We
tested Cavaleire's Anakin, a French-made, alloy Effigear gearbox bike a few years ago. Now, the French company is finalizing their 29"-wheeled 160mm carbon enduro bike, the Blackbird.
The bike is built around the French-made Effigear gearbox.
Cavalerie wanted to build a carbon bike over three years ago, however, the conundrum with carbon for Cavalerie was sourcing the the right carbon fiber. According to Cavaleire's David Roumeas, in keeping with the spirit of the rest of the bike, gearbox included, they wanted to get the carbon from France, which proved to be a challenge.
Cavalerie were able to find a carbon expert along with a 3D printing expert, and then experimented with different designs before investing in the tooling. Now, after finding the correct materials and process, and with everything in place, their supply chain is said to be short and efficient.
The team at Cavalerie have been testing samples of the Blackbird for a year at this point and are now working on production tooling. They expect to have production bikes shipping this fall.
Batch runs for the Blackbird will be small, 5-10 bikes at a time, and Cavalerie is accepting pre-orders now. The bike will come standard with a Fast and Formula suspension set up, but there will be the option for a Fox build as well. The bike will be priced starting at $8,300 EUR. This already includes the French VAT.
The gearbox is shifted with a standard SRAM trigger shifter.
For more info, check out
Cabalerie's webpage.
This is why you simply don't see big brands going this route. They know it will be out of the price range of some of their customers and simply not what some of their other customers want. Also going and designing/manufacturing gearbox version of their existing bikes is unlikely to pay for the costs in the end.
That being said, I think I like effigear's approach better than Pinion. Pinion uses a series of staged overdrives, requiring the power to move through many gears. This [effigear] seems cleaner, and I bet has less power loss. The problem is that all the gears are being driven no matter what gear you are in. if they could figure out a selector device so the other gears would remain stationary when not in use, then efficiency could be dramatically improved.
Other than that, I HATE getting back on my MTB with traditional shifting after riding pinion. Shifting while coasting or stationary is so convenient, and the fine spacing is just awesome. And the shifter has a very rewarding feedback when you bang through gears, absolutely no delay and it NEVER misses a beat.
1. Proprietary cranks (damaged one set already, good luck finding those when you're on a riding holiday somewhere that isn't Germany)
2. Proprietary rear cogs (not many people making 30t single rear rings... and they do wear out)
3. Ridiculous clip-on plastic dust covers that fall off all the time
4. Grip shift only - just make a double trigger ffs
5. High weight
6. High cost
7. Having to send them back to Germany for repair when they leak (and many of them do, my first one included)
8. Having a second freewheel for no good reason (like 20 degrees between engagement points too, and tons of noise because the chain can overrun forwards).
Inability to downshift under power isn't great either but it's a reasonable tradeoff for being able to shift when not pedaling at all.
Efficiency and range are IMO the things they HAVE got sorted. It's all the other stuff that sucks.
Gearboxes have a single chainline all the time, which reduces drag/friction compared to derailleurs which are usually always cross chained.
Mine's a P12 Pinion so it's a bit on the porky side compared to the cast magnesium C12 Pinions, but that is the only negative where it absolutely pisses over derailleur systems in every other respect.
The range on the 12 speed is 600% and is HUGE! I was riding 10 speed for years (never rode 11 or 12 speed because I didn't see the point). There is a 9 Pinion speed version which is lighter than the 12 speed and STILL has more range than Eagle. I genuinely think I would be happy to spec the 9 speed on my next bike.
I really don't get the incescant quest for more gears tbh. Just get fitter ffs.
The shifting is beautifully precise and mechanical, you just grab a gear and go. Even when you're stopped at the trail head, or exiting a corner in the wrong gear, you just click click click, lay down the power and go, seamlessly.
I can't praise it enough, it's the system every mtb'er deserves.
We have done some test bench, the Effigear efficiency is close to derailleur on short gears and becomes better on long gear. Before publishing data we want to do more test to confirm the first result.
We also want to do the test bench after 1-hour rides on the muddy and dusty ride, that's where the gearbox is a game changer!
Props for the bike, looks amazing! Would you do a (cheaper) metal version too at some point?
The blackbird is 148x12 boost standard so the customer can use the wheelset he wants, thanks to this choice we try different freewheel hubs and discover that in many situations the gearbox freewheel as less drag than the hub will freewheeling on a downhill.
For an aluminium version hard to say now: we already have a lot of work because of ongoing projects (including this one!) so we don't want to mess by going in too many directions
Thanks for the update and good luck with your bikes!
The whole ignorant "it's a motorbike" thing is getting so tired. It's like saying that a powered paraglider is the same as a 747 and should only be able to take off and land at Heathrow or JFK.
