Lets not pretend that the value is even comparable here. You can get a modern car with safety, speed and reach that is hundred if not thousand times ahead of this electric bike. It's purely a high-class fashion vehicle and there's nothing wrong with that as long as you don't pretend it's something more.
Value is always relative to your intended use case.
I own a similar sized and prized cargo bike. It replaces all my urban transportation needs, carrying me and my 3yo kid and all the cargo we need. It’s cargo capacity is in line with a small car. My average speed in the city is about 20km/h which is very much in line with a cars average speed in an urban setting. On many of our daily commutes it’s even faster than a car. For us, it entirely replaces a car. It’s cheaper to maintain. I can largely fix it myself.
I ride it for about 3000-4000 km per year, which is a definite indicator that it’s not a toy device.
(1) bikes are priced disproportionally high compared to cars, (2) e-bike even more so, (3) this is a top of the line model from a fancy brand, (4) cost of ownership of a bike is a very small fraction of a car, with a bike when you've paid for it you're done, maintenance is cheap and DIY. Cars: insurance, expensive maintenance, road tax, fuel etc.
Personally I almost always buy my bikes second hand, there are always deals to be had where bikes are only a few months old and are sold with a 50% or more discount.
In Belgium, second hand bikes tend to be overpriced, because many sellers aren't aware of the disproportionately high cost of local labor compared to the cost of producing a new bike. The price of local labor should be taken into account because you need it to maintain the second hand bike. I used to buy my bikes second hand, but I've switched to buying a new one every three years, and it requires little maintenance since I choose a higher end one.
I agree with you comparison to cars. In the last five years prices have significantly gone down thanks to big players like Decathlon or online brands, but they're still quite high. 500 euros can buy you 1000 kg of second hand metal, or an entry-level bicycle. I know there's more to it, but I still don't understand why good quality bicycles cost so much to produce.
Yes and no, at least for Brussels than I know. Yes, fancy road bike and so on tends to be expensive for second hand. No because, if you look at more "old" bike and you reach to a lot of bike association, often you have kind of repair shops managed by non-profit were you can learn to repair your bike only paying for the pieces your need with someone. Not the best gear will be available but you can easily transfer that knowledge after to maintain your bike on your own.
Brussels and cities in Wallonia can be very hilly and valley-y and require either a good enough bike and/or physical condition. Outside of the cities, Ravel are a good way to travel and avoiding small roads when cars are going way to fast because of habits. An e-bike in those cities is really a nice tools to navigate. The bike infrastructure is not as much there than in Flanders but it will finally come to the same level, I hope. I see way less cargo bike than in the Netherlands too but that will come with the bike infrastructure because riding the city is still tough IMO.
Another angle: or why cars are so incredibly cheap for what they offer. Do keep in mind that car manufacturers make a lot more on the after-sales track than bike manufacturers ever will and some might be willing to reduce the sticker price a bit but raise the price of parts and maintenance to counterbalance that.
I think it's just the difference that car industry is much bigger and much more efficient with its labor. It's also widely different markets so clearly markup is very different. Where automobile markup is often not more than few percent hipster urban ebike market can easily justify 500% markup.
I expect bike and component prices to go down with wider adoption. Especially e-bikes. I was for example surprised to see that on my kids-towing e-bike in a hilly city I have to change front-disc-brakes pads approximately every 1'000km which, at 20€ a pair of disc-brakes pads in Switzerland, translates to approximately 0.02€ per km just for braking. Which at the end of the day is not an issue for me but seems SO expensive in comparison with a car.
I believe it might have to do with the near-monopolies of bike component producers, like Shimano or SRAM. It might also be related to the antiquated model of distribution with local bike shops that have little freedom about how they can sell within the exclusive contracts they have with big brands.
There's also the mix of leisure practice of cycling that clashes with a more practical use. In the first case, bikes are almost a Veblen good. People are happy to spend crazy amounts of money to save what is in the end very little weight.
For instance I recently looked SRAM Eagle groupset prices. The cheapest version is $380, and the most expensive one is $1,381. The weights are 2032 g and 1,502 g respectively. Almost 4 times the price for saving 25% of the weight!
Consumers that are ready to spend that amount of money get a lot of attention from the industry, that has little incentive to cater to the needs of daily cycling commuters, who're looking for cheap, reliable and durable bikes.
