[talove]

FWIW, the electronic drivetrains are superior in just about every performance metric, aside from needing to be charged every few weeks. You might not want an tablet computer in your refrigerator door but electronic bike shifting is more akin to going from carbureted to fuel injected engines, it is the more reliable and tunable of the two options.

[TheCondor]

Long time cat3 here.

This simply isn’t true, across the board they are heavier. Satellite shifter are wonderful, but that’s not a performance metric. Also, fwiw, races have been lost due to shifting power being out and being stuck in a gear. Rigo Uran stands out, a few years back at the Tour.

I’m not a hater, I have some electronic shifting in my stable.

Editing, I was misremembering my gruppo weights, they are on parity.

[petre]

> Also, fwiw, races have been lost due to shifting power being out

In addition to a mechanical now one might have an electronical. I hate tuning my mech shifters, but Di2 cable routing inside the frame, seatpost batteries? No thanx. I hope it has improved since the seatpost battery days.

[taude]

Also that problem a few years back in the Tour was when the tech was new, wasn't it? Don't hear as much about that as much anymore. Flat tires are still far more common.

[loeg]

Has no one snapped a mech shifter cable in a race? (I don’t follow the professional racing.)

[caycep]

Granted, maybe I'm better at keeping up w/ my cables than most people, but it's not like my mechanically shifted bikes are ever bad at shifting....and "charged every few weeks" is a big "aside"...unless they make a battery that can be charged in about the same time it takes to pump up my tires, it's an extra cognitive load to keep track of the charge vs. just hopping on the bike and riding.

[jskrablin]

What's not reliable and tunable when using classic, cable operated gear shifting? I'm all ears, since my offroad bikes are usually getting thrown around a lot, are usually dirty and covered in mud... and gear shifting just works, no need to charge anything and require some adjustments once per year...

I understand that some people get excited about just any $shinynewtoy but unless you're in a position to take measurable performance gain out of it... it's really just a $shinynewtoy. There's a lot more performance to be gained with improving the rider, losing weight, etc.

Or maybe just stop being obsessed by specs, performance, results, comparing oneself to others and just start to enjoy riding.

[ubermonkey]

If you're only adjusting your cable-pull drivetrains annually, you're getting off easy!

Once you ride electronic shifting, it's hard to go back. It's really nice, really stable, and on the whole I've had much fewer issues with eTap than I had with mechanical Ultegra.

[kleinsch]

Electronic shifting never has to be tuned, that’s the point. It tunes itself so you always have clean shifting, no grinding chains.