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Comment by xhkkffbf | Hacker News Reader

I like innovation and this certainly is clever. But do I really need it? I agree that it can be hard to shift cleanly but after I wiggle the levers a bit it all works out.

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You never need to recalibrate your rear mech. Ever. This to me is the best part of di2. You also never need to replace dirty/old cables.

Di2 is amazing. If you do > 500km riding a year it's a worthwhile upgrade IMO.

>If you do > 500km riding a year it's a worthwhile upgrade IMO.

Did you miss a zero? I do 500km a year, taking my kids to nursery on my beat-up old MTB.

Probably. I did more than 20Mm (20k km) so far on my mechanical 105 in 2 years and had to replace a single rear shifter cable in between. Mechanical transmissions are not exactly high maintainance either, and maintaince is fairly trivial. Probably would have spent more time charging batteries in 2 years with DI2 than with cable fixes and adjustments on mechanical. But I'm still somewhat intrigued to try it.

I love biking because it makes me independent. Adding electronic complexity and the need to charge is the antithesis of why I own bikes.

I might have to change the cable once in a while, but I don't ever have to upgrade the firmware.

The battery need to be replaced at which interval?

Is there Di2 for MTBs? I'd like to get a new bike this year, but they all seem to be SRAM.

road bike innovation is rarely needed, it's mostly a step of incremental small improvements that add up to a large quality of life difference.

it's much more pleasant to ride a new age ergo-centric composite bike than it is to ride a Gios from the 70s, for a variety of reasons.

source : family bike shop; I don't ride myself.

These are justified when looking at the truly elite level. You’re looking for fractional improvements that might add up to a watt or two. Aero frames, internal cables, spandex, are all about things that will make a marginal difference at an elite level.

Disc brakes have been a bit of an outlier with extra weight and safety issues brought up by riders. Though it’s easier to internally route cables, and you can stop quicker and more predictably. Maybe the aerodynamic issues of the cables are big enough to switch for the elite riders.

Disc brakes are a must-have for me on a bike now. They add a tiny bit of weight, but the performance difference much more than makes up for it. They stop faster, but they're also much easier to modulate, and their performance doesn't change when it's raining, so for real-world riding (I frequently get caught in the rain where I live, and I ride my normal bike for commuting and shopping) it's a huge safety improvement. There's no way I'm going back to rim brakes.

In the future, I expect to see some improvements with disc brake hose routing. They're hydraulic, so they don't actually need to be straight like mechanical cables, so this would enable a lot of changes that can't be done with old-style cables, much like electronic shifting allows changes because it uses electric wires or even wireless comms.

As an amateur cyclist, I can tell you that this is false. Make a climbing with a 15 years old bike and a modern bike and you will feel the difference, even if you are not a professional rider.

It's a matter of better fluency, less frictions and better power transmission.

If you have to ask, you don't need it.

If you ride 1k+ miles a year and care about performance, maintenance, etc. then it's _absolutely fantastic_

It feels really nice though. They are always exact and all you do is press a button, no lever action needed.

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