Lots of post work is required to result in rotors that don’t suck (imo). Stamping doesn’t mean that it’s garbage. I would suspect there is a lot more going on behind the scenes than people think to get “good” rotors. That being said I think ice-tech rotors are garbage and are more prone to thermal warpage than solid rotor. Ive trued more Shimano rotors than I’ve...

Have you completely given up trying to genuinely contribute in these forums? I haven’t seen a post in weeks that has a positive connotation or actually adds to the conversation. Please don’t turn this place into a pinkbike comment section.

Can we please not turn this into a d*ck-measuring contest regarding who rides which steep thing w/ which gearing?

The price and weight are completely ridiculous when you consider how cheap and well all the cable stuff is these days. Who is this even for?

Weights are pretty close for Di2 vs. mechanical (550g vs 600g) however the RD weights are 360g for the mechanical version, and 520g for the Di2 version. An extra 160g of unsprung weight. This seems less than ideal.

Certified armchair engineer here… Wouldn’t you want something like this hidden inside the frame, or somewhere less obvious?