Originally Posted by
Stadjer
I have that with most bicycle innovations. Love the creativity but they seem to solve a problem that didn't really exist, was already solved or is solved by an idea with much more drawbacks. It's like they think "the bicyle has been there for so long with little change, there must be a way to fundamentally improve it". That's illogical, the bicycle has been there for so long with little change because it was about finished a 100 years ago.
The bicycle chain is pretty efficient and easy to use. It's a nice intellectual exercise to design something better, but the brilliance of the idea doesn't necessarily make it a better drivetrain.
The drivetrains we know are protected with patents, so someone can't come in and produce their own drivetrain without enough innovation to make it "different". This is a problem created by intellectual property law - they'd not do this if they weren't forced to.