Thru axle for rim brake road bikes
Are there any reasons not to build road bikes with through axels, even if they are not disc brake equipped? Is this a trend we might see as manufactures produce more pairs of very similar road disc/non-disc models?


It makes very little sense to produce a rim brake bike with thu-axels.  What wheel set would it run?  Custom? Almost all thu-axel wheel sets on the market now come with disc specific rims that cannot be used with rim brakes. 

I would ask what is the advantage to non-racers of having a rim brake frame with thru-axels over a disc frame with thru-axels?


Brake modulation? A good hydraulic disc brake has much better modulation than rim brakes.
All weather braking - this one is no contest, disc brakes.
Wheel compatibility? - you will need to stick with QR then as this is the most common road wheel interface.
Familiarity? - If they want to keep with a brake format they are already familiar with I doubt that they would suddenly want to switch wheel interfaces and have any extra wheels they already have rendered useless.
Weight - QR interface wins again.


The only "advantage" to the rim + thru-axel seems to be steering response (although some would argue that this is a myth), with the main disadvantages of brake performance and basically no compatible wheel sets.

If the industry produced such a bike, even more people would be lining up complaining that they are producing a completely unnecessary bike configuration.