Italian bicycle component makers FSA (Full Speed Ahead) have confirmed to road.cc that they are working on an 11-speed electronic road groupset.
FSA makes chainsets, bottom brackets, brakes handlebars, stems and - through its Vision sub-brand - wheels. Talk of an FSA electronic groupset was one of the hottest rumours at last week’s Eurobike trade show in Germany. (Full Eurobike rumour round-up - and there’s some corkers. - on the way).
FSA’s electronic groupset transitioned from the realm of rumour to reality when in response to our enquiries an FSA spokesman confirmed that it was true. “It’s not a secret that FSA is working on a new full road electronic groupset”. You can’t get much more definite than that.
The ‘FSA to make full groupset’ is a perennial of the bike industry rumour mill - no surprise given that they already make most of the parts you’d need anyway.
Indeed this would not be the first time that the FSA groupset rumour has become reality. Back in 2010 FSA launched the FSA Vision Metron TT groupset - yes, you guessed it was for time trial bikes - and later that year went so far as to confirm the existence of a road groupset too.
The latter however never made it to market. There are various theories as to why that might have been - the most likely being FSA couldn’t find a way round the various patents on mechanical integrated brake/gear lever technology held by Shimano, Campagnolo and SRAM. Metron TT neatly side-stepped this problem by not having integrated levers but simply using bar end shifters (as you would on a time trial bike) to change gear. They certainly made a very pretty looking carbon rear mech (as you can see from our main picture) and a slick looking front one too (see below).
The fact that FSA are coming back this time with an electronic groupset suggests that problems getting around Shimano - in particular’s - mechanical lever patents was a major reason 2010’s road groupset never made it on to bikes.
One of the beauties of an electronic lever is that apart from a couple of switches the shifting bit is basically empty (which makes it a good place for a hydraulic master cylinder, but that’s another story) - complicated cable runs and the patents protecting them are out.
One of the other beauties of an electronic lever from a manufacturer’s point of view is that they are both much easier, and cheaper, to make than the equivalent mechanical one while paradoxically you can charge much more for them and nobody seems to bat an eyelid.
So will we see FSA’s electronic groupset on bikes any time soon? Our guess is yes… sort of. We wouldn’t be at all surprised to see it launch at the Taipei International Bike Show in March and we wouldn’t be surprised either to see it appear complete on some 2016 bikes.
FSA need to hurry up though, the level of choice in the electronic bike shifting market for manufacturers and consumers looks set to increase. Earlier this year SRAM’s marketing team did what they do best when most of the world’s bike journalists happened to notice at almost exactly the same time that Bissell Team were riding the Tour of California on bikes equipped with electronic versions of SRAM Red. Wireless electronic versions at that.
That SRAM need an electronic groupset is a given - they've been left behind by Shimano and Campagnolo on electronic shifting which Shimano in particular has demonstrated their is a market for. Something needs to be done if they are going to keep a place at top table of technical innovation on the road.
If SRAM is going in to the electronic market and that market is going to grow - while still, we’ll bet, being beset by equipment delays - then it makes sense for FSA to get in their too.
Why? Well, it goes back to that “sort of” a few paragraphs above. FSA are a significant player in the original equipment market - the kit and components fitted to new bikes. Typically manufacturers fit FSA when they want the spangly bits of a Shimano, Campag, or SRAM groupset - such as the mechs or levers, but for reasons of cost, limited supply or need to make a price point can’t have the bottom bracket or crankset too. So they look for something of similar perceived value but without the price tag and reach for the FSA parts catalogue.
So an electronic groupset would be a canny way of FSA securing a chunk of the electronic shifting OE market. We’ll be very interested to see how compatible elements of it are - particularly the shifters with electronic groupsets from the other manufacturers.
From a bike manufacturer’s point of view being able to mix and match parts to produce bikes with electronic shifting would be an attractive proposition - manufacturers have been mixing and matching elements of mechanical groupsets for years. From the bike buyers point of view too it holds out the prospect of bike with electronic shifting becoming much more plentifully available and more affordable too.
