[Closi]

> 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

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.