2023 Pinkbike Awards: Innovation of the Year Winner
The finalists for the 2023 Innovation of the Year were the Cane Creek Tigon, Classified Powershift, SRAM Transmission, Pinion E-Drive and Shimano Linkglide.
The Innovation of the Year award goes to...
Pinion E-Drive Motor Gearbox Unit
The Pinion Motor Gearbox Unit (MGU) takes the win largely because, of all of the wonderful innovations nominated for this award, the E-Drive has the greatest potential to change how full suspension eMTBs can be designed for the better.
Centralizing weight around the bottom bracket, the Pinion E-Drive tangibly increases the sprung-to-unsprung mass ratio, something that is widely agreed to be advantageous for vehicle handling in general. And, with only a single sprocket at the rear wheel, suspension designers must consider only one chain position, versus the 11 or 12 chain positions that come with a modern wide range cassette.
In packing all of the necessary hardware to deliver 9 or 12 discreet gears alongside the 85 Nm motor, Pinion also do away with a vulnerable derailleur. And, that single, compact unit is also claimed to offer maintenance-free functionality for 10,000 kilometers - requiring nothing more than a 10-minute oil change thereafter. That's an astounding improvement over the incumbent derailleur-operated drivetrain, and can be considered even more impressive against the backdrop of the reliability of current mid-drive motors that are commonly in use.
On regular bikes, the gearbox does of course offer all of those benefits. However, the additional weight and the additional drag in the system have been two factors limiting uptake. On pairing the technology with a motor, both of those factors are largely banished to oblivion. Oh, and unlike some of Pinion's gearbox-only systems, the E-Drive units benefit from a more ergonomically-pleasing trigger shifter (instead of grip shift, which proved to be woefully lacking in popularity).
While Ralf Hauser's first impression of the Pinion E-Drive was largely very positive, we are yet to put this technology through any long term testing. We have a good understanding of Pinion's capacity to produce reliable gearbox technology, but the reliability of the motor component is yet to determined. We are yet to see any full production bikes rocking the 9- or 12-speed MGU, though the Rotwild RX.1000, Simplon Rapcon PMAX Pinion, and Bulls Vulca Evo look set to change that imminently.
As was mentioned in the nomination article, Pinion also offers their Smart.Shift system without the motor for use on regular bikes - that means an electronic trigger shifter is now available instead of the twist-shifter that Pinion used for years. Faster shifting combined with the reliability of a gearbox could help the system gain more widespread acceptance, but no matter what, there's no denying that it's an innovative advancement.
The Gamux DH team used the non-e-bike version of the Smart.Shift gearbox this year on the World Cup circuit.
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If that doesn’t happen it will continue to be nothing more than a niche for those in the know.
First though you have to convince the bike companies to take the product on and that’s much more difficult - we have cost, serviceability, availability etc - could Pinion get close to meeting a huge upswing in demand?
SRAM and shimano are the drivetrain gatekeepers right now - maybe in 10 years things will change, but right now they will dictate the course of travel - you want proof of that look at how SRAM has managed to push the UDH and ask yourself how many other brands could have achieved that?
Here you are looking for bike companies to adopt a small brands ebike motor / drivetrain solution in preference over the status quo - that would be like asking Ford to use Tesla drivetrain and batteries.
Maybe pinion will be bought out and get the big push into ebike dominance, who knows.
@jayacheess: history says that's not always the case.
Every single brand is producing only for the sake of statistics. There is not enough dentists in the world to buy the e-cars.
Something far more intriguing than hydrogen to me is green ammonia. Can be produced from intermittent power like wind and solar, can be stored and burned later for baseload storage without the need for batteries and much longer term storage options, and can be used for transport or power generation. And is much denser energy than hydrogen
It has some storage issues to deal with, plus the heavier than air and suffocation thing (like propane) but is less Hindenburg-y than hydrogen! Plus it can be used as fertilizer, and if combined with excess CO2 from industry to make Urea or UAN, could actually serve to sequester carbon in the soil as fertilizer.
Or maybe it’s just trickery, a one-off throwaway result to fool you into thinking otherwise.
So far all the proper mountain bikes that I’ve seen with MGU have have ugly carbon frames with shallow seatpost insertion and a huge price tag!
\m/
- Alfred describing PB editorial staff
Way to go bicycle website, choose a motorcycle product for your 'innovation of the year'.
Color me very disappointed.
While this is a painfully obvious use of the tech, it has no business being given this award due to it being an even further evolution of bicycles into motorcycles. Hey look, this even has an internal gearbox with the motor integrated? You know, like on EVERY MOTORCYCLE IN THE WORLD!
Reading comprehension people. Reading comprehension.
You missed a word there.
But you're wrong. In fact my opinions about ebikes have been influenced by my experiences with them, not from making assumptions about them. And mtb is not at all the only human powered recreation I participate in, like sea kayaking or sailboat racing; I like the hard effort. And I regularly do these things with people of all ages and abilities and no one gets left behind because we're nice people. I don't need a motor to fulfill my happiness.
Now, for urban mobility they are awesome, but for riding on trails built for human powered recreation they simply don't fit the description. Hence my dislike of them.
Go right ahead, ride them on motorcycle tracks, just keep of the bicycle trails.
So, we filter out the award?
Don't be afraid to give users a little pushback on repeatedly being dinkbutts. It makes the site better for all of us.
Instead you say here is how to limit the reach of your website?
That feels... Crazy and not a little rude to the 'products' that pay your wages.
When did it become the norm for writers on here to denigrate users (the product) for disliking motorized bicycles?
Myself and a lot of others don't think they belong on a bicycle website, nor on trails for human powered recreation; because they don't fit.
We are the users (the way the site makes money) and we are speaking our minds on the corruption of the sport.
Preach the good word.
It’s a motor and a real transmission. Stop calling that a bicycle.
or is it the marriage of the two the thing that sent you over the edge on this? Lol
When's the advent calendar coming out?
Might want to check a normal calendar. Christmas already happened my dude.