A good three years ago, a Japanese company revolutionised road bike shifting with two motors, four buttons, a few metres of cable and a battery. Now Campagnolo is entering the race with its first rival product. However, the assumption that Campagnolo's EPS - Electronic Power Shift - is a hastily knitted answer to Shimano's Di2 is wrong. This is because Vicenza has been working on the prototypes for 20 years; functional parts were spotted in professional sport as early as 2004. However, new developments in battery and motor technology and the jump to eleven sprockets have repeatedly set the project back in recent years. The anecdote that the planned start of series production in 2010 was postponed again because a water ingress paralysed the electronics of the Movistar team bikes, which were racing through a downpour at 150 km/h on the roof of the material van, can be believed or not. However, the fact that the development took so much time makes one thing clear above all: the Italians' internal benchmark for their own product is extremely high. And so it is that the EPS now supposedly still functions perfectly even one metre below the surface of the water.
Special frames are useful
The EPS system consists of electronic Ergopower levers, the motor-driven rear derailleur and front derailleur, a small interface with LED, which is in the rider's field of vision, and the "power unit" on the down tube, which contains the battery and also has a monitoring and display function. These components are connected by cables with five-pin plugs. The somewhat bulky battery box is conspicuous, as its size means that it cannot be positioned under the chainstay - now a favourite place for the Di2 battery. Some manufacturers have prepared mounts under the down tube. The frame should also have at least seven millimetre openings for the cables, which corresponds to the diameter of the connectors. External routing is theoretically possible, but not really attractive, as the connections are not located on the components but ideally disappear into the frame.
The rear derailleur, which is much less bulky than the Di2 changer, is a technical and visual gem. The trick is a rod-shaped linear motor that moves the parallelogram. The front derailleur, on the other hand, carries a clearly visible "rucksack" in which the motor sits. The arrangement of the additional components gives rise to the suspicion that the designers have copied one or two details from the competition. But there are differences in the way they work. While Shimano's Di2 sends the signal from the control button more or less directly to the motors, Campa's system first calculates the signal: The analogue button press is converted by the interface into a binary code, which the power unit processes and only then sends the signals to the rear derailleur and front derailleur. This happens so quickly that you don't notice it during operation. The complicated process allows, among other things, the realisation of a function that can be an important argument for EPS: With "Multishift", several gears can be shifted at once with a long press of a button.
Quiet at the back, loud at the front
The first contact leaves a good impression. The much-praised shape of the Ergopower has of course also been transferred to the EPS. The thumb lever, on the other hand, has given way to an S-shaped control button that is easy to reach from all handlebar positions. An audible and perceptible click provides feedback as to whether the operation has actually been triggered - Di2 buttons do not offer such direct feedback. The multi-shift function is also quickly internalised: the rider can quickly feel how long to press for two, three or four gear steps, and it only becomes imprecise above that. If you press a button for 1.5 seconds, the rear derailleur swivels across the entire cassette. The rear shifting process is barely audible, the noise of the linear motor is drowned out by the wind. The front derailleur, on the other hand, announces the chainring change with a clear whirring noise. It shifts over first, only to shift into the correct position a fraction of a second later. Trimming is not necessary, this also happens automatically. The adjustment is made on the handlebars. A mode button is concealed on the inside of the rubber grips, which can be used to display the charge status and set the system to adjustment mode.
Adjusting the position of the rear derailleur, as may be necessary when changing a wheel, is just one function. Another, the "Reset" function, allows the rear derailleur to be calibrated on the 2nd and 10th sprocket; the system recalculates the positions of all other sprockets from these reference points. This allows manufacturing tolerances to be compensated for, for example. The system performs fault diagnostics automatically and continuously. If a malfunction occurs, the LED in the battery box uses one of six colours to indicate which component has been detected as faulty and an additional warning tone sounds. Any false alarms can be neutralised by briefly pressing the mode button. The battery of the EPS cannot be removed, so the bike has to be plugged in to recharge. This takes a maximum of four hours. As the self-diagnosis system means that a small amount of current is constantly flowing, the range also decreases with the time the bike is stationary; Campagnolo specifies 1,500 to 2,000 kilometres for a single battery charge, depending on the distance ridden. This also corresponds to our previous experience.
Conclusion: Riding a Super Record has always been a luxury. The EPS goes one better. The complete groupset for more than 3,000 euros epitomises the ultimate in technical development, at least as far as the bicycle world is concerned. If you don't want to spend that much money, you can still save 500 euros with a Record EPS. Or wait until the presentation of the electric Athena, which will not be long in coming.
