ebike value for money or not

[electric.mike]

just having one of my window shopping moments on the net and i came across these, no matter how good an electric bike is are they really value for money, or are suppliers of £1000 and above e bikes taking the micky.(don't know how to spell micky and not allowed to use the other word)
ime not saying they are ime just asking the question.

mike

 

[flecc]

They are produced in the same way as the mini motos and £299 trail bikes so beloved of kids. Sometimes basically sound designs, but often not, they are thrown together with minimal quality control, if it starts it passes.

Then they are marketed like baked beans, fast turnover, no support etc, often by firms that disappear quickly or change their trading names to avoid comebacks.

It's a gamble. You can be lucky and get a reasonable amount of use, but more commonly they don't last long. Parts are impossible usually. One local kid's one lasted 23 hours for example before a failure which was unrepairable. Since it's never been started again in at least a couple of months since, I guess they've had no satisfaction in getting it put right.

Certainly they reflect the fact that the mainstream companies have very substantial gross margins on the products they retail, but their more responsible operations bring large overheads and ongoing costs that reduce those substantially to moderate levels.
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[Ian]

That's the bottom end of the scooter market Mike, a quality 50cc scooter from someone like Honda will cost a lot more and it's that that should be compared in value terms with more expensive e-bikes.

Whether something represents value depends on your point of view, my first e-bike cost less than £500 but was very poor value due to it's lack of reliability and performance, in fact it was £500 wasted. My next bike cost £1000 but I have to consider it good value as it does everything asked of it and is well on the way to paying for itself in terms of saved car journeys, something the cheaper bike would never have done.

I don't think suppliers of expensive bikes are taking the mickey, after all they sell small quantities of them compared to cheaper mass-market machines, and the manufacturers have development costs to recoup over a relatively small number of units.