[lmm]

> In wheel gears have been in use for over a century very successfully.

They've been barely viable the whole time. Sturmey Archer are the last maker in business; they went bankrupt a couple of decades back and for some years there was serious concern that manufacturing would never resume.

[WJW]

...what? There's a whole bunch of manufacturers, so many that there's an entire Wikipedia page disccusinge them at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_hub_gears. There's at least 8 different manufacturers on there, some with many different models. Some were introduced as recently as 2023, so it's hardly some abandoned legacy technology.