Originally Posted by
DropBarFan
Yes but OTOH, 3 years ago I was surprised to see $200 mountain bikes in Walmart with disc brakes. & in 70's "10-speed" boom all the department store chains were quick to introduce cheapo road bikes. Quality usually bad (though some Austrian-made Sears models were surprisingly good). Point being that new tech can be introduced to general public w/o exorbitant expense.
True, for the belt, it may depend a bit on patents, and whether the patent holders actually want to deal with dept store bikes.
For the internal gearing, it has been around since the 50's, and I believe there are still some 3 speeds showing up in the dept store bikes. However, with the price competition, the 7 & 8 speed hubs are fairly rare, and the 10+ speed hubs are still more expensive than the rest of the bike combined (for average dept store bikes).