...not a poor man\'s bike by any stretch...

This is crock if ever there was one...
$2800 banana republic dollars for a hub with internal gears.....
Should be no more that $75 to $125.

@ Mr Stiffy The prices mentioned were for the entire e-bike, not the transmission system. Still expensive though

Expensive ? That\'s a laugh ! Any complete bike at that price is still going to be shitty.
I just went biking 188 Km on the Eyjafjallajökull on a Sandman mountainbike. Climbing black ash ridges, across litterally-boiling rivers, on sharp obsidian-glass boulders and over ash-dusted glaciers... all at high-speed gales and in driving rain and sleet.
The bike ate it all - not even a flat tire ! Durability comes at a price, though.
I would have ridden a crank-mounted Pinnion gearbox-equipped Sandman Gobi (18 speed) if it had been ready.
It wasn\'t, so I had to choose between my wheel-mounted Rohloff gearbox-equipped Cannondale Prophet (14-speed) with 2,5\" Schwalbe Fat Albert tires and a derailleur-equipped Sandman on 3.8\" Surly tires.
The fattest tires were the obvious choice and did the trick admirably, but on these ashes (or on sandy beaches, for that matter) a sealed gearbox would have been much better than a derailleur, which needed constant attention.
The rain had one advantage : no dust blowing around...
Whether you need a bike to cruise the city streets or for extreme adventures : cheap models are only okay if you count on throwing them away after use.
I\'ve been driving my TWIKE electromobile for 13 years now. Not cheap, but still good as new...

If you live on your bike or perform extreme sports on your bike, then yeah...$2k isn\'t that big of a deal...but for 99.999% of the rest of us, the bike spends the vast majority of it\'s life hanging up in their garage...heck the tires on most bikes fail more from dry-rot than actual wear! No, a $200-$300 bike is more than enough for me...considering I haven\'t ridden my bike once in the past 2 years!

I am hoping that these are;
a) Strong;
b) Reliable;
c) Durable; and
d) The hub is available from the corner bike shop for about $80 a piece.

wooo... sexy as hell! do want. great design work.

A few thoughts:

If the gear unit is sealed, the it ought to have a very long life. If you are going for a rough tour then a derailleur is efficient and can be fixed if it goes wrong; but it can get dirty or jammed. If you commute, then a Stumey-Archer drive is sealed so it can run for many years and never give problems, apart from the cable drive, which is also the only way that grit can get into the hub; but if it goes wrong you are unlikely to be able to fix it at the roadside. I had wondered whether you could combine the Sturmey-Archer gears with a dynamo hub, and have an electrical switch to change gears, so fixing all the problems with the cable.

This new gadget in its present state seems closer to the Sturmey-Archer commuter model. You want something that can get you to work and back as reliably as possible without having to tinker with it and get your hands dirty; and you take it to a shop if it goes wrong. Absolute drive efficiency is not critical, but you would like not to get too sweaty if you are going in to work. With luck it may come down in price and migrate to non-electrical bikes.

Yay, science!

I ride an N170 and it\'s an absolute joy. Coincidentally I was talking just theother day to a colleague about how the hub would be the perfect base for an automatic transmission system, and here it is. It\'s awesome, and the auto version is the icing on the cake. I acn\'t wait to try it. And to all the haters I say \'Don\'t knock it \'til you\'ve tried it!\' I\'ve owned or ridden every transmission available from fixed to Dura Ace and Torpedo to Rohloff - and I can assure you, this is the future. www.cyclorama.net/blog/ramblings/of-hubs-and-gears-and-things/

@ Richard Kirk.....
Could 2 Sturmey Archer hubs be lined up in tandem, to give a much broader gear range from a deeper low to a higher high.....
Like a sealed chain drive (in a case) to the hub in the frame, driving to a hub in a wheel...
Just a thought.
I like good gear (bicycle componentry and build quality) - at a realistic price, but I want practical commuter drives, not fiddly \"$5000 for 5 gram lighter gear sets\".