

New front gearbox design for bicycle - ajuc
http://www.efneo.com/advantages/
More info: http://www.bikeradar.com/news/article/crank-based-gearbox-in-development-35979/<p>http://www.efneo.com/how-efneo-gearbox-works/
======
Petrushka
As a former bicycle mechanic and salesman, and someone who is still very tuned
into the industry, I'd give this a zero percent chance of actually being
successful.

There are three big issues with this design. First of all, you're going to be
looking at a seriously increased Q factor trying to fit three different speeds
into that gearbox (as opposed to Truvativ's two). The Q factor is the amount
of distance between your feet. If you lie down on your back and make a
pedaling motion, the natural positioning of your feet is one banana apart.
Bikes, to have sufficient stiffness in the bottom bracket region, space your
feet two banana's apart or more. Graeme Obree
(<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graeme_Obree>) figured that out, and when he
designed Old Faithful he added a very narrow Q factor, which was a big piece
of his success. A huge benefit of carbon fiber is its ability to add stiffness
in the BB area by overbuilding without increasing Q factor (or weight all that
much), hence the BB30 standard. Truvativ's two-speed front crank is already
very widely spaced, and trying to fit more in is going to cause problems.
Remember, to balance out the pedal stroke, you have to compensate on the left
pedal (I see this is designed to work with existing tech, but it'll feel
strange unless you get a longer left pedal spindle), so every increase in
distance on the right side is doubled.

Secondly, no part on the bike gets worn out quite like bottom brackets (not
including "wear" parts like chains, cassettes/freewheels, tires, etc.).
Powerful riders (and not necessarily racers, I know plenty of everyday
commuters who fit this bill) tear BB's to shreds. I am a racer, but I'm also a
lightly built climber, and I tear through them pretty regularly. Putting a
gear box in the BB shell is going to subject it to a hell of a lot of torque,
and it'll be difficult for it to stay dialed in and functional with the power
output of many riders. The extra mass could also make it uncomfortable to
stand up and power out of the saddle. Trek, Pinarello, and a few other
companies already reinforce the non-drive side of some of their bikes to even
out the extra weight from the chainrings and front derailleur. All the extra
mass from a gear box will expound this.

And lastly, internally geared systems are a bitch to maintain, and it's one of
the reasons why you will be hard pressed to find a shop which will overhaul
your vintage three-speed hub. The newer internally geared systems (like
Shimano Alfine and Nexus) are a lot easier to work on, but Shimano spent
decades perfecting that stuff. This system is not going to be easy to work on
to start, and good shop owners don't sell products their mechanics can't fix
easily. It's just not a good proposition.

All in all, a cool idea, but to me far too many issues for it to ever be
accepted. As that bikeradar article puts it, no need to reinvent the wheel.
Internal hubs and derailleurs (the latter especially) get the job done quite
well.

~~~
jrockway
Came here to say this. Internally-geared rear hubs are great for certain
mountain bikes, where derailleurs just won't work because there is too much
mud. But for everyone else, a well-adjusted derailleur system will be fine.
(Yes, you have to pedal forward to change gears. If you're stopped at a light,
press the front brake and move the pedals forward. Or remember to downshift as
you're braking.)

I've thrown a chain twice in recent memory: once when I was climbing on a
chain where I disregarded the rule against breaking the chain without
replacing the pin with a master pin (that you break off after driving in), and
once when I was trying a new kind of lube on the chain (that worked more like
glue than lube). A well-maintained derailleur system is very light and very
efficient, and with a bit of practice, easy to use.

~~~
Too
Mud always comes up in these discussions but isn't a real problem. You can get
mud, water, sand, branches, snow, grass, gravel or entire bushes into your
gears and hardly notice it. Sometimes it feels like the whole forest just
wants to go into your gears but in some magical way it _always_ falls out
again. The more i think about it the more amazing i think it is, the amount of
punishment the powertrain takes is quite remarkable and even though the
components are so small and precise they don't take much damage.

The only real problem with derailleurs in the forest is when they get hit by a
rock, a think branch or the ground. Anything else that doesn't actually bend
the derailleur is a non issue. In very very rare occasions something might jam
the chain but no changes in the gear are going to fix that. And of course the
mud will slowly wear and tear things down by grinding but that's not an issue
of the actual gear but more of the cogs and chain.

~~~
jrockway
Ah yes, the derailleur thing sounds like the real issue that internal gearing
aims to fix.

------
ajuc
Another article about that system:
[http://www.bikeradar.com/news/article/crank-based-gearbox-
in...](http://www.bikeradar.com/news/article/crank-based-gearbox-in-
development-35979/)

------
hkmurakami
What's the target market for this product? (Another way to ask this question
would be, which subforum at bikeforums would be interested in this?[1]) I fit
into the commuting, road biking, touring, and classic bikes sections, and want
no part of this product.

As a 30 mile a day bike commuter, I want relatively few failure points as
possible in my machine since I don't want my shifters to go bonkers on me as
I'm going home at 9pm in sub 40 degrees weather (I'm going to be replacing my
STI shifters with barend shifters soon). If I were a city commuter, I'd
probably going for a simple fixed gear or similar set up, and certainly don't
want a bike that would be a magnet for thieves. As either type of commuter,
this component is out of my price range.

As a road race style cyclist, my front derailer is of high enough quality that
I have literally _zero_ problems shifting from small ring to big ring or vice
versa. I never have a situation where I need to shift the front gear while
stationary, since any adjustment I need will be small enough to be covered by
moving up or down in the cassette. Thus the "shift front gear while
stationary" benefit is a moot point for me. As for weight, the Shimano Dura
Ace components that you'd go up against don't add up to 1kg when looking at
crankset + BB cup + front derailer [2], so I don't really see a weight
advantage either.

If I'm on a tour, there is _no_ way I want a complex gear system that can
break down and leave me stranded. I'm going to go for a barend or downtube
shifter setup.

As a classic bike aficionado, I have negative interest in this product.

That being said, jrockway has a good point that this may come in handy for
mountain biking because of the mud issue, or cyclocross for similar reasons.
Maybe these segments could make sense for this product?

[1] <http://www.bikeforums.net/forum.php> [2]
<http://www.totalcycling.com/component-weights.html>