( I'm not 100% sold on them by the way and definitely get the land access issues etc)
I’ve ridden a number of different ebikes on at least a half a dozen occasions in a few different locations. I’ve also ridden motorbikes most of my life, mainly sportsbikes but also dirt bikes. And I’ve been riding push bikes since shortly after I learnt to walk, probably like most people on this forum. I certainly think ebikes are neat and really fun devices. However, and my recent ride on a Merida 160 ebike confirmed this, they are definitely not mountain bikes in the traditional sense. They are pretty much just piss weak motorbikes with the throttle in a different spot. Still good fun though, after all they still have 2 wheels and a set of handlebars.
The "pedal assist" is a red herring- you can gently spin your legs generating about 10 watts, and the bike will happily blast out the other 200 on your climb up. Converting a pedal assist to a straight throttle, or incorporating a throttle is easy as well.
For reference: I own one, and think it's the bee's knees for commuting. But I'm also not so willfully blind as to pretend they aren't going to be ludicrously overpowered in a very short time frame.
Embrace the e-bike for what it is: a nifty new class of motorized vehicles that are going to open up some very interesting possibilities.
But don't pretend that magical fairy dust legalize somehow makes them not motorized.
It doesn't matter how powerful they become if you're limited to roughly 20mph.
They're definitely NOT motorbikes when comparing them to say a dirt bike and likewise they're not mountain bikes, however, they're a damn lot closer to a mountain bike.
As they stand now the risk they pose to other trail users and the trail damage they can do is no different to a traditional mountain bike. That's a fact. To judge them against the standards of a motor bike is simply not fair. Everything else is negative bias and hype.
It will be interesting to see how it all shakes out. They're not going away no matter how much whining there is.
For me. I can go either way. They're super fun but if they went away tomorrow I'd be just fine on my regular bikes. I ride them more anyway.
It's the closed mindedness and unwillingness to accept new things and look at it from a different angle that irks the shit out of me.
I've done so many sports where this has been an issue. Water skiers hated wakeboarders, snow skiers hated snowboarders , windsurfers hated kitesurfers and surfers hate EVERYONE.
As you admit, they are motor vehicles, and that's the end of the story.
Everything you wrote past that is A) bad physics, B) wrong, and C) an attempt to wriggle out of them being motor vehicles.
Weight doesn't worry me a great deal, especially when the unsprung mass is reduced. Drag is a huge concern, though, and I'm keen to see further details.
When pedaling on flat ground, mass has virtually no impact on your speed, but drivetrain drag always will.
I want to love geaboxes, but the drag issue has to be solved.
Having had a pinion bike, no you can't shift under load, not tried an effigear, the pawl like shift mechanism might allow it.
So you could say the Pinion is a component bolted to the bike frame, while for the Effigear the gearbox is an integrated part of the frame.
So it looks similar, but it's different.
Mens, try and ride some gearbox bikes, and stop earing false rumors / clichés.
Have myself a Cavalerie Anakin, the 27" Aluminium enduro bike of Cavalerie equiped with an Effigear Gearbox.
No lies here, bike and gears are just smooth as f*ck, gears passes under charge, up&down, on and off the bike, WITH classic Trigger, Bike is definitely tailored for enduro use and abuse, and cherry on the cake transmission stay at the top even in mud .
444% is not enough for you to get to the top??? So you are not really a moutainbiker and i don't think with even 600% will get you to ride your bike to the top.
come on guys, come to a gearbox, it's so natural that you will wondering why even big brands don't do this kind of transmission.
also, Please do the light version of inner cogs with carbon inners and steel tooths or something, those full metal cogs lookin superheavy just from a picture, its like in motorbike, but you definitely dont have a such a torque in your legs
BUT i feel some micro DRAG, but that was totaly OK, was better than dirty or dry chain, which also have brutal drag of multiple Watts! (5W i think? )
"Instant and smooth shifting of gears in any situation.
Shifting of gears under load, without pedaling, or even stopped."
Oh la lá
"commute on a pinion bike" - yeah fine for commuting but thats not smashing through rock gardens at speed. I want to be able to hold onto my grips without any shift mishap that'll occur.
"Going back to a derailleur is like going back two decades in time" - You realize that roughly two decades (really three decades at this point) is when gripshifters were a thing.
I want a gearboxes to be a thing, but they have some issues they still need to work out.
I understand it's very difficult to convey the ease of shifting by words. It's even not that evident when you test ride a gearbox bike. But after 2000 miles, going back onto a traditional bike, I really had to re-learn how to shift "properly" - not when standing, not when coasting, repeatedly hammer on a heavy thumb shifter before going into a climb... This is when you realize what a crutch derailleurs are.
Other than the tiny water bottle that bike looks pretty sweet!