There are some brands of bicycles that can cost more than the down payment on a car. Why? Surely making a bike lightweight and reliable isn’t so difficult that it warrants that price? Is it just the brand name or maybe it has to do with customization options?
lack of mass production probably and cuthroat capitalism. the expensive bikes cater to a niche of bike riders who the business knows can afford to buy them. a lot of these bikes have specialized parts made in specialized countries by craftspeople which up the price of production and in addition they offer some kind of free maintenance you are also buying. the real question is why are cars and other bike so cheap, and thats because of mass production factories and cheap manufacturing methods and economies of scale
economies of scale: high end components aren’t manufactured in enormous quantities. their price has to pay for everything along the supply chain plus profit.
Same way as high-end sports cars can cost hundreds of thousands or even millions.
Regular commuters are cheap, you can get perfectly good 2nd hand bike for a pocket money, but a high-end enduro bike with state-of-art parts and exotic materials can cost you over 10k.
Making a bike lightweight is not so hard. Making a bike lightweight and durable is. Top end bikes use high end materials and are engineered to very high standards. But if you just want to get from A Too B, a cheap bike will do just fine.
Low key loving it that people here automatically assume that a bike would mean you would go on trails and off road while here in the Netherlands we still are riding that old riggidy hunk of metal (a Omafiets) we got handed down form our sister 15 years ago. (Who also got it as a hand me down)
There are nice bikes here with carbon fiber belts instead of metal chains but those get quickly stolen or used so much they wear down away in a few years because the bikes get beaten to bits by the weather and usage.
One of my favorite episode of Top Gear was when the boys went to Africa and brought used cars for a thousand pound [UK] then drove them across the continent without many mishaps. They pointed out that there were people in London / New York City who brought high end SUVs to handle six inches of snow on a paved road.
That’s something of a point, but they’re also followed around by a literal caravan of assistants for their show, including mechanics and a van full of parts, just in case anything goes wrong.
Edit: not to mention fully prepared to handle logistics and expense of staying at hotels or even camping out if needed, not to mention tools and equipment for major roadside repairs.
But even that was kind of cheating. I think May had the Mercedes 300D, which is probably the most reliable car ever made, and Hammond had an Opel that had already survived 50 years there. The only one who really struggled was Clarkson in the Lancia, which makes sense.
I had to convince a woman with a giant SUV at the base of a slick uphill road that this was the reason she bought that thing. She was blocking the road in paralysis. After I convinced her to go up she made it up, no problem. People think they need a tank to deal with an inch of snow.
We should really stop propagating this narrative that all bikes are expensive. Insanely sophisticated race bikes or gravel bikes that you could throw off a cliff without your derailleur getting misaligned are very expensive. A very good, reliable, and perfectly usable bike for the average person cost <$500. Even that is a lot for some people but it’s a LONG way off from the $3k-20k bikes people THINK they need it worse people ASSUME is what all bikes cost. The best selling models of almost every major manufacturer are their lowest and middle tier entry level bikes, which is a slight step up from what you can buy at a Walmart or target. Those Walmart and Target bikes btw, will serve the vast majority of people just fine.
To be fair, the OP did say “some brands” not ALL bikes. Also, I have one of those Walmart bikes and I pity the foo who owns one. On my very first ride, my pants tore the chain guard off. Pretty sure it was there to protect my pants. Then when I came to a stop, the seat exploded. Springs, nuts, bolts and washers went flying. I had to gather them up again and try to piece it back together to keep the seat usable. It’s ridiculously heavy too. If you can’t afford a nice new bike, I recommend buying a decent used one at a garage sale or something. I don’t agree that they will serve the vast majority of people just fine.
Not to “victim blame” because such unsafe junk should not be sold. But a $100 bike with amortized seat and spring suspension of wheels has no right to be durable. But an $100 simple bike with shimano gears or no gears can last for years.
In a nut shell, I had an older but better built bike at work I used to get around campus. Someone borrowed it and did not bring it back. Eventually it was found in a work area where it was destroyed by a steal beam they dropped on it. The construction supervisor gave me $100 to buy a new one, so I went to Walmart. It appeared that they were all built the same. I noticed the warning sticker on the bikes were identical between makes leading me to believe they were just the same cheap bikes with different brands. So I bought the one that did not have coaster brakes. I hate coaster brakes. I still have it and use it as a spare bike. It’s trash, despite being the most expensive bike I’ve ever bought. My current bike was given to me by a friend who was not using it. She said it was a $400 bike. Anyway, I digress, but that’s why I bought such a cheap bike. The circumstances were just right. Don’t want an expensive one just sitting outside at work. Plus I could use a company truck to go get it during lunch, instead of shopping around for a better used one.
$500 is still insane to me. I’m Dutch and I’ve been riding bikes pretty much daily for my whole life. I don’t think I’ve ever used a bike that cost more than €200. Almost every bike I’ve used is either secondhand or a hand-me-down. My current bike has a front wheel that has been folded into a 90-degree angle and back (which is noticeable), has only one working brake, and only 2 of the 7 gears work well. Yet for the past 2.5 years I’ve reliably and comfortably driven trips without issues. Whether it is a 10-minute trip to the supermarket or work, or a 40-minute trip to the next city over for some party, it always gets me there.
I don’t really understand the sentiment in this comment section that a bike should always be a fancy new bike of $500 or even $3K when a trusty old rustbucked could also get you the same distance for a hundred bucks or even way less.
