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?
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.
Similiar amounts for the literal absolute best. Most people don’t spend more than 1500 total though.
$1500 gets you a pretty kickass gaming PC, even if it’s not absolute top of the line.
In mountain biking, $1500 gets you a solid hard tail or an entry-level full suspension from a direct-to-consumer brand like Polygon if you’re buying new.
In PC gaming, you can get a GPU for that $1500. You can also get a high end custom water cooling setup. Just the water cooling components.
Right, but that’s top of the line stuff. You can easily build a PC with a 70 tier GPU for less than $1500 and you’ll still have a kickass gaming PC.
The XX70 tier equivalent mountain bikes cost like $3000-$3500. I’m thinking along the lines of a Trek Remedy 7 (which is what I have), a base Santa Cruz Bronson, or a base Specialized Stumpjumper. There are plenty more but those are just 3 from some big brands.
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.This does sum it up pretty well, but bike pricing in general has gotten out of hand and pretty much everyone in the biking (specifically mountain biking) community agrees. Of course, volumes are pretty low for these products.
Just the frames for many of the higher end models can be $3000-5000. A fork is another $600-$1600. Shock is $500-1000. Carbon wheels are like $1500-2500 (alloy more like $500-800). Tires cost as much as cheap car tires, around $100 each. Pedals can be anywhere from $20 to $250. The new wireless drivetrains (made up of fragile derailleurs, crank arms, and cassettes/chains which importantly are consumable wear items) from Sram are just absolutely insane at like $1000-2500, Shimano has much more reasonable options from like $300-$1500 at the high end. Brakes (more expensive usually means more powerful) range anywhere from $200 a set at the low end, to $1000+ at the high end. Then there’s handlebar, stem, spacers, tire sealant, valve stems, and other misc bits.
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.
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. 😅
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.
brought high end SUVs to handle six inches of snow on a paved road.
Pavement princess
I live in a neighborhood full of them. The funniest thing is when there’s a heavy snowfall and you see the same beast buried and unmoving for weeks.
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.
Did they encounter 6 inches of snow in Africa?
No, just a thin salt crust over deep mud:
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.
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.
and have been for like 100 years.
Have they? What I heard bikes became popular in 1960-1980s.
Honestly i wadnt sure so i google that part.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_in_the_Netherlands
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.
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.
A rusty old bike wont feel as bad when it inevitably gets stolen too.
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, $500.
How much? Brand-new foldable costs about 150$ here. Used foldable 50-70$, used regular 30-50$.
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.
Plus they don’t get made in large numbers.
Perhaps sporty mountain-bikes that are seen by Americans as a toy due to having such a car-centrist culture. Normal bikes are 200e.
What?
Normal bikes are 200e
What?
NORMAL BIKES ARE 200E
200€ is Euros, about $212.
For some more extreme riders, they need bikes that are designed way stronger than any average bike. Imagine jumping a 50 foot ramp on a common bicycle, you’ll straight up break the frame in half.
I had met a retired rider from https://m.pinkbike.com/ and had a chance to ride his ~$8000 bicycle, that thing was built like a friggin’ tank with some of the most advanced mechanical features I’ve ever seen, including adjustable hydraulic shocks.
As far as lightweight, that bike was anything but lightweight, it was rather heavy actually, but when frame and fork strength is way more important, that’s just a necessary tradeoff for safety in extreme riding.
My brother used to be on Pinkbike! Thanks for the nostalgia trip.
The corrrect answer is massive profiteering off of suckers.
There’s some engineering expense, that makes real bikes that last years and perform reliably, which makes it more expensive than a Walmart bike