>A particular example I'm very familiar with is bicycles - they're fairly easy to maintain and work on relative to automobiles (no fluids, not much electronics

>A particular example I'm very familiar with is bicycles - they're fairly easy to maintain and work on relative to automobiles (no fluids, not much electronics until recently etc.). Ideally a bicycle can be maintained easily and replaced piecemeal from a wide variety of suppliers, i.e. everything is swappable and there are no non-standard parts, such as weirdly threaded bottom brackets or non-standard axle widths. Some companies have tried to do things like that - I think Shimano made an integrated brake lever/gear shifter for a while No, obviously you're not familiar with bicycles at all. When was the last time you worked with a bicycle? 1975? Every modern road bike has integrated brake/shifter levers, and has for 30 years. What universe do you live in? Non-standard parts are commonplace: there's at least a dozen bottom bracket standards, and lots of road bikes have press-fit bottom brackets. The industry is moving away from this thankfully, and threaded brackets are now becoming the norm again (using a particular standard, I forget the name). Axle sizes (diameter, thread pitch, width) are also all over the place, though here again they seem to be converging. As for fluids, every decent bike these days has hydraulic disc brakes, which use either mineral oil (Shimano and clones) or DOT4 brake fluid (SRAM). Your post is really bizarre; was it meant to be satire or something?