Rohloff Speedhub

The Rohloff Speedhub is an epicyclic internal hub gear for bicycles, developed and patented by Rohloff AG. It has been manufactured and marketed by that company since 1998. The Speedhub 500/14 has 14 equally-spaced sequential non-overlapping gear ratios operated by a single twistgrip. The overall gear range is 526 %, meaning the highest gear is 5.26 times as high as the lowest gear. Individual gear shifts give an increase or decrease of 13.6 %.

The Speedhub is more expensive than competing bicycle gear systems (both hub gears and derailleur gears), but it combines the robustness of hub gears with the gear number and gear range of derailleur gears. It is therefore mainly used in high-quality touring bicycles and in mountain bikes, where its robustness and the lack of (vulnerable) external components is useful.