First look: Campagnolo EPS V2 internal battery and Over-Torque cranks

I've heard that Shimano are working on a secret system where no battery is required at all. You can just change gears with a small amount of effort from your fingers. It will revolutionise cycling but will require all the people that have changed over to battery operated electronic shifting to throw their bikes away.

@ jarredcycling - It is a more complicated method of inserting and retaining the PU than, say, jamming it inside a tube with a load of bubble wrap (a "solution" I have seen on a production Di-2 equipped bike, out of the factory) but it does give a firm anchorage and allows Campagnolo to dictate how the PU is used, so saving a whole raft of issues at the (hopefully rare) warranty stage. It's very controllable and goes a long way towards making it possible to test for things like battery heating on charging where if users are allowed a free hand in installation, none of this stuff can be effectively tested for.

It sounds harsh but it's axiomatic in engineering design where you don't have a lot of control over how things are installed that it's less troublesome in the long run to restrict the options allowed ...

@ridein, a seat-tube mounting is very quick, simple and allows a relatively easy retro-fit of v2 to a v1 bike - a solution such as you suggest looks like a lot of wiring to accommodate (and losses in the cabling are one of the biggest headaches in designing electronic shift systems) as well as a potentially higher number of ingress points for water and dust.

@deanF316, I agree in some respects - all press-fit BBs suffer from the fact that PF is a lousy solution in pure engineering terms to mounting a bearing, where that bearing is subject to cyclic loads at 90 degrees to the axis of the bearing and which needs to be readily removable. It is, however, a good solution to a whole raft of questions around weight saving, bigger junction areas for tubes and crucially, of course, reducing production costs. Bonded inserts which can be threaded (as in many 1st gen. carbon moulded frames) go some way in these areas but can be troublesome to bond reliably. A lot of creaky O/S BBs that fetch up in my workshop are not creaky because of the BB assembly, they creak because the BB sleeve is shifting inside the frame.

What Campag have sought to do is to make the cup walls between bearing and BB shell thick enough to deform to accommodate the imperfections in roundness tolerance inherent in composite tubes, whilst making them thin enough that the bearing can provide substantial support to the cup - after all, there's damn-all point in making a super stiff frame and a super-stiff crank / BB assembly then sitting a load of squidgy plastic between.

We are at an interesting time in component design as frame designers are looking at whole new areas of materials technology and component designers then have to play catch-up with the frame designer's attempts to maximise the properties of the materials they have, whilst both parties seek to control costs ...

Campag's over torque crank set is a response to the industry lead problem of press fit bb system. At first the system appears good but it is nothing but a problem waiting to happen - bearing walk out, replacement, bearings creaking etc. We are seeing solution like inserted tubes with threaded insert cups. Isn't that how bb used to be.

That battery seems like the most complicated way to install an internal battery that Campy could come up with. I mean it literally seems like they tried to make it more difficult

After watching some of that battery mount video, I can't help but wonder why bother with seat tube battery? Wouldn't a smaller battery work inside a drop bar? I'm guessing maybe a 1000Km capacity each, so 2 batteries would be required. So just one special snake tool required for wiring them together or use a simple inner brake cable. The magnet on/off port could be on the left side barend plug and a recharge port (for both batteries) could be on the right side barend plug. Or maybe combine the magnet plug somehow with the recharge port? In my opinion this would be easier to recharge and reduce a lot of the installation headache this video entails.
As a 2nd idea, how about a simpler external battery, but with through holes where it could be sandwiched in between a bottle cage and a frame. I believe that Campagnolo used that format while still in the prototype development stage. Bottle cage mountable is much more universal for triathloners/non-traditional frame compatibility. As you can see I would like to have more options available.

Any idea what levels of groupset the 11-27 is going to be available for?