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by ogre_codes
1997 days ago
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> Although clearly you represent the everyman and can be the one-person-focus-group for the bike market! The bike market represents the bike market. As I said, these have been around for 10+ years and nobody buys them. It's not my opinion that these are undesirable, we know they are undesirable based on sales numbers. Bikes with Automatic drive trains aren't popular in the US.
... or Europe.
... or Asia.
... or anywhere. They are more expensive, heavier, and harder to work on than traditional bikes. Half-assed automatic shifting doesn't make up for those issues. Maybe I'm off base and people just didn't like them because they are ugly. Who knows, but since it's been 10+ years now I think it's clear they aren't the fix-all for getting people on bikes Shimano designers thought they were. Maybe, just maybe, your mom and your sister aren't the perfect bellwethers of the needs of skittish would-be-bike-riders in the world. |
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Your claim is that nobody wants them. I know at least two, which is more than 0.
They aren't popular yet, but I'm willing to bet that they will be with further development. Let's not forget that the first automatic gearbox for cars, the 1904 Sturtevant "horseless carriage gearbox", wasn't exactly a market hit - it took until the late 1940's for it to take off as a polished product and longer still to overtake manual transmissions (due to similar cited concerns about maintainability and the level of control).
In fact, I actually drive a manual transmission in my car because of those factors (and manual is still more popular in the UK), but clearly the majority of the market has moved on.