![]() ![]() ![]() Browning says he envisions aging baby boomers might take quickly to the automatic shift bikes since they have the financial means and will demand high comfort and ease from their bicycles as they grow older.īut Grisley, Shimano and Browning are facing a slumped bicycle market. Grisley calls his Browning-equipped bike a "perfect commuter" tool. "You can be pedaling up a steep hill, the bike will shift and the chain stays put." "It's a radical departure from the derailleur," says Peter Grisley of Grisley Bicycles in Salt Lake City, Utah. Rather than derailing from the chain ring to change gears, the chain is guided to other gears by a mechanism that slides from one gear to the next even under a full pressure load. SmartShift also features a transmission system that keeps the chain on its ring at all times. The system's computer then remembers its rider's preferred rate and starts there the next time they get on the bicycle. The rider can select any level with the press of a button and battery assisted front and rear derailleurs shift accordingly.īrowning's SmartShift also lets riders select manual mode or they can adjust the automatic shift to any cadence level by pressing up or down buttons. ![]() The Shimano system then offers four options: manual shifting mode and automatic mode in one of three speeds, slow, normal and fast. The technology behind the Shimano and Browning systems both monitor road speed, calculated from signals generated by a spoke-mounted magnet passing a sensor. Casual bikers - the targeted customers - are less likely to spend a lot of money on their bicycles and these systems aren't cheap, at least not yet. "But my mother is 72 and she adores this bike." "More experienced cyclists want to be able to select their own gears the way someone driving a Ferrari might prefer a stick over an automatic," says Carson Stanwood, another spokesman for Shimano. Their target customers aren't high-powered Lance Armstrong-types, but mainly casual cyclists who feel overwhelmed by manual shifts. The systems monitor the road speed of the bike and calculate when it's time to shift to keep a rider's cadence steady. (Michael Gamstetter, editor of Bicycle Retailer News, called the early Autobike model "a piece of junk.")īut so far the computerized shifting systems have won good reviews. Critics have said the old mechanical models gave auto shift bicycles a bad name when early versions proved unreliable. Both are higher-tech versions of a mechanical automatic shift system that has been available in the Autobike and LandRider models since the late-1980s. ![]()
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