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When are we getting British made tin foil so I can wear a British tin foil hat
I hope not.
Traditional group sets have iterated towards a place where innovations are becoming smaller and smaller. They are close to as good as they can be - the future is just going to be about making them cheaper.
Launching a new MTB groupset brand is like launching a competitor to Blockbuster Video in the 1990s. Not a good long term option.
Hopefully British companies are concentrating on the next generation of drivechain technology - enclosed gearboxes, integrated e-bike technology, etc.
It seems like there's an awful lot of margin in electronic shifting. It should be cheaper than mechanical. The software isn't complicated.
To work, I think it would have to be truly innovative in terms of function or performance. I’m sure most of the reason for one British success story - Hope, was the reliability of their early hydraulic disc brake offering - when most others were poorer. Similarly, others like ARM, offered a superior product that allowed innovation.
I think, it would have to be something as already mentioned - like a gearbox that innovatedly offered cheaper cost, lower weight or less power loss or wider range - maybe all of those. This is the only way to capitalise on the skills, economy and associated costs of manufacturing in the UK.
It’s to differentiate, it’s intentional and designed to be so.
Why would they though. Its would be two parts (or more for deore, xtr etc) which means another few weeks of designers time, another set of tooling, another inventory item in stock control. No company interested in profit is going to go though all that to deliberately frustrate customers over a part they don't even sell as a spare so can't charge a premium for xtr over slx. It'll just be an improvement you're not appreciating.
And this is Shimano, a company famous for its manufacturing efficiency, from the country that pretty much perfected the modern concepts of manufacturing process engineering.
You're going to need to re-tune your tinfoil hat.
So you can't transfer parts with better features across to cheaper product lines (in this case the clutch adjustment port) and/or you are forced to buy new when a single part is broken (due to no spares support) or source parts from businesses who break, at a cost, for after market sales.
They also put a little plastic tab in the old XT shifter cover to differentiate it from the higher spec XTR, disabling the multi release function. That's right a different moulding (they always pick the cheapest part to alter) just to prevent it.
The above must be fake news from the Shimano Conspiracy Cult eh?
There are numerous examples of these types of practices. Xbox 360 had a proprietary connector and boot loader (the boot loader could be copied) to prevent users connecting their own cheaper laptop hard drives. Again the plastic connector cost peanuts to produce.
It's also rife in car spares and electronics.
So this tin foil hat you are on about?