Scheduled for 12/12/12 (aka the end of the world), Tiso Bike plans to unveil their new 12-speed wireless electronic drivetrain group.
We spotted this over a year ago in prototype form, so it’s neat to see that it’s actually been in development. It’ll be even more interesting to ride and see how they’ve worked out the whole cog spacing and chain width thing. We’ll post more when we get it. If we survive, of course.
@Bob, imagine the amount of money they can charge for this! The complete drivetrain retails for $1,000,000, but you think “screw it, I might as well spend my last nine days on this world riding the greatest cycling technology there has ever been and will ever be”. So you spend your life’s saving, take out five mortgages and embezzle some money from work .
Sadly, after four days of the best riding of your short life on earth the derailleur breaks late on
Friday the 16th, and can no longer be connected to the shifter. Tiso tech-support is unreachable on the weekends, so your problem is first resolved late on Monday the 19th. You get one more day of orgasmic riding, before the earth is engulfed by the flames of an expanding sun.
RF interference is no problem. Frequency hopping, ACK’s, etc can make very reliable wireless communication. More than a dozen wireless low-power protocols are suitable for this type of use, I only hope they are not like Shimano and try to re-invent everything.
Off course there is good use for 12 sprockets in the rear. For years Shimano had the biggest available road sprocket with a 13-29. But the last years Sram and Shimano keep introducing bigger range cassettes, 11-32 has horrible steps even with 11 speed. I don’t understand why someone who needs a 34-32 gearing would ever need a 11 in the back, but they’re selling it.
@Mark: Seriously. It’s just hype machine filling in notches. I have spoken to sooo many fools who can’t get their 53/39 x 11-36 bike shifting properly. No shit! 53×36 is an awful gear combination. Anything to avoid triples, I suppose? Pointless.
Bring on the 13-28 cassettes. Some frames are so tight they can’t even handle anything bigger than an 11 tooth. Road design is terrible in general.
I totally agree, it would not be my choice to install a 11-36 on a road bike. But for the marketing guys these new 11-32 cassettes combined with compact cranks are ideal. They can tell the customer they’ve both a lighter and a bigger gear. Sram maximizes the profit by keeping the number of components as low as possible.
