As mentioned early on in this post if they could show me some testing that does a direct comparison of energy transferred compared to the exact same gearing done thru a triple chain ring setup and the numbers were respectably close I would jump in and take a big bite of the pie. Conventional drives are amazingly efficient somewhere between 93% and 99% I wouldn’t mind a gearing loss of say 10% on just the granny gear if it could be made to be an effortless shift and then done with gears. I wouldn’t want to lose even 2% or 3% in my main riding gear range because of friction internal to a drive like this.

I don’t see where any serious rider touring or other would be willing to give away any power for easier shifting. The market for these will be for people that don’t care and want simple.

They should show the total picture when asking for funding I think.