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Comment by _Wintermute | Hacker News Reader

Hardly revolutionary, its still a fragile derailleur hanging off the frame exposed to the elements.

I'm amazed with hub gears and when Honda simply put the derailleur and freehub in the frame with their old downhill bike, that this is still the best solution on the mass market.

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> amazed with hub gears

I've never seen hub gears on light or even medium weight hybrid/city ALU bikes. Which suggests there is a problem with hub gears. Maybe they are heavier, or more expensive, or harder to maintain, but they are not popular.

I have such a bike.

The downsides:

* It's heavier than a derailleur/cassette

* More drivetrain losses

* It's expensive.

Upsides:

* Maintenance is replacing the oil about once a year.

* You can shift from a stop.

* Easier to adjust.

They're expensive, and ones with as many gears as a derailleur system are hideously expensive. Folks worry that they won't have the gears that they need for hills. Also, I think the bike makers are timid about marketing them -- an entire line of bikes might have exactly one with a hub gear, on a bike with "city" styling.

I've got a couple of bikes with old Sturmey Archer 3-speed gear hubs, and they're utterly bulletproof. I've had each one open exactly once, when I got it and wanted to make sure it was in good condition before putting it on a wheel. Plus I was curious.

The other thing in my opinion, though I love hub gears, modern derailleur systems with a zillion gears aren't all that bad. Especially with indexed shifting, which we've now had for decades. They're exposed to the weather, but most people don't ride in bad weather.

Since you mention hybrid/city, that's my category. I use my bike for commuting to work, shopping, and weekend recreational rides. I'm in no way fast nor competitive, so the weight and efficiency issues are secondary for me. But also, the 3-speed is a sweet spot where its efficiency actually rivals derailleurs.

Weight is important to me with that usage because bike thefts in the area around my office means I want to carry my bike up stairs...

Similar situation for my kids, both in college. Both have built up single-speeds. They can lock up their bikes on campus and enjoy "security by obscurity," but at their apartments, they have to bring their bikes in or hide them well.

They are heavy and don't shift under high load. Maintenance is minimal, though. Great for a commuter but not practical for road racing or mountain biking.

They don't shift under any load, as far as I'm aware. Maybe Rohloff's are different but IME, you need to stop pedaling entirely to safely shift without damaging anything.

Certainly true for Sturmey-Archer. If you try to upshift under load, you'll feel the cable resisting. If you downshift under load, it'll wait to shift until you back off on the pedals just a bit.

Compensating for both things becomes a habit. Likewise, remembering not to shift at a stoplight becomes a habit with derailleurs. You reach a point where you begin to think like your bike.

Given that I'm a casual cyclist on a non-sporty bike, I just live with the slight awkwardness when I'm halfway up a hill and realize that I chose the wrong gear.

They need very little maintenance. But they are very expensive.

e.g. https://www.sjscycles.co.uk/rohloff/

You picked about the most expensive option, there’s quite a few that are fine for commuter bikes, but cost substantially less. The Shimano Alfine series for example.

But except for the Rohloff, they all have a smaller gear range than a derailleur, so there are tradeoffs.

But you still don't see them on very pricey bikes ($15k+). So they are very expensive, without being premium, which is a weird place to be.

Bikes in the $15k plus range are probably targeted at professional sport cyclists, who need to adhere to UCI equipment regulations, which include the requirement for a chain-derailleur drive.

If you want to know what's premium for everyday utility cycling, look at the ebike space, where people are shelling out thousands for bicycles just to use them a vehicles. Hub gears are not dominant, but are very well represented on price points over $2k.

There are also triathlon bikes in the $15k plus range which don't comply with UCI rules. But the efficiency loss makes hub gears useless for that market.

The $15k+ bikes are race bikes, which are probably never going to have internally geared hubs because they're too heavy and add too much drivetrain loss. Rohloff hubs are fairly common on high end ($5k+) bikepacking and touring bikes.

I've mostly heard of them being used for people doing giant international tours where they want something that just will not break. Seems like a very niche market though!

I personally can't get over how you have to stop pedaling to shift using internal gear systems. People told me you "get used to it," which is true, but the awkwardness never goes away.

The nuvinci hub is really interesting. I suspect it is not as efficient as a derailler at transferring power, but it is more efficient at getting power out of your body at the cadence you want. Some bikes pair it with a non-metal chain and it is very quiet.

I bought one and ended up not even making a wheel from it. It was brutally heavy and just playing around with it I could see it would be power-robbing. On that bike I stuck with my shimano 7 speed internal gear hub.

For high-end mountain bikes, makers are actually experimenting with removing gears from internal gear hubs[1] because for less mass, they want to keep the full range of gears but use less in the middle.

[1] They are not very common but there are some high end downhill bikes that use an internal gear hub, located near the bottom bracket. They are simply too heavy and expensive to appear on other types of bikes.

I had an electric cargo bike with a nuvinci, since it was the only option with a belt drive. It works for that application, shifting under load is a nice thing when going up the hill with a heavy bike. But the downsides are pretty big. It’s lossy, so riding the bike without assist was tedious. The gear range is tidy, so I was always missing some on the upper end. I picked a different combination for the next bike.

Compared to a 7 speed, yeah, a CVT is better for getting your cadence where you want it. 11 and 12 speeds? I've rarely felt like I've wanted intermediate gears with an 11-34T cassette.

Yeah, I wish they sold derailleur hangers in six-packs. I've always wanted a Rohloff for commuting, but they aren't cheap.

In six-packs, because you break them often? How does that typically happen?

They are kind of a sacrificial part in crashes. They can also get bent going in/out of bike racks. Crashes are a lot more common racing FWIW.

What is cheap, definitely enough for commuting (well except dirty dozen type one) and rides amazingly well are 3 speed Sturmey Archer hubs.

Problem on 3-speeds is that they are always installed wrong. Number 2 gear is direct connection and lossless and it should be the one you use most.

I had to go extreme measures to find 1:3 sprocket set for my 20' folding bike. Originally I was constantly switching between 1 and 2 and never using number 3.

That situation is actually pretty common. The problem is that the gear spacing is quite wide, so there's rarely a use for more than 2 of those gears in a lot of regions.

Also, 3-speed bikes in the US were sold with no gearing options. Schwinn geared them too high in my opinion. In England, the bike dealers were instructed to work with the customer to choose a cog that was appropriate for each rider's terrain and physique.

I've geared mine based on the realization that my top speed is likely to be limited by wind resistance and my own physique, and I don't need gears that are faster than I can ride.

Yeah, I was looking at the cassete-combo version of the Sturmey Archer 3-speed, but I believe it would be obviously better if the top gear was direct connection (100/70/50% ratios, not 133/100/75%).

You can offset for that with a smaller chainring and you gain some ground clearance. Win win!

When you simply, it's kind of true, but the space to do this is really limited and there's no good solution seen yet to keep a wide range of gears in that system.

Some of this might be intended for the pros, and with time modified to be more robust for the retail consumer market.

Mountain biking is interesting in that the consumer usually gets to buy exactly what the pros are using.

Same with road biking. If you are willing to pay for it, you can get the exact same set up as any of the pros, of course, with the exception that some of it might be prototype and exclusive.

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