IF we talking about IGH or Internal Gear Hub we all know if this is all about gearing ration inside your bicycle rear hub.
For those who doesn’t know, regular multi speed bicycle is using a set of sprockets that being arranged side by side and then installed on the right side of rear hub. These set of sprockets are being called as a Cassette. This design is work very well and easy to maintain.
To shift between gears, we use a special part that being called as Derailleur or Derailler.
As the name implied, a Derailleur main function is to derail your chain from one sprocket into another. If the chain get derailed and then being caught by another sprocket, you will have variation of your speed ratio.
There are two type of Derailleurs, Front Derailleur and Rear Derailleur. And Powershift is an alternative Front Derailleur.
The basic idea of Powershift is basically an Internal Gear Hub. But the big different between IGH and Powershift is: IGH gear cannot be shifted under load. While Powershift can.
Because Powershift can be shifted under load, this is basically an improvement from a regular Front Derailleur.
Why?
Because Front Derailleur also having problem if being shifted under load.
Since Powershift is basically an Internal Gear Hub that being modified as a Front Derailleur alternative, they still need Cassette and regular Rear Derailleur.
So, cassette and Rear Derailleur work as regular gearing ratio on speed variation. While Powershift will work as the multiplier of the current gear position from the Derailleur.
This innovation is great, but still too expensive.
While I personally like this idea, but since this is basically a modifed IGH, the price point is still too high if compared with regular Front Derailleur.
First, we cannot use regular cassettes. It need a custom made cassettes, which is bring us to more money.
Second, it uses wireless shifting. And we all know, this kind of technology still too expensive, while currently they still did not make the cable actuation version.
Third, only available for Tru Axle frames. Leading to regular drop out frames are useless.
So I hope, this design will get familiarized and then copied by other manufacturer to surpress the price.