I’d like to see more commentary from the cycling media addressing the SRAM interchangeable battery patent and how that impacts the industry. Maybe some commentary would sway opinion to the point they walk it back?
I find it absurd that they hold a patent on the ability to have interchangeable front and rear batteries. I’d love it if Shimano made their first wireless road groupsets in such a way that a simple and cheap aftermarket change (3d printed part?) would allow for user interchangeable batteries.
The rumours I’ve read about the upcoming Shimano wireless road system is that the batteries won’t be interchangeable. Last weekend, a long way from home, I had to swap my front and rear SRAM AXS batteries. Something I apparently wouldn’t be able to do on Shimano. The flow-on logistics of this is also dumb.
SRAM enforcing this patent creates waste, intentionally makes the industry more complicated, and generally leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
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SRAM can’t make a front derailleur that works because of Shimano’s patents, so perhaps it’s just the bike industry fuckery balancing itself
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Campagnolo batteries are not interchangeable.
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He may have been asking why Campagnolo can make a good front derailleur if SRAM can’t. Which is a valid question. SRAM’s solution to poor FD performance/chain drops was to limit the allowable front chainring gap from 16T down to 13T, and then make up the range difference on the cassette with a 10T cog.
Meanwhile Campagnolo is here with 2x13 two years before the big players and an utterly unrivaled amount of supported gearing options at the same price as their competitors and can’t seem to get any love because everyone who ride it when it was good before, is dying off.
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No different from most of the industry, no? Why do we need a ridiculous number of headset, BB, valve, freehub, seatpost (I’ll stop there because the list is endless) formats? There’s so much opportunity to reduce waste in the industry it’s not funny - but then the same is true of everyday life too.
The real waste-reducing answer, as far as electronic batteries are concerned, would be to enforce the use of a particular type of already available battery, but nobody really has the power to do that.
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It’s also the reason why e. g. Rotor tried to make hydraulically actuated groupset, they had no patent portfolio to lean on.
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This is how patents work. And sometimes - sadly - some things are not excluded when a patent is granted.
Maybe a competitor could find a way to circumvent the issue. E.g. by having an adapter. Or by creating a possibility to work with a charging cable between batteries. Or…
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True.
I can also see a world where Shimano is clear prior to the release of their wireless drivetrain that batteries won’t be interchangeable until 2032 or later due to SRAMs patent.
Anger the masses. Create social media agitation that pressures SRAM to drop it.
Anyway, I think way too much chatter occurs around 1-2watt savings, width of head tubes as a proxy for aero-ness and whether one should use CP or FTP. While a huge chunk of electronic drivetrain bikes will probably be sold with two different batteries for 6+ years for the marginal benefit of SRAM and the detriment of everyone else.
Whether patents and the way they are granted are in total a good or a bad thing for our society is surely worth a debate. But a company using a patent to their competitive advantage is just what patents are there for.
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I think patents are designed to protect intelligent, novel ideas. I’m not sure how using one battery type is novel or intelligent…
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Sram mechs are fine, it’s their front chain rings that suck. Stick in a shimano crankset and they shift beautifully (though if course every one will tell you your bike will explode because of the 50 micron difference in chain roller radius).
I think the Sram patent is actually slightly more specific, and related to their use of the clip to retain the battery. Hence shimano having a removable battery but having the clip on the mech itself. When I think about the sram design it isn’t like anything I can think of from other devices, but works really well in the application.
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Shimano has one of the largest and most stifling patent libraries in the industry. SRAM made etap wireless because di2 wired groupset patents were so oppressive. Very funny to me how quickly this has swung around on Shimano.
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SRAM, Shimano, and Campagnolo probably all have patented designs the others would like to use. In theory, they could create a patent pool where they essentially cross-licensed everything in that pool. I think something like UDH would be more consequential, since it affects frame design.
Or they could create a standards body for agreeing on things like, I dunno, sprocket spacing.
The fact that they haven’t done either that suggests none of them think it’s to their benefit.
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As others pointed out, that’s how it goes with patents. As for that bad taste in your mouth, hop in the way-back machine to the mid-80’s, where for MTBs you’d find Shimano enforcing their patent on the floating upper pulley. It was not the only reason why Sun Tour failed as a company, but it sure didn’t help since Shimano equipped index shifting bikes sold far easier than their Sun Tour equivalents. It also did’t help Campagnolo either.
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A big difference SRAM has versus Shimano and Campagnolo is that SRAM is relatively new compared to the others, Shimano and Campy have been both accumulating a lot of patents over decades and decades. It’s harder for SRAM to navigate between all the patents those two already had before SRAM was even born. Shimano vs Campy were inventing and filing for patents at a more comparable rate/timeline.
But this can be both good and bad.
Bad: SRAM front shifting has never been close to as good as Shimano and Campy for exemple. Rear shifting is not as smooth and silent as well.
Good: many patents forced the american company to think outside the box which lead them to some innovations that are/were nice. Double-Tap shifting was created because of Shimano and Campy’s many patents, it wasn’t great on mechanical groups but eTap is very nice to use and intuitive IMO, much better than Di2 to use in the cold with thicker gloves. Also, their front shifting being well below par, it made them push for 1X groupsets which became the norm off-road.
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Arguably, SRAM is older than Shimano and Campy. The SRAM branding only dates to 1999 but arguably the company dates back to 1895 (Sachs, which was sold to SRAM in 1997) and to 1920 (Huret, which Sachs bought in 1980). Campy started in 1933 and Shimano (Iron Works) in 1921.
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That may well be but Sachs Huret were largely irrelevant by the 70s while Campy and Shimano dominated the market.
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It was novel when they created it. At the time Shimano had the one di2 battery and had patents on tthat construction so SRAM had to do something else.
And remember that initially SRAM was critiqued for it because it added weight in what the bike industry at the time perceived as being “the wrong place”
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I wouldn’t be surprised if they all got together to do something like this to try and fend off the Chinese brands.
I also wouldn’t be surprised if the SRAM battery patents expiration leads to the groupset equivalent of the DT Swiss Ratchet Rings now being on virtually everyone’s hubs.
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