<\/p>\n I first saw it firsthand a few years ago when I joined a buddy for a long ride in the thick of the Appalachian Mountains<\/a>. We planned a metric century that counted some 7,000 feet of climbing. A sizeable day in the saddle. And all was well for the first twenty miles. The weather was perfect, the roads quiet, the leaves a beautiful palette of early autumn oranges, reds and browns. And then, out of nowhere, the battery powering my friend\u2019s front derailleur died.<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n Given the amount of climbing we had left before us, he decided to keep it in his small front ring, making what should have been a series of glorious, hair-raising descents more boring affairs of small-ring spinups and childlike coasting. Not exactly the ride we drove four hours to the mountains to do.<\/p>\n At the time, I had just started to think about what my next road bike<\/a> might be (let\u2019s face it: we\u2019re always thinking about what our next bike might be) and over those last forty miles, I decided that, whatever it was, it had to have mechanical shifting<\/a>.<\/p>\n Granted, electronic shifting<\/a> has come a long way in the few years between that ride and this writing. But still, all too often, I see someone at the start of the ride, loading their bike back onto their car because, whether due to malfunction or user error (i.e, \u201cI forgot to charge my batteries last night”), their bike is little more than a paperweight.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve never experienced these issues because I\u2019ve yet to make the switch to e-shifting<\/a>. And, if I can help it, I never will. But my fear is that, someday soon, I won\u2019t be able to help it. At least not if I want a higher-end bike.<\/p>\n Let me abundantly clear here: I\u2019m not opposed to e-shifting, just like I\u2019m not opposed to disc brakes<\/a> (that\u2019s another rant for another day). If those things make you happy, if they make you enjoy riding your bike more, then go for it. It\u2019s your money. Spend it on whatever you want.<\/p>\n What I am opposed to is the bike industry\u2019s slow creep toward the ubiquity of electronic shifting (and disc brakes). I am opposed to the fact that, likely within the next half-decade, I won\u2019t be able to find anything above an entry-level road bike that doesn\u2019t require batteries to work.<\/p>\n And, unless we\u2019re talking about e-bikes<\/a>\u2014which are amazing and have levelled the playing field for countless people around the world, allowing them to enjoy the magic of bicycle riding\u2014bikes shouldn\u2019t require batteries to work.<\/p>\n You may like<\/p>\n In the modern age, batteries are a part of every cyclist\u2019s life. The night before I go out on a long ride, I have to check and charge about half a dozen batteries: my bike computer<\/a>, my rear light\/radar<\/a>, my front light<\/a>, my heart-rate monitor<\/a>, occasionally my camera, and, of course, my cell phone. But whether or not my bike works as it\u2019s been designed and built is not reliant on a fully charged, fully functioning battery. So long as my cables and my chain are intact, my bike will work no matter what. The bicycle is a miracle of human ingenuity. I\u2019ve argued before, and I\u2019ll argue for the rest of my life, that the bicycle is in the pantheon of humankind\u2019s engineering marvels. It is considered by many as the most efficient machine ever made. Two triangles sitting on top of two circles, its form and its function are both damn near perfect.<\/p>\n So why mess with it?<\/p>\n \n (Image credit: Shimano)<\/p>\n Well, primarily because the bike industry<\/a> needs to survive. And the only way for the bike industry to survive is for us to continue buying what they\u2019re selling.<\/p>\n Think about how many times in your life you\u2019ve bought a new bike<\/a>. For most people, that number is in the single digits. Of course, we bike nuts skew a bit higher, but it\u2019s not like most of us are buying a brand new bike year after year.<\/p>\n And so what does the industry do? They create new technologies and then use marketing prowess to convince us that we absolutely need them. To wit, where there used to be two main categories of performance bike\u2014road and off-road\u2014there are now all-roads, aero, climbing, cross-country, tri\/TT, downhill, enduro, trail, gravel, cross, and so on and so on and so on.<\/p>\n What the industry does is create solutions to problems that never existed in the first place.<\/p>\n When it comes to disc brakes, I get it. There was an actual problem that\u2026 well, I won\u2019t say needed to be solved, but one that could be improved upon. Disc brakes<\/a> offer more stopping power (and, as the ad-nauseam adage goes, \u201cin rain and when you\u2019re descending\u201d), especially when they\u2019re asked to stop carbon wheels<\/a>. More importantly, they allow for a far wider range of tyre choice than the typical rim-brake calliper<\/a>.<\/p>\n Great.<\/p>\n You could even argue that there was some necessity to the introduction and proliferation of gravel bikes<\/a>. Whether consumers started riding gravel and the industry followed their lead, OR the industry planted its flag in The Spirit of Gravel<\/a> in an effort to invent another subgenre of bike to sell us, can be argued until we\u2019re blue in the face. But the fact is that masses of people started riding longer distances off-road<\/a> than an average trail or cross-country bike would be suitable for.<\/p>\n But what problem does e-shifting solve?<\/p>\n More precise shifting<\/a>? Okay. I guess. If you\u2019re Wout van Aert<\/a>. But for the rest of us, a well-dialled mechanically shifted groupset changes gears just fine. Sure, there is some maintenance involved with cable wear. But I\u2019d rather swap cables once a year or so than deal with batteries all the time.<\/p>\n And while I\u2019m ready to admit that on-the-fly trim adjustments are cool as hell, it\u2019s not something that I\u2019m willing to trade off for the idea that my bike requires battery power to even be ridden.<\/p>\n Again, and let me say this louder for the people in the back: if you love e-shifting, great. If you\u2019ve become a convert, even an evangelist, I\u2019m happy for you. Maybe someday, I\u2019ll join your ranks. Sadly, it doesn\u2019t look like I\u2019ll have any other choice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We\u2019ve all been there. Maybe it was you. Maybe it was someone you ride with. But we\u2019ve all…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368679,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[569],"tags":[64,63,784,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-368678","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cycling","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cycling","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368678","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368678"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368678\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368678"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368678"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368678"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Shimano](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/4jn9zUxCkXCFqCbRqmXs2Y.jpg\")
\n<\/p>\n