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?
My diy ebike cost me more than what I bought my previous car for. Although with insurance, gas, and maintenance, it swaps around.
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.
It’s not rocket science.
Now I just wish I had a rocket bike.
No you don’t…
I mean there’s no reason you can’t.
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.
$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.
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.
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.
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.
Am I located in China? No.
Will I relocate to China? No.
Then why bring this hell hole up?
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
A perfectly reasonable bike is $100 in America too. A really good bike is much more expensive in both places.
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.
The best kind of bike is one you can lock up and not worry about.
Jup! It’s quite normal here to have a bike that is so ugly, it is not even worth the effort to get stolen. 😅
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 week do just fine.
Plus they don’t get made in large numbers.
Although this YouTube video is about motorbikes and mountain bikes, much of the context is applicable to bicycles at large. And is also within the ballpark of an automobile down payment.
Borrowing some of the points from that video, a high-end bicycle – let’s say a road bike – is very close to what could actually be used in competitive road cycling, with all the technological and material sciences advances included. Whereas a standard car like a Toyota Corolla would need substantial further investment to bring it to competition grade (eg rallying). And a high-end, track-inspires road-legal car would be exceeding $100,000 easily.
Certainly, in the average quality range, the price of your average road bike and your average automobile will be a chasm away. But I figured your question is focusing on the high end of bicycles.
As people dive deeper into a hobby they have very particular desires. That means two things: (1) specialty parts with very low sales volumes, and (2) people are willing to pay extra to get exactly what they want. If I just want two wheels and a set of pedals and don’t really care about the details then I can grab any $200 bike from a department store. But if I want, say, a very particular drivetrain, carbon fiber parts to shave weight, maybe a specific suspension design, mounting points for niche accessories, etc., then I’m shopping for very specific items from boutique brands. That’s why a very small number of hardcore riders do crazy stuff like pay over $4k for a set of wheels.
You’ll see the same thing in other hobbies, too. I can’t imagine what some people spend on their gaming PCs.
The amount you spend also scales with how much you want to use the device, and the quality. It’s similar with power tools.
£100 combi drill? For the average DIY user, exactly the same functionality as a £500 one.
For a tradesman using it 7 hours a day, 240 days a year, the more comfortable/reliable one may well pay for itself.Similiar amounts for the literal absolute best. Most people don’t spend more than 1500 total though.
Mountain bikes have to be lightweight and strong, and production volume is low. Suspension design takes R&D, and adds moving parts. Start pricing components and you hit $5000 easy for a full-suspension bike. For hardtails, you are making a lot of compromises at $1500, but $2500 gets you a nice bike.
For road/gravel bikes, once you get over $2000, you are paying a lot of money for tiny weight savings, negligible aerodynamic improvements, and electronic gizmos.
For either mountain or road, if you want a custom/hand-made frame and parts made in the developed world paying living wages, you are going to spend a lot more. Taiwan makes a lot of great frames, but if you want a frame made buy a dude in Denver who names all his bikes after craft beers, add several grand.
For city/commuter bikes, you can get something perfectly good for under $1000, but if you can swing $2000, get a Brompton.
I dont get why walmart is the only choice for low end bikes
For a lot of people the point of a hobby seems to be as an outlet for their unhealthy relationship with money and purchasing, and markets find ways to take advantage of that.
You can buy good used bikes for cheap though, and maintain them cheaply also, so it isn’t a problem for people who are not stupidly rich or insane.
I can only on road bikes as that’s what I ride. But it seems like the biggest factor that drives up prices is a combination of weight and aerodynamics.
For just regular people, If you know where to look you can get a high end bike that was unfinished at the factory and didn’t get painted/stickered/branded and pay a fraction of the price. A lot of time the branding is what really drives up prices.
But in the very high end it’s really all about weight and aero. Professional racers will pay a hefty premium to knock a few grams off of their bikes total weight, or to get parts that are more aerodynamic and thus give you better power transfer between your bike and the road.
And then the lighter you want to get, you start getting diminished returns, and exponentially higher prices. Like if you compare a 3 pound saddle to a 1 pound saddle it might be a little bit more expensive. But then if you have a 150 gram saddle and want to get a 100 gram saddle that might be 20x the price.
Lighter parts also have to sustain the same amount of forces (and sometimes much much more) as their heavy duty steel counterparts so finding things that can undergo this amount of stress and not break plays into it as well.
And this doesn’t even go into materials. The big new thing is titanium bikes which are ridiculously expensive but will last several lifetimes if taken care of. And then carbon fiber is difficult to make and even more difficult to make well. Much lighter and than other materials but really only flexes in one direction and can be really fragile if under the wrong type of stress.
I got a world class mountain bike for 100€, invested 260€ two years later (rims, chain, stuff).
Yeah it’s from like 1998 but it’s both light and funky as hell :-)
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.