Bikes could not possible get 'wider adoption' where I live and yet prices are what they are. Switzerland is probably one of the worst countries for bike brake maintenance, here I got for many years between pads/discs and I cycle a lot, as much as most people would drive their car.
A lot of those 50% off used bikes are probably stolen which is why they are so cheap. Bike theft is rampant in a lot of cities and it is trivial to export them to other places to sell them.
Not a chance. Frame # check is an easy thing to do here and if someone's new bike gets stolen it is a sure thing that will get reported to insurance / police.
But new bikes get stolen to be chopped up for parts regularly. Joke on the subject: The bike theft report form for the Netherlands contains a field labelled: "Where did you steal the bike yourself?"
> Lets not pretend that the value is even comparable here
If you want a car, the value is not comparable, and you should get a car.
If you do not want a car (for any reason), it doesn't make any sense to "compare value".
I do not understand why so many people react with "you could get a car for this much" when looking at expensive E-bikes. Well, perhaps you could, but so what? A car is not equivalent to an E-bike, except that they are both options for transportation. But so is public transport, an airplane, an 18-wheel truck and a cargo ship.
In my case, while I would probably not want an $8000 cargo bike, I do not have a problem paying around $2000 for a good quality E-bike — and I would not compare it to a car, nor would I compare it to an 18-wheel truck. It's a different mode of transport.
With car share schemes, the value of buying a car when you only use it occasionally is greatly diminished while a cargo bike can be used daily for the school run.
But it depends where you are. American towns and cities are largely built for cars. Many European cities are built for walking and are pedestrianizing their city centers. Depending on your situation there's no need for a car aside from really occasional use. Calling a cargo bike "purely a high-class fashion vehicle" is not correct.
I don't agree about the way you assess value, and I don't think it's so much about fashion as you pretend.
Mobility choices are lifestyle choices. Buying a bicycle means getting rid of parking issue and exercising everyday by default, without the cost of having to decide to do it. Despite road violence coming from car drivers, it's less stressful because it keeps you connected to your environment. The value of a bike compared to a car is like the value of a lower paying job that has less pressure, in a lower cost of living area, a shorter commute, and better offices and colleagues. You can't compare them easily.
> Lets not pretend that the value is even comparable here.
Agreed, but for opposite reasons. As someone living in a city I drive a few times a year. I bike 200kms a week, though. So the value of a bicycle is vastly better.
Do I need to know how to pilot a helicopter to know that's its a complex and expensive machine?
The response is quite mind boggling. Are you really implying a vehicle with engine, safety systems that have been refined for a century and probably has markup in single digit percents is less valuable than a niche product that produced for the high-class with a 1000 percent markup?
I know many tech people are spoiled high class citizens but this thread is just ridiculous. There's nothing wrong you liking the bike just don't judge the rest of the world's peasants claiming that it could equate and replace whatever poor people are using.
> Are you really implying a vehicle with engine, safety systems that have been refined for a century
The ignorance displayed here is astounding. Appealing to the length of cars' history, when bikes have been around for even longer? Really?
> produced for the high-class with a 1000 percent markup?
Even more absurdity. I'm sure the markup is higher than for cars, but a thousand percent just reveals how little you know in a subject you're nevertheless overwhelmingly confident on.
You complain about the actual knowledgeable people being "spoiled high class citizens", even as you advertise your ignorance on the subject with nearly every sentence.
Oof, it's almost like the concept of hyperbole is alien to you. Sure it's not 1000 percent markup but it's much much higher than middle class automobile.
It's a niche product for upper class urban citizen, of course markup is high here. You can't serisouly be thinking that a electric bicycle has actually worth 8000$ of parts right? Not even 4000$, right?
As much as I don't agree with the aggressive tone of the grand-parent post, I tend to find it less a problem outside the urban areas due to the bike roads in the "countryside" more available either in Belgium or the Netherlands. It is also the part of the countries when the need of a car is enhanced due the need to travel way longer distances to reach day-to-day facilities (supermarket, shops, etc.).
And yes, different countries, different prices, requirements etc. Comparison is fallacious but taking inspiration of something done in another part of the world and applying it with the constraints of your own environment is always useful.
The question of mobility is much centred around the mobility in urban areas of various sizes. I may project here because I used to live in urban areas most of my life.
