Digging through patent documents can sometimes offer hints at what we might be riding in a few years’ time. Many of the weird and wonderful designs don’t see the light of day, but even then it’s interesting to see what ideas the bike industry’s brains are working on. Here are a few that we’ve spotted lately from SRAM that all relate to AXS electronic shifting components.
SRAM’s Axle-mounted AXS batteryA patent filed by SRAM in 2021 called “power supply in a bicycle” shows a battery housed in a thru-axle that could be used to power an electronic derailleur or other electronic components. The patent art shows the axle battery connected to the derailleur in several different ways, but all the drawings show a style of direct mount derailleur like the one we saw here and which was patented earlier in 2021 – we covered that patent here.
Some embodiments (possible versions) have…