Well first, €200 is not the same as $200, so it’s not as high as you think but also second, you just named like twenty things wrong with your bike! Granted at that price point it’s cheaper to buy a new bike than invest in parts, but for more expensive/purpose focused bikes, Longevity and durability is a big part of the cost, but to your point isn’t necessary for everyone. I commute to work (7 mi each way, urban environment) on my bike and also do longer distance rides (20-35 miles) a few times per month. My bike was about $800 when I bought it (2019), and has somewhere in the neighborhood of 3500 miles on it. The base model of my bike though - you guessed it, $500.
I think there is a difference when you are living in the netherlands.
bikes are part of the culture and have been for like 100 years. there are cycle paths everywhere. Your infrastructure is built for cycling. Meaning you dont have many bad roads or paths to damage your bike.
The majority of the roads in the uk are terrible and dont have dedicated cycle lanes, and our walking and cycle paths are mostly dirt paths through wooded areas.
your country is almost completely flat, so you dont have to put much strain on your bike to get it around.
Again here in the uk the land is all over the place, hills everywhere, which puts alot of strain on your chain and gears as you have to change gear constantly so you dont have to work too hard to maintai your speed and momentum…
So i dont think a 30 year old double hand me doqn will suit most people here. And i imagine its a similar story in other countries.
Granted, im generalising a bit, and i dont live in the netherlands and haven’t seen much of it, but i dont think im being too liberal with my starements above. But if im wronf rhwn by all means correct me.
Looking at this wiki page under history it date back to before 1900 and was becoming more and more popular until 1960 when it took a hit as cars became more affordable but then began to rise again following protests from the dutch people around road deaths. But the development of cycling paths/routes has been going on over there since before the 1900s
Huh. I was thinking about those protests. Because before cars there were only three options: bicycle, horse or tram/train. And before that only bicycle and horse.
Dutch bikes are made for commuting. Do something off-road like driving on a path of gravel and your bike will commit self destruct. Do not underestimate our $500 bikes.
Your bike doesn’t sound like I’d want to ride it up or down even a small hill. Unlike the Netherlands, many places on earth have a 3rd dimension, putting additional requirements on a bike.
The answer is economy of scale, the collapse of the American manufacturing industry, bloated budgets, especially brand/marketing budgets, and the prices set by OEM manufacturers who themselves have bloated budgets. A lot of these brands arent actually manufacturers but middlemen for manufacturers. They do design, service, marketing and maybe assembly. But manufacturing is primarily done overseas. If it’s manufactured domestically the labor and material costs are commensurate. Maybe the frame is made domestically, maybe not.
A perfectly decent bicycle is less than $100 in China.
“some brands of bikes” make frames out of carbon fiber with wireless derailleurs and have rear facing radar to detect when other bikes or vehicles are approaching, how fast, and on which side.
When your exercise, your recreation, your hobby, and your transportation are all the same thing, it’s easy to justify spending more to make those things as easy and pleasant as possible.
You can get a perfectly usable bike for very little money in America… Probably still made in China though 😂
I don’t understand the sarcasm here. My comment was perfectly relevant to the OPs question. Yours sounds condescending. Are you being condescending? Because that’s not very nice. I eat the rude.
I wish there was a service that you could give a price range to and it would find the best used bike on craigslist and other bike sales sites in your area.
Because when talking about the economics of specialty outdoor products in the US market you have to recognize that manufacturing for most US consumer products is in China. Settle down
While what a lot of people said is true, with R&D costs, economy of scale, and such, a lot of it is profit too. They make bank on those high end bikes. Then they spend a chunk of that bank to sponsor riders, races, and advertising, so that they can continue making bank. What really gets my goat is bike shops around here charging $198 an hour for super basic mechanics. Anyone with any sort of mechanical aptitude can work on bicycles. It’s not rocket science.
No, the bike after all repairs and upgrades cost more than just the car itself. Car insurance for the year also cost more than the car, and the repair bills for the car at least double that but over a decent number of years.
I’d estimate the bike to date is about par with the first year of driving that car. After this winter will be the second year with the bike, and I have some additional winterizations this time.
Gotta think about what it takes to develop a product, combined with the size of your workforce, and the size of your consumer base.
A massive company like CCM can make a decent, cheaper bike because they have mass production facilities on their side. However, those bikes, serving massive consumer bases, are probably more of a “one size fits all” type solution.
Want something more bespoke? Thats usually when you look to smaller companies. They usually have a much smaller team, and that means the product takes a lot longer to develop; prototyping, testing, reiteration, etc. That all costs money, and that has to be recuperated. These companies are usually made up of people who know some consumers are into the product enough that they want a custom tailored version of it, and know they are willing to pay for it, and wait for it.
As for brand image, thats probably part of it for some people, but I personally know a couple people who have very nice custom bikes with little to no branding. They’re into it enough that what matters is the quality and performance.
Cycling is the new golf. There are lots of 50 year old dentists with disposable income out there who think electionic shifting and aero carbon wheels will enable them to drop their “buddies” on their Saturday group ride.
“In 2021, the Arizona Republic found that across the state’s 219 golf courses, the average water use per course came out to about 450,000 gallons per day.” PER COURSE. In a fucking desert! Golf needs to fucking die.
I’m fairly certain that’s the same area where wild hogs no longer find enough food in the wild and are currently enthusiastically reclaiming said golf courses.
I, for one, am rooting for the four-legged pigs on this one.
Yep. In my area, almost all the weekend warriors I see have these very fancy expensive bikes and the dudes have HUGE ass bellies like they’re pregnant with a baby cyclist.
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