I have been thinking exactly the same thing!
I have a mini pipe, and I am a long time pipe smoker and still have quite a lot of them, a few of which (like the falcon) are designed for interchangability of parts. (None of which I am prepared to sacrifice in the name of science).
I've been looking at the swan neck and thinking - "if that was a little shorter you could move the switch out of the bowl and into a removable collar" However I was thinking along the lines of a female
thread to the neck (like the evo atom to battery connection) and male to pen atomiser connection.
On that collar you could even have the option of manual or auto switches. To which it would then become a consumable and easily replaced, and this way the bowl would become purely a battery holder which would be unlikley ever to fail.
A forward thinking manufacturer could start creating a variety of bowls to suit the e-pipe smoker. Cheap ones for the masses, and quality for designes and styles for those of us that were real pipe smokers and want our briars, meershums and applewoods.
With a little thought I reckon you could even work options on aftermarket mouthpieces that could replace the standard ones on pen style carts. Its only a matter of the recess being able to acept the cart plug - from there it could be long, short or even bent, which combined with a bowl and acute angled swan neck woud become a standard bent pipe.
(Straight pipes are great for day to day smoking, but bents are better when you are working/smoking hands free)
Like you say Russel - a manual switch there would be easy to operate, and many pipe smokers tend to hold the pipe around the base of thew bowl with thumb on collar anyway for safety.
