Internal Bike Hubs - Rohloff, Alfine, etc...
 

Hey folks! New to the forum, nice to meet y'all!

I have a Catrike that I have recently put a Bafong motor on it, and I love it! However, the loss of my front gears has left me wanting a better range of shifting options. I have been investigating the internal gear hubs. Of course, the Rohloff is the gold standard, but at $1500 for the 14-gear hub, it is super expensive. The Alfine hub is nearer $500, and has some good reviews, but mixed on reliability. Apparently with the Alfine you really need to go with electronic shifters to avoid damaging the hub from a cable issue. Found a great video comparing the two, but from a normal bike guy, not a trike. (Since I am new the forum won't let me post the video, but if you search in YouTube for "Are $199 Shimano Alfine Internal Gear Bicycle Hubs GENIUS or Terrible?" you will see it)

Would love to hear from you folks on your experiences and any recommendations.

Thanks!

The Rohloff is on my wish list too but I cannot justify the price. As an alternative for a front derailleur there other options as well. I am huge fan of the combo hubs. Internal gear hubs with a cassette. Sachs/SRAM had these in the 90s with 3 speed hub and a 7 speed cassette. 21 gears on the rear wheel. It was called the Spectro 3x7. I still have two bikes with that hub. They built these into the early 2000s when they replaced them with the SRAM Dual Drive. Although SRAM completely stopped making internal gear hubs you can still find new never used Dual Drive hubs. I think they were available as 3x7, 3x8 and 3x9.
https://www.sheldonbrown.com/dualdrive-shifter.html
Sturmey Archer still makes a similar hub. 3 speed internal gear hub combined with a 8 or 9 speed cassette.
https://www.sturmey-archer.com/en/pr.../cs-rk3-silver
The 3 speed internal gear hub basically replaces your front derailleur.
Another option might be a 12 speed cassette. I bought a used Lightning Phantom recumbent a few months ago which came with a 1x12 SRAM set up with the purpose to add a motor to the crank case. So far I have not added a motor yet but actually like this 1 x 12 more than the 3x9 setup on my other Phantom. Meaning I don't miss my front derailleur at all.
There are folks out there who recommend using a 12 speed cassette on ebikes:

I have a trike that has the SRAM dual-drive 3 speed internal hub and an 8 speed cassette coupled to a single chainring and Schlumpf Mountain Drive. The SRAM DD is no longer available. Mine was pretty robust. I replaced it once in 29K miles. The Schlumpf drive had one failure in that time. The major problem I see with internal drives is that few bike shops will repair them. In both cases I did the repair myself but these are complex devices and many owners would not even try. If you are on a tour and have a failure, your tour is probably over. I did check with one bike shop that would repair hubs but I would need to ship the wheel and the cost was so high it was just as cheap to buy a new wheel with the hub in it after I added up the cost of the repair and shipping costs both ways. Ditto with the Schlump drive. Florian Schlumpf suggested shipping the drive to Europe but instead I had him send the part and I installed it myself.

I'm considering the Efneo GTRO - basically an IGH for the front crankset. GTRO for trike – Efneo 3-speed front bicycle Gearbox. For your consideration. I like that it is easy to swap it onto a new trike or bike.

Never seen that one. But I am not sure it will work for the drumbubba. As I understand he added a motor on the front crank set loosing the front derailleur. To add additional gears he either would need to swap his rear derailleur for one with more gears, or add an internal gear hub with more gears or add a combo hub such as the SRAM Dual Drive or the Sturmey Archer.
Yes these internal gear are more complicated than derailleurs but they are not rocket science. Plus they are pretty bullet proof, weather independent and almost maintenance free. I only had one fail on me after 25+ years in service. Internal clutch broke. I accumulated a few spare hubs I use for parts. So I was able to fix it. Unfortunately here in the US most bike shops have no clue how to work in internal gear hubs. No matter what brand. However they are more common in Europe and many bike stores over there do know how to work on them since these brands either originated from Germany or the UK.

Ah my bad - I read Bafang but didn't realize it was a mid drive motor on the crankset, thought it was a rear hub.