I do agree with your first point, I don’t see much revolutionary here.
I do agree with your first point, I don’t see much revolutionary here.
- Another battery to recharge
- Proprietary battery format making replacements difficult
- Needing an app to make simple adjustments. Hopefully it runs and is still compatible after 10+ years of ownership!
Bike components are wonders of precision machining and modern materials but conceptually, they have a beautiful simplicity. Not to get too "give up programming for woodworking" but all of that goes flying out the window the moment you add a proprietary wireless protocol and closed hardware in the middle of it.
The battery replacement is the real issue as technology gets older. Though to be honest, at some stage it gets more difficult to find parts for any system. I started to run into challenges sourcing several replacement parts for a 8-9 year old bike that had 10 speed Shimano group set, so it got sold and replaced. Batteries are not much different really.
Example: https://www.amazon.com/Jagwire-Inline-Indexed-Tension-Adjust...
I can't say I've had any problems with getting maintenance parts for my 2004 (19 years old) Shimano XTR mountain bike.
I've been riding and racing bikes since I was 15 years old and I'm nearly 50 now.
Not much different than a mech cable snapping or the derailleur not being adjusted correctly by a tiny set screw and the chain ending up in your spokes.
Shit has catastrophic failures... that's never going to stop being a problem.