Originally Posted by
dynaryder
Plug in the numbers and see for yourself:
Sheldon Brown's Bicycle Gear Calculator
On my old commute,I tried several IGH bikes,including a Novara FlyBy with Nexus 8. None worked as well as my 3x9 and 2x10 bikes. Gearing was either too low and I spun down the big hills,or not low enough and I had to mash up. Biggest hub I used was a SRAM i-9;it almost made it,the Alfine 11 would prolly have been do-able.
And what about combining both with a DualDrive? I have a Dahon Mu with it and, combined with a 52 tooth chainring and a 11-34 cassette it has an impressive gearing range. It's low gear is almost as low as my mountain bike, and high gear is higher than my road bike. I have climbed 20% climbs seated with it, and reached more than 70kph downhill.
Its downside though is that I feel it's less efficient than a traditional derailleur. Especially in high gear. Not a huge problem on my daily commute though, but worth considering for doing long distances regularly.