I think it's about time that bike companies start investing more time into developing gearbox technology that's compact enough to be practical and and that's at a competitive weight point. The only concerns I have are reliability and ease of maintenance but neither of these factors can be resolved unless more time and money is invested from major brands such as Sram and Shimano. I don't however think that gear boxes will completely wipe out the traditional Derailleur and cassette system, but for riding genres such as downhill and gravity enduro I think this really makes sense.
Shimanos Alfine, and the Rohloff are already ridiculously reliable and low maintenance. Hopefully these and the Pinion will match their reliability. Way less maintenance and unreliability of a derailleur set up is definite.
About the same weight as a conventional drivetrain with none of the hassles, and being able to shift any time. Less unsprung weight, less maintenance, less to go wrong, win win win.
Release the 160mm 650b Enduro bike Cavalerie, can't wait.
I don't believe that is sub 39 for 1 second. I don't understand why bother going through all of this energy to advance the strength and durability of carbon, to push components to the edge to save weight, and then these guys are giving people a backpack full of aluminum. A BIKE IS NOT A MOTORCYCLE!!!! The whole point of the exercise is that a bike does not have a bunch of big chunky components that you need a motor to move around. If this gearbox was small enough to fit into the palm of your hand and functioned then, yeah it would be very impressive. They should just start fitting gas tanks to bikes just to look cool. -rant over.
I know... like why do people use derailleurs when you can just use a single-speed and its lighter and simpler. Damn technology. Im downgrading my frame to wood.