Freewheels were definitely on the way out until the Chinese re-introduced them to the West with their hub-motored e-bikes. It would be harder to adequately and cheaply engineer a cassette system onto a hub with a high degree of reliability, I would think.
Just look at how easy and cheap it is to obtain an 11T cassette cluster on ebay - compared to freewheels. That's really down to scale of demand and manufacture.
Even buying one direct from aliexpress is more expensive than I can find a cassette on the 'bay.
Aliexpress.com : Buy DNP Epoch 7 Speed Freewheel Cog 11 28T 7S speed For shimano system bike MTB cassette mountain xc from Reliable bike bicycle sports suppliers on Bike Bicycle Accessories Wholesaler(Free shipping)
That's the one I'll be ordering next week, I think. I'll have a go at reducing the cog count, too.
That's the very one I've ordered Scimitar so I'll let you know if it's any good (if it even arrives!) unless you want to go ahead and risk it too ;-) There's only TWO stockists that I know of in US that have them for shipping to UK (one sells on eBay.com) and shipping is about $15 so I figured go to China and save on the shipping.
I agree with your last comment about freewheels being well and truly gone now in 11T (people on endless sphere are even discussing buying old bikes off eBay to salvage them!) only DNP makes them still I think and they're obviously intended for the e-bike market according to the website rather than mainstream cycle industry.. it's surprising then in their small production volume they're able to keep the price reasonably low. I wonder if Shimano and others would consider making 11T freewheels again to cater for the growing e-bike user market? Probably not due to low volume and if they did, would be very high price premium I bet.
I asked DNP the weight and they confirmed that 11T-28T is 550g, so a bit on the heavy side compared to some 14T Shimano 7-spd freewheels which weigh 330g. You can see on DNP's website net shipping and gross shipping weight for 26 units is given for each freewheel type.
I've spent a week researching gears and searching extensively.. whilst freewheels are still made by Shimano and others, there's far less choice and its very unusual to see them below 14T for some reason. The lowest I found for a quality brand is 13T and that's
Sturmey Archer for the bargain price of £15.. I suspect that is "old new" stock as I could only find one vendor in UK stocking them. I did find a site that stocks salvaged freewheels with quality makes and reasonable prices they didn't have very many or any 11T's though as I recall.
I saw some talk on Endless Sphere about an adaptor being available for conversion of freewheel hub to take cassettes. Maybe that makes more sense and then we're not so limited on gearing options? What's the practical considerations about the adaptor approach..less reliable or difficult to fit etc?
BMS stocks freewheels for $8 but don't state the gear range, but be interesting to see if they're 11T and DNP, but it doesn't look like it from the pic. I will ask them and report back. The Chinese e-bike kit sellers attitude towards gears seems to like they're an afterthought.. there doesn't seem to be any serious consideration to people who want to use all their gears and want a proper set of gearing..and importantly the ability to ride at 11T to keep up with gears! Weird.
EDIT: BMS only stock a Shimano 14T-28T.
