So I was in local bike shop last night, and the owner showed me this Bianchi with an automatic hub transmission. How crazy is that? It had three modes for the shifting, something along the lines of "Race" "Cruiser" and I forgot the third. Looked like it'd be a great town bike. They also had an eight speed internal hub too. I can't believe the bikes out lately. I love all that weenie tech stuff.
With features like that I'm surpised more people don't ride bikes. Bikes rock. Okay, I'm done. I just love those internal hubs. they're pretty nifty pieces of engineering.

What? No Reverse???

That'd be hilarious.

Pfft automatic. They've been shown to suck. suck bad.

This is not the crappy "automatic that used some fly weights on the wheel connected to the der. This is a little computer that is attached to a solenoid at the shift rod of an internal threespeed hub, It monitors speed and shifts according to a preset pattern or several in the case of the models with modes. The often have a manual up/down button as well. Three speed internal hubs have a lot in common with a cars automatic transmission, they both use an epicyclic gear set.

Yeah, that's the one. I personally wouldn't want one, but it's still pretty crazy that they can basically stuff the equivalent of a deraileur and the cassette into the hub like that.
I rebuilt an old Shimano 3 speed hub once and that gave me nightmares. I can't imagine what an 8 speed would look like. Yikes!
I would think that something like this might help get non-bike people on bikes, but probably not. Most Americans are LAZY.

Just the user freindliness of internal hubs would help a bunch but they are much more expensive when compared to the entry level deraileurs they would be compared to.

And if you're really intrigued, check out the automatic moving chainrings and cogs on the Browning SmartShift system... Yes... that's right. Brought to you by the same folks who brought us the .50 cal M2 machinegun. The system's been around a while. I seem to recall seeing an early version of it about 15 years ago.

No thanks. Guns might be great for people that hunt, but growing up in a big city the only thing I witnessed them being used for was very very bad things.

??? Its a bike transmission, not a handgun.

i think it was a double on 'Browning' a type of hand gun

Yes, it's the same company.