Originally Posted by
elfmachine
I was wondering if there is bicycle internal gear hub that has high ratio like Rohloff or external gears but without lots of different speed modes which only internal gear hubs more expensive, difficult to produce and add lots of weight? I think I could be happy even with three or five speed modes which would even simpler to switch but which would have fastest like 526%, medium and low for hills. Nuvinci 360 or 380 is like that although it's mechanism has some issues and has limited gear ratio.
No. Both lower gears and more ratios come from having multiple planetary gearsets which can run in series.
Once paying for the parts to get a lower ratio, companies are better off spending the negligible incremental cost so they can price their offering like competitors' parts with more gears and higher price tags.