Why are motorbikes so much better value than bicycles?

[flecc]

So somewhere along the line someone is cashing in big time - and in the eBike market it's probably Bosch. For a system which is so widely used the economies of scale must be enormous and they must be seriously cleaning up.

So no change there, ever looked at Bosch prices for their other products?

They often even import cheap Oriental and Italian makes of domestic electricals, stick the Bosch name on and price OTT. And as for their battery prices................

 

[timidtom]

just look through the descriptions of some of these products .....Magnesium RST Vita Hydraulic Suspension forks with lockout.....Xtasy black anodise alloy riser bars with ergo support grips...Pinarello RoKh Ultegra Di2 SM Elec 10S.


I find that simple ignorance can be a great money-saver - I haven't a clue what most of the above are!
Best wishes,

Tom (wallet firmly in pocket)

 

[103Alex1]

So no change there, ever looked at Bosch prices for their other products?

They often even import cheap Oriental and Italian makes of domestic electricals, stick the Bosch name on and price OTT. And as for their battery prices................

Indeed - and back full-circle to my comment on another thread to the effect that having seen how rubbish some of their other products are in domestic electricals when I first started looking at eBikes in the non-kit market, I wrote anything with that Brand involved off as a no-go area.

With a manufacturer into so many different things obviously you can't necessarily draw balnket assumptions but if they are capable of these practices in one area then I wouldn't trust them in another. The "you get what you pay for" and "buy cheap buy twice" assumptions does not hold these days in many areas ... you get cheap stuff in both expensive and cheap products and some expensive products fall over even faster than their cheaper competitors. Also translates as "most of what you buy nowadays is a load of junk" lol.

Mistrustful as I am of large corporations, default position is big brand averse until persuaded otherwise lol.

 

[Woosh]

There are 1000s of Chinese assemblers of E bikes - some large, most small.
They have jumped on the bandwagon over the past 5 years with the rapid increase of sales especially in Europe (and notably Holland) because that is what China has done for years.
As already stated on here, the economies of scale that can now be achieved by the motorbike manufacturers simply cannot be achieved by the E bike assemblers - not yet.
It is like the early days of the IBM clone (PC) back in the late 80s. A PC cost a fortune and you could get one built by any one of 100s of different companies - now its either a Dell or a Dell and costs peanuts.
Give E bikes another 15 years and they will be mainstream, made by 4 or 5 of the big guys and probably sold in Tescos for a quarter of what they cost today.
They'll all look the same, though and if they go wrong you'll be dealing with the call centre...but that's the price of turning niche into commodity and getting your pricing down.
This doesn't mean that there isn't an element of ripping off in some cases when there's a 'what the market is prepared to pay' attitude.
And as long as people 'are prepared to pay' (because essentially they think that the more they pay, the better the product so social status goes up, you only have to witness the cost of branded trainers for example), prices will remain high.
With more and more sales of E bikes I think we'll see less of this blinkered attitude- better for everyone all round.

Hatti