 You don't need to be an 'investor' to invest in Singletrack: 6 days left: 95% of target - Find out more
If you want to run a 10-42T sram cassette do you now need to go to an XD driver hub body as well? Seems a little excessive/ clever marketing.
Yes
Seems like necessary engineering.
If you can think of a way to mount a 10t sprocket on a normal freehub and 11 sprockets without making it wider (and then needing a new hub) please enlighten us.
New XTR 11-40, 11 speed cassette on a standard freehub is another option if you want to mix and match and don't want the new freehub. Wouldn't go for it myself.... XD freehub is a nice design and no other way to fit a 10t sprocket without it as mentioned above!
I really don't see the point of 11 speed XTR the range is just the same as 10sp.
You always needed the XD driver and, as said before, it's not marketing, its necessary for the 10t cog. The only way around it, while keeping tha same range, would be to have an even bigger largest sprocket, with a larger front chainring, though the mech would need to have a huge cage to deal with it!
Wouldn't it be nice if the three big manufacturers could agree on a common freehub standard? And what happened to the polygonal interface Kirk Pacenti was pushing a while ago?
THe XD hub is an open standard but I don't know if that applies for compatible cassettes. Shimano would probably refuse to use it though in the same way as with 20mm axles. It's bad for the consumer but good for whoever wins the standard war.
Shimano seem pretty confident that the wider range of SRAM isn't a selling point they need- it's not just the 10T, it's the 42T which they could easily have added.