On 22 Mar 2004 11:40:33 -0800, [email hidden] (Gordon
Muir) may have said:Could you pass this on to get more companies to start
selling these chainless driveshaft bicycles,to companies
like,Wal-Mart,Halfords,Littlewoods,AGROS,etc.
It won't make a bit of difference. The principal market is
driven by price, flashiness and apparent complexity, not
durability, cleanliness and low service requirements. The
mass-market buyer generally wants two things; a low cost for
the features delivered, and lots of speeds.
Shaft-drive facilitates neither of these, and adds an
efficiency penalty that's induced by the twin right-angle
gear drives.
The mass-market retailers deliver what is known to be in
demand by the average end-user. Absent a provably adequate
level of retail demand, they seldom adopt radical
technology changes except to deliver a cheaper or more
profitable product. To make shaft-drive bikes sell, you
must first convince the buying public that it wants shaft-
drive units. Shaft drive has been around for a long time,
and retailers know that its appeal is insufficient to merit
a marketing push; if the issues it addresses are really
important in a given market, there are other ways to
deliver a product that meets the needs...more profitably
and more acceptably to the buyers.
By way of example, I will point out that shaft-drive has
little penetration in its best existing potential market; it
has qualities which nominally imply that it *could* sell
well in Japan, where the messy chain is widely disliked, but
it doesn't. The competing tech of a dry flexible toothed
belt drive is cheaper to make, lighter, less complex, and
produces a bike that's easier to service.
Despite the fact that the drive belt is a technology that's
readily available and in mass-market production, it's not in
widespread demand in any other market. When coupled with a
seven-speed hub, it produces an efficient and easily
serviced bike with a useful gear range...but at a price that
can't compete with the derailleur.
The rest of the world seems to view the chain as an
acceptable component, and its presence facilitates the
very inexpensive large-range multispeed setups that *are*
in demand.
Shaft drives have three hurdles to overcome, then; they are
more expensive than the clean dry-belt drive, they are less
efficient than either the belt or the chain they propose to
replace, and like the dry belt, they necessitate the use of
expensive geared hubs in order to achieve a multi-speed
drive system. As a result, shaft drives are unlikely to
attract any significant market share...and thus, they will
not appear at the mass-market retailers unless someone
embarks on a massive propaganda campaign to create temporary
demand for them...and they would be unlikely to dominate the
market in the long run in any event.
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