New SRAM Torpedo Fixed/Free Hub

At Interbike SRAM showed a new hub that (miraculously?) switches from being fixed to freewheeling with just a few magical turns of an oh so simple screw in one side of the axle. Is this genius? Well I fear maybe not, but it so easily could have been!

The downside of this hub as I see it is that it's likely to be considerably more expensive than a simple flip/flop hub, from what I read it weighs about half a kilo more than a flip/flop hub and it'll have rather more complicated, so more vulnerable to breakage internals.

The thing is they've resurrected the Torpedo name that used to be used for their hubs with internal gears and coaster brakes, so why didn't they fit this with a coaster brake?

I've got a vague idea of how a coaster brake works, but am never going to explain it as well as Sheldon, so here's his explanation;

"Though there are differences in detail, all coaster brakes are fundamentally similar. Different manufacturers use different names for some of the parts, I'll try to use terminology as generic as possible:

• The chain sprocket is attached to the "driver" usually by a snap ring (though some older models used threaded sprockets with lockrings similar to those fo a fixed gear hub.)
  
• The driver has a coarse thread which is screwed into the brake cone.
  
• The brake cone fits loosely over the axle. It typically has conical projections at each end. When the sprocket turns forward, normal pedaling, the driver's threads pull it to the right, where the conical projection on the right end of the brake cone jams into the narrow part of the hub shell, transferring the pedaling force to the hub shell, and thence to the rest of the wheel. When the sprocket/driver turns backwards, the driver threads push the brake cone to the left, where the conical projection on its left side spreads the brake shoes, causing them to press against the inside of the hub shell.
  
• The brake shoes are curved to match the curvature of the inside of the hub shell, and they have tapered inside edges. These tapered ends fit against the brake cone on the right, and the left side bearing cone on the left. The left bearing cone will have some sort of projection that will make it impossible for the brake shoes to rotate around it."
  So if you started out with a standard coaster hub and had some kind of block/jam that when you tightened the screw (in the axle) forced the brake cone against the driver you'd presumeabley both disable the coater brake and the freewheeling of the hub, making it fixed. Loosen the screw, releasing the brake cone and you've got your coaster brake and freewheel back.
  
  

This also now has a clear advantage over a flip/flop hub in that you have a rear brake when in freewheel/coaster mode that you disable when you don't need it in fixed mode. Is it that I'm just a little mad, or does this make sublime sense? So why didn't they do it this way and how, maybe, do we convince them to see the light? Or has everyone stopped reading by now, because they thought it was pointless from the beginning?
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