Updated: Nicolai to launch B-Boxx, a Hammerschmidt rival
Nicolai's new B-Boxx planetary gear system (Nicolai)
Nicolai unveiled their new Hammerschmidt rival, the B-Boxx, at this weekend's in-house show at their factory in Lubbrechtsen, Germany.
They are keeping details of the planetary gear system, which has been developed in partnership with Bionicon, close to their chest.
But CEO Karlheinz Nicolai told us: "The current prototype of the B-Boxx works great! Super-smooth function, nice design and under-load shifting."
It looks set to be available in a range of colours, but not for at least another year.
"We have to invest huge tooling costs and we have to do a lot of long-term durability testing," said Nicolai. "Because of this, there will be no mass production before winter 2010/2011."
This weekend's show was the fourth time Nicolai had opened their doors to the public. Customers could go on factory tours, have sneak peaks at the latest bikes and technology, and take part in workshops showing them how to maintain and tweak their rides. There was a relaxed atmosphere, with a barbecue and plenty of beer.
Nicolai said that when you buy, or are even interested in buying a Nicolai bike, you become one of the family: "And, of course, we like to look after the family we have created." For more information, visit www.nicolai.net.
Karlheinz Nicolai shows customers around his company's factory in Lubbrechtsen
User Comments
There are 6 comments on this post
Showing 1 - 6 of 6 comments
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Militant_biker
Posted Tue 25 Aug, 9:38 am UTC Flag as inappropriate
Mmmmmm. Hope it retrofits my Bionicon :)
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AidanR
Posted Tue 25 Aug, 11:01 am UTC Flag as inappropriate
I don't understand why the Hammerschmidt (and now B-Boxx) gets all the attention... they weren't there first. Schlumpf have been making these drives for years but because they're not a big company they never seem to get mentioned by the journalists. Is it because they can't afford to dole out freebies?
http://www.schlumpf.ch/antriebe_engl.htm
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PissedOffCil
Posted Tue 25 Aug, 2:58 pm UTC Flag as inappropriate
Aidan, it's probably a big part marketing. I would also add that they had technology before it's time.
Thruth is there we're other aspects of mountain bikes that needed refining before riders started carring about gear boxes. Suspension technology for once has gone a long way so ridders start thinking about improving other aspects of their rides so the gear boxes comes in.
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NatoED
Posted Tue 25 Aug, 9:18 pm UTC Flag as inappropriate
in fact browning got there first with the Browning Automatic Gears , and when I say Browning yes that's the company that made the BAR rifle in WWII and the Browning .303 and .50 machine guns. The made great parts for bicycles too.
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Matt Skinner
Posted Wed 26 Aug, 1:49 pm UTC Flag as inappropriate
When SRAM launched Hammerschmidt last year at Eurobike we obviously covered it, but we also spent a lot of time with the guys on the Schlumpf stand too looking at their MTB set up which requires a tap of the heel for quick shifts - rather than using a bar mounted shifter. All this was in our 2009 Preview Issue (What Mountain Bike issue 89) last year.
The issue with Schlumpf - and to a degree also the B-Boxx system, given it's not available yet (!) - is the economy of scale and the potential availability to the widest range of end users. Hammerschmidt is still - as far as we know - the only widely available crank-based planetary gear system out there. But certainly there are plenty of interesting transmission ideas that we'll pick up on further at Eurobike and Interbike, and I'm hoping that 5Rot (www.5rot.com) will be there again with an evolved version of their hydraulic shift system.
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Thermo1
Posted Wed 26 Aug, 8:58 pm UTC Flag as inappropriate
How come Schlumpf, Syncros and StorageTek all have the same S logo?
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