Automatic Shift Bikes Slow to Catch On

Aug. 30 -- For those who never quite shift into a lower gear in time for steep hills or who have greased their hands too many times linking up popped chains, manufacturers are offering a system to make cycling simpler.

Here's what's required: Hop on, pedal, steer.

"[For] anyone who has complained, 'I can't even shift this thing,' this is the perfect bike," says Josh Woodbury, spokesman for Shimano, the Japan-based bicycle part company.

Three years ago Shimano began marketing what they call Digital Integrated Intelligence technology — a handlebar-mounted, computerized unit that decides when you need to shift and does it for you.

Also entering the automatic "comfort bike" market is Browning SmartShift. The Washington-based Browning family, better known as gun-makers, has developed a similar automatic shifting system with a unique gear transmission that they claim is superior to Shimano's since it can shift under a heavy load without derailing.

For the Gear-Fearful

Both are higher-tech versions of a mechanical automatic shift system that has been available in the Autobike and LandRider models since the late-1980s. Critics have said the old mechanical models gave auto shift bicycles a bad name when early versions proved unreliable. (Michael Gamstetter, editor of Bicycle Retailer News, called the early Autobike model "a piece of junk.")

But so far the computerized shifting systems have won good reviews. The systems monitor the road speed of the bike and calculate when it's time to shift to keep a rider's cadence steady. Their target customers aren't high-powered Lance Armstrong-types, but mainly casual cyclists who feel overwhelmed by manual shifts.

"More experienced cyclists want to be able to select their own gears the way someone driving a Ferrari might prefer a stick over an automatic," says Carson Stanwood, another spokesman for Shimano. "But my mother is 72 and she adores this bike."

One key dilemma, however, is price. Casual bikers — the targeted customers — are less likely to spend a lot of money on their bicycles and these systems aren't cheap, at least not yet.