What if you could turn your current bike into one with wireless electronic shifting without having to change any of your drivetrain parts or derailleurs?
That’s what inventor Paul Gallagher asked. “It was one of those crazy ideas. I wanted to put wireless shifting on my mountain bike, but it wasn’t available. So I made it.”
“I’ve been in manufacturing and engineering since the 70’s, and have worked for Hayes (developed the current braking system used on Harley Davidson motorcycles) and then at SRAM (developed the Guide Ultimate’s caliper and other parts of that brake). I started working on XShifter on April 26th, so less than five months, and it’s come a long way very quickly.”
The system uses a servo driven motor with a 450mA battery that’s micro USB rechargeable. It works on anything that pulls a cable, so it could be put inline with a gear box or internally geared hub, too, or even on lower end parts like the Shimano Acera parts on this demo bike. It’s shown here on a mountain bike, but a road bike version is in the works with a triathlon model likely following.
It’ll be available as a separated, two unit system with two distinct front and rear shifter units plus the remote (as shown here), or a single unit that runs two cables out of it plus the remote. There may be even be a choice of single-unit designs that either run both cables out one side, or each cable out of opposite sides, giving you more flexibility in mounting positions depending on your setup.
As shown, it’s about 200g with cable – only 60-70g per single servo / battery unit. That’s down from 370g with traditional shifters and full length cables, standard housing, etc. That saves about 170g, and he says the system can easily be lighter than eTap.
