The complete market failure of the Autobike suggests that the demographic of people not on bikes who would ride if they didn't have to shift is either not that large or wasn't reached by their marketing.

This was literally the only one I've ever seen. And I volunteered for a year and a half at a community bike shop that was infamous for attracting oddities and evolutionary dead-ends. For instance: a side-by-side bicycle built for two. If there were a gazillion Autobikes out there, we'd have seen a couple. People simply didn't buy them.

1x setups have negated a lot of this. My wife does not enjoy bicycling and we got her a cruiser, it is very simple for her to understand "click up for harder, click down for easier".