Electronic & Hydraulic Shifting (Di2, Ui2, customisations)

A good while ago I read that Sram have a patent on mechs with removable batteries or mechs with on board batteries.

This was apparently what was stopping shimano from being able to go fully wireless. Does anyone remember reading such an article? I now can't find it.

The patents in the article linked above seem to show two versions, mechs with on board batteries and then one with a frame mounted battery.

The frame mounted battery would be similar to the electronic fsa groupset, wireless communication but still wired to a battery on the frame.

But the mechs with on board batteries make me wonder if shimano really will be able to release a fully wireless group. There's no mention if the on board batteries are removable.

By the time you're spending di2 money, who cares about saving £25 on a £250 mech

It's not about individual aftermarket components, it's about whether OEM pricing of complete groups allows a worthwhile difference between 105 and Ultegra equipped complete bikes. If 105 Di2 means electric gears on sub-£2k Specializeds, Treks and Giants, bike factories will be pressing Shimano to get on it.

There's nothing particularly expensive in a Di2 mech. It's a standard 10 cent DC motor and some plastic gears, and an optical encoder for positional feedback.

I mean, I'm sure it cost a shitload to develop and make reliable, but the manufacturing cost for the electronic part is negligible.

You missed the microcontroller and the canbus (because that's what etube basically is) transceiver.

Still pennies to make. As grams said, costly to develop but the BOM will be tiny.

So why is di2 more expensive than mechanical? Surely cant be marketing/hype otherwise one of the brands would just slash prices to follow costs and clean up.

Btw I'm not denying that the motors etc themselves cost pennies but maybe their integration into reliable bike components costs?

Mechanical derailleurs have benefitted from 75 years of R&D, so the sunk costs have been amortised significantly. The electronic versions have only been meaningfully developed for the mass market in the past 20 years, so the R&D costs are higher and will take longer to amortise.

Surely cant be marketing/hype otherwise one of the brands would just slash prices to follow costs and clean up.

There's a balance to be had with a race to the bottom and maintaining a market value because it gives you a better margin

Shimano only has two, maybe three direct competitors, and none of them are interested in getting into a price war in the high-end road bike bits market.

Mechanical derailleurs have benefitted from 75 years of R&D

we can safely deduct the campag years from this

we can safely deduct the campag years from this

lol

This R&D stuff still doesn't stack up to me; the cage, parallelogram, pivots , jockey wheels etc are the same and the motors etc have been developed by others and can bought for pennies.

Is the industry wanting to put di2 on sub £2k bikes or is it not interested in a price war? The same brands are happy to race to the bottom with their (eg 12 speed) MTB stuff

Is the industry wanting to put di2 on sub £2k bikes or is it not interested in a price war?

Shimano is not interested in a price war with itself. 105 Di2 will only happen when makes more money for Shimano than it loses them by cannibalising marginal Ultegra sales.

Agreed. At the moment di2 105 would sit as close to Ultegra as to be too similar price-wise

So why is di2 more expensive than mechanical?

Development costs. Which will be significant.

see my post #4411, I'm not sure it stacks up if indeed the motors etc are available for pennies

if indeed the motors etc are available for pennies

That's manufacturing, not development

Development done by someone else though? Shimano don't make electronics

They will have designed the circuitry around that motor, its control algorithms, the communication protocol, etc. The components cost pennies, the electrical engineers who make them work together not so much.

Development in the system, not the components

That was what I thought. Hence my original statement.

No point in 105 di2, all the money is in the electronic gubbins so it couldn't be much cheaper than ultegra

I suspect they could do it very cheaply. As you say, the components cost pennies and the designs are done. They could just cut some costs on materials and finish and do it really cheap but there's no incentive to when people are still paying for ultegra.

The initial cost of development was high and so prices are still high to cover that, backdated. But that's just because customers are still willing to pay it.

TLDR: the reason it is expensive is because it was costly to develop. They could now do it cheaper but there's no incentive for them to do so

would assume a lot of that that development cost has been recouped by now though and that they could start to trickle down some of the technology to 105-weight materials. whether there are sufficient market forces generating demand for that or not... well, iunno

At the moment di2 105 would sit as close to Ultegra as to be too similar price-wise

That's not an impediment in itself. When I was a boy, there didn't seem to be an exploitable gap between the BSO grade Tourney parts and Golden Arrow 105, but Shimano have dropped Tiagra, Sora and Claris into that space.

The decision isn't based on any absolute or relative price difference, it's based on price elasticity of demand. If nearly everybody who wants electric gears is also insensitive to a couple of hundred pounds difference in initial purchase cost, then there's no need for 105Di2

And people can just use 105 for the non Di2 stuff

Interesting I had exactly the same.

I need to try warranty it