Lowest Ultegra DI2 groupset price?

js14

Ribble was offering the full external Ultegra DI2 group (including crankset, brakes, cassette) for less than £770 on Friday. This is the best price I've seen in a good while. I was tempted, especially as my 10 speed Ultegra is getting on for 6 years old, but managed to resist. I still think DI2 is overpriced compared to the real extra manufacturing costs of adding a couple of motors, a battery and some clever electronics. Now if Shimano could get the cost down to £100 to £150 or so more than the mechanical version, they would clean up.

daniel_b

£770 for the entire shebang?

That's very good, cheapest I had seen was and is £900 from crc, so with cashback and bc discout would make it about £794.
Agreed though, still a large wedge of cash.
With the current weakness of the pound, can only see prices going one way, Tiagra/105/Ultegra have already shot up a lot.
On that basis if you can get di2 for sub £800, I would be inclined to snap it up.

meanredspider

Yes - it is good. And I don't think it's too bad value either: I don't suppose it was cheap to develop and "a couple of motors" really doesn't do the system justice: I guess they're stepper motors and they need to be light, small, robust, reliable and efficient.

daniel_b

Indeed it wasn't that long ago it was a total struggle to get Ultegra 6700 for much less than £600, so to get di2 for £770 seems entirely reasonable to me. Not sure if I can justify buying one for the future though, can I......?

sloppyschleckonds

Seems a high price to pay for the ugliest groupset known to man

meanredspider

Daniel B wrote:

Not sure if I can justify buying one for the future though, can I......?

Ha - if you can't, nobody can You have purchase justification skills that are way beyond most of us

js14

The mechanical version 6800 was also on offer at £445 so that's still more than £300 extra for DI2.

I agree with meanredspider that development costs probably account for a significant part of the price premium of DI2 in the early years. But Shimano have probably recovered most of these costs already. Going electronic reduces the need for precision mechanics, so manufacturing costs for the di2 derailleurs are likely very similar to the mechanical versions. As for the DI2 levers, the mechanical complexity has been reduced to near zero; they probably only cost a few quid each at the factory gate!

meanredspider

JS14 wrote:

Going electronic reduces the need for precision mechanics, so manufacturing costs for the di2 derailleurs are likely very similar to the mechanical versions.

I can't say I agree with this. I haven't pulled a Di2 RD to bits but, along with high precision of the motor itself, the geartrain is going to be robust and high precision to avoid backlash. The designs are constantly evolving so R&D costs will continue.

Above all, though, reducing costs will only canabalise their own market in mechanical groups of which there are a great deal - why do it?

js14

It turns out that the price I quoted was too good to be true. Since my original post, I discovered that the Ribble site thinks I am in the US when I connect with my mobile. I guess this is because I use OperaMax and my traffic maybe goes via a US based server. Ribble displays prices in sterling for US shoppers but apparently knocks off the 20% VAT, hence the bargain prices on the screen. Sorry if I misled anyone : at the time I thought it really was a good Black Friday deal.

pinno

SloppySchleckonds wrote:

Seems a high price to pay for the ugliest groupset known to man

+1.

More importantly, why has Road General crept into Cake Stop?

capt_slog

SloppySchleckonds wrote:

Seems a high price to pay for the ugliest groupset known to man

To me it just seems a lot to pay, full stop.