[MENTION=314122]wilfried[/MENTION] – I agree: my preference is for Nuvinci-equipped bikes too, when / where they’re available.

My experience: the original Shimano hub remains rock-solid-reliable though the shifting range is relative limited (low, lower, lowest); the Sturmey-Archer hub is nice, but its reliability seems – anecdotally – to be the poorest of the three; the NuVinci hub gets my vote – except when it (rarely) fails.

I have an internally-geared rear hub (SRAM DualDrive) on a personal bike. When I bought it, I asked the seller about the failure mode. Obviously, there could be a bunch of failure modes, but I was told that if the shifting mechanism failed, the hub would default to 1:1. I’m clueless about the Citibike Shimano hub failure mode because I haven’t encountered it and I haven’t read about anyone else’s experience. Apparently, the Sturmey-Archer and NuVinci hubs have a bunch of alternative failure modes. I haven’t experienced all of ‘em. The Sturmey-Archers fail most frequently, but overall, the failures are rare. And by “failure”, I mean “nuisance”. The wheels keep spinning.

BTW, I was recently in Toronto. Their bikeshare system relies entirely on frames like Citibike v1.0 and the Shimano hubs. Folks with whom I chatted seemed pleased with the system, but what I observed was most of the folks on the streets were riding personal bikes, even in areas well-served with docks. I don’t know what conclusions to draw.

My comment about the NuVinci-turned-fixie wasn’t to dump on the NuVinci hub; merely an effort to continue crowd-sourcing information. What we hear from Motivate is merely cheerleading, not informational, so thanks for the continued contributions.