Daveilift

Concerning Linde hydrostatic transmission I'll stay with my opinion.
On the market there are still the trucks from 70's and 80's like 330 (manufactured between 01/1978 - 09/90) 331 (05/80 - 12/86), still very popular 351 (10/85 - 08/2003 - still in Xiamen) and 350 (10/90 - 03/07).
All these forklifts have pure hydrostatic transmission, and the only gears there are in the wheel reduction box.
I can serve you with the detailed diagrams of these trucks transmissions, and if you find there a single gear or cog, I will owe you a sixpack.
Additionally - I personally disassembled lots of 350's and 351's drives, and found no gear there. But the swash plates were there, I give you my word.
Well, perhaps I was lousy technician ;-)

Linde patented the hydrostatic drive sixty years ago and developed it since then. The solution was so revolutionary, that other companies tried to implement it. Hard to say, they succeeded.
It's like with the English lawn. Everybody wants to have such, but you need to care for it a 300 years to get comparable result.

Concerning the topic.
We can say, that IC forklifts did't change much (although they strongly developed), but forklifts as general...c'mon.
You ignored my remark concerning the reach trucks or narrow aisle trucks. But this was exactly the revolution comparable with Apple inventions on mobiles.