"Recently got back from a trip to Taiwan where we met up with Alan from Sunrace/Sturmey Archer to see what they have cooking. We are looking at using one of their standard 3 speed internal geared hubs for a Luggernaut complete bike we are working on. In addition to their standard 3 speed hub Alan wanted us to tryout out the new 3 speed fixed gear hub. I have been really curious about this hub as to how it would perform. They had just finished building up a prototype for us to test out so we got to get some riding in.
First impressions where the hub shifted perfect and all gears felt very smooth. You didn't notice much friction or drag at all. The gear range is pretty huge and I immediately thought this would be perfect for bike polo setups to have a gear you can actually pedal to the event and then a super easy gear for the game. Downside is that there is a little pedal backlash when you attempt to skid stop. If you just slow your cadence down normally you don't notice anything but when you try to skid the rear wheel you definitely notice it. It is not really meant to be on a fixed gear with no brakes. You will definitely want to have a front brake with this setup. The engineers did not recommend that we skid stop the bikes but we did it anyway to see how it would feel.
Overall I think fixed gear purist will not be into this setup but I do think there is a market for it for around town bikes and commuters that like the idea of a fixed gear bike but still want some gear range and the use of a front brake. The other major thing to note is the rad shifting options they have for the hub. They are offering their own bar end shifters which are very smooth and I got to check the prototypes out in person. They are also making a version called the Thumbie that is a bar con shifter that mounts to a flat bar."
