News
City-bike boom leads to hub-gear shortages
Carlton Reid Oct 15 2007, 11:15am
It's not all fine on the city bike front
Want to spec a bike with a hub-gear? Get in the queue, it could be a 200+ day wait. The humble hub-gear is back in a big way.
Many of the city bikes on display at Eurobike and Interbike were fitted with hub-gears from Shimano, SRAM, Sturmey Archer, and Rohloff.
These bikes were wildly popular with show visitors but there may be problems getting enough bikes to market to satisfy consumer demand.
Another key filip for the hub-gear sector - and the reason for the longer than usual lead times - has been the run on hub gears for the city hall rental bikes now becoming increasingly popular across Europe.
JCDecaux and Clear Channel in France, and Bicinceitta in Italy, are building tens of thousands of hub-geared bikes.
Paris alone will have 20,600 Velib self-service bikes by December.
