Originally Posted by H23
The thing about low gear inches is that at some point your speed becomes so slow even at normal cadences that it becomes too hard to balance the bike.
And a road rider who would actually need super low gear inches would probably not make any use of 120 inch gears.
Instead of trying to build a drivetrain that is all things to all people, I think a better approach would be for each rider to honest assess what he or she really needs and adapt the bike to fit those needs.
If people did that, you would end up seeing a lot more double chainrings, single chain rings, three speed, and single speed drivetrains.
Some recumbent trikes have low ratios in the teens and high ratios in the 140's. The balance issues aren’t a problem on trikes, they have less aerodrag than road bikes so they can go faster. Climbing is usually more difficult on recumbents, so a trike can benefit from the low gears.
One of my recumbent bikes has 131-24 gi and balancing in the lower couple of gears is a chore and it’s actually easier to push the bike u[hill than to pedal at those low speeds.
There are a few recumbent bikes with 160gi+ high ends.
Middrives are usually the way to achieve big ratio extremes.