'Ah', I hear you say - they may have been mixing and matching componentry but they haven't been mixing and matching shifters and levers. Well, an electronic groupsets offer some new possibilities. While Shimano Di2 and Campag EPS aren't compatible Shimano's use the CANBUS protocol which Bosch holds the licence for. If FSA uses the same protocol there's no reason - in theory - why they couldn't make a Shimano compatible lever. And what system will SRAM use? Only they know that at present, but if… you know where I'm going with this.
If we were FSA we’d be aiming at the space just below Ultegra while maybe also launching a high end version to establish our credentials - not that FSA’s credentials need that much establishing. But that bit of the market around Shimano 105 level looks ripe for an electronic groupset and if Shimano aren’t going to extract the digit… well, full speed ahead.
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12 comments
Why take a chance on untested FSA when Shimano works out the box and is so user friendly. Bet Cav can't wait to get his!
Another load of complicated short lasting junk, which has nothing much to do with improving reliability or scope, and everything to do with making a simple job complicated and expensive.
Another symptom of the way the "cycle industry" is seriously mis-leading many.
If this makes Electronic gearing cheaper i'm all for it, because it's way to expensive!
And how much is cheap? Iphone cheap? Or bubble gum cheap?
Just hope it's better than some of the cheap FSA cranks...
I do prefer the Vision branding to FSA actually, and that rear mech looks cool.
Interesting also that you note the lower cost of producing electronic shifters. Clearly, that price premium isn't going away anytime soon if Shimano and Campag are left to their own devices, so competition would definitely be helpful.
Good news! Competition is a great thing.
More hydraulic brake systems are needed too.
I'd be surprised if FSA can easily build Shimano Di2 compatible components, albeit very pleasantly surprised.
While the technology used for sending the commands to the derailleur and so forth might be CANBUS, the actual software protocol facilitating the messages between the components over CANBUS will surely be a proprietary Shimano design (I'm not referring to the shifters, these are clearly just switches, hence the third party options we've seen here. The derailleurs however have CPU's in them).
A good example is the wireless Di2 adapter. It's ANT based, ANT like CANBUS is an open platform, but the protocol used to send the information over ANT is a proprietary Shimano one. I would imagine a similar situation exists with regards to Di2 signals over CANBUS, but i'd be happy to be proved wrong.
I'm not arguing it's impossible for FSA to reverse engineer a compatible derailleur, but I doubt its as simple as "Shimano used CANBUS, so anyone can make Di2 compatible stuff". I would imagine ensuring some degree of control over who can integrate with their system was surely a major technical and business requirement when the Di2 spec was drawn up.
Compared to the situation with mechanical groupsets, building interoperable electronic components without legal hurdles might actually turn out to be easier. At least in the US (and the EU has largely taken a lead from US decisions on this front), it's been held that black-box reimplementation of a protocol for reasons of interoperability is legitimate reverse engineering and permissible; the actual content of messages sent over a protocol (i.e. the messages on top of CANBUS, rather than CANBUS itself, which can be licensed without restriction) aren't patentable in and of themselves (the Oracle v Google fight over Java APIs is probably the one to watch on this). Assuming FSA can pick apart the content of Di2 messages on the wire, they can quite possibly make fully compatible parts regardless of Shimano's wishes.
Encryption of messages might be a way to force an all-licensed ecosystem, but it would come with substantial power and complexity drawbacks and the way the legal wind is blowing at the moment, breaking encryption solely for interoperability is considered acceptable, so Shimano might get months to a year on the competition before they were broken into again. SRAM might be in better shape on this front by using a wireless protocol, since that's encrypted by default and likely to have a better starting point in terms of low-overhead protocol encryption.
Personally, I'm looking forward to it. It's only a matter of time before someone builds up a converter that lets you use (say) EPS shifters with Shimano derailleurs, and without the faff and imprecision that converting mechanical systems entailed. Mix and match components are inevitable when they all talk binary.
Italian?? Taiwanese, me thought....
Joint Italian/American company IIRC - their manufacturing base is in Taiwan (used to be exclusively there I believe).
+10
I would really love to see a drop in the cost of electronic sets and I think more manufacturers would definitely drive that