~~~
TheCondor
Dura ace is a competitor to this? When it's all said and done, it's going to
be too expensive for most commuters and maybe that makes it like "durachi" but
if it has any market it will be for the suburban super commuter buyers.

Put a belt pully on it and if its reliable maybe you'll see it on some of the
$1500+ super commuter bikes. The nexus, roloff and alfine are all remarkably
reliable, just pricy.. The appeal isn't weight, it's durable purpose built
commuter stuff. Maybe some downhill honks will like it but I've seen a whole
lot of those guys just riding single speeds any more

------
jdietrich
Would people from outside the bike industry please stop trying to reinvent the
wheel?

There's a much better internal gearbox already available. The three-speed
planetary gearhub has been in production since 1936 and continues to work
brilliantly, essentially unchanged since. It's cheap, light, phenomenally
reliable and highly efficient. They're ubiquitous on European utility
bicycles, because they will run for years without any sort of maintenance or
adjustment. You can have one in a variety of ratios, with a coaster brake,
roller brake or disc mounts, or even with a standard cassette spline, allowing
you to use any derailleur system in addition to the internal gearhub. At the
expense of some efficiency and durability you can have eight speeds built into
your rear hub; At the expense of about €1000 you can have a 14-speed Rohloff,
as favoured by most round-the-world cyclists.

People from non-cycling cultures seem convinced that the key impediment to
widespread cycling is technical and tend to jump on any supposed "innovation".
The truth is that cycling development is primarily a social issue and requires
no new bicycle technologies or special infrastructure. It is for this reason
that the promotion of cycling is both much easier and much harder than most
believe.

------
revelation
This is a gimmick. It's gimmick engineering, really.

I'm a commuter by bike. I want something that can still work after driving it
through winter without constant maintenance. But the only thing coming out of
that industry is gimmicks. It's a market designed around either enthusiasts
that spend every second refining their subtle creations, never getting to ride
them, or parents who need a cheap bike for their kids to demolish and consume.

~~~
snogglethorpe
> _This is a gimmick. It's gimmick engineering, really._

Is it a gimmick (I dunno)? Their apparent goal, a more robust and less finicky
alternative to front-derailleurs, seems pretty much in tune with what you
want...

> _It's a market designed around either enthusiasts...or parents..._

Look outside the U.S. for very different approaches, e.g. Japan, where bikes
are ridden by _everybody_ (bike mode-share is an order of magnitude greater
than even bike-friendly cities in the U.S., and far more evenly distributed
amongst sub-populations), and generally not fetishized (there's an enthusiast
market, but it's very small by comparison).

I agree that the U.S. market historically resembles your description, but
that's started to change in recent years as the overwhelming obsession with
automobiles has cooled, and we start to enter the "post auto age" (very slowly
in the U.S. of course!). American biking culture is still very influenced by
older patterns, but this is changing too.

~~~
mamachari
A significant aspect of the Japanese market is the prevalence of $1,200
electric bicycles, which now appears to be at around 30% of bikes seen around
in Tokyo. Automatic gear shifters on standard bikes are fairly common too.
Also pertinent is the fact that Japanese tend not to repair their own bicycles
- not even a puncture. Rear brakes are typically not user serviceable anyway.
So I suggest they should try to ride the EB wave in Asia to market this system
at first.

~~~
snogglethorpe
> _A significant aspect of the Japanese market is the prevalence of $1,200
> electric bicycles, which now appears to be at around 30% of bikes seen
> around in Tokyo_

Electric bikes are a somewhat popular niche lately, but there's absolutely no
chance they account for anywhere even _near_ 30% of the bikes in use in Tokyo.
The number of bikes, and biking population, in/around Tokyo is _immense_ , and
the vast majority of them are not electric (nor new, nor particularly fancy).
Even amongst the recently popular small-wheel-two-kid-seat bikes, most don't
seem to be electric.

But you're absolutely right that the Japanese bike market would be a good one
to target; it's very big, more upscale than many other countries, and oriented
around practicality.

~~~
mamachari
Perhaps my observation is skewed by the fact that I see so many mothers
dropping kids at the houikuen (nursery) are using them. Also at my suburban
station bike park, I estimate 30% are eb. If you count bikes in use, as I do,
rather than those static outside a mansion, you get into the 30% ballpark in
my neighbourhood. I am not sure whether this new gear tech suits EB, but it
seems it might be good for them to ride the eb trend , which is large and
growing.

------
marshc1
Could see it used if you ran it to a fixed hub in the back. You could have
multiple rations while keeping cleaner lines and all. But you would still have
shift hardware....

Definitely an enthusiast product looking for a problem.

------
alayne
This reminded me of the Rohloff Speedhub
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rohloff_Speedhub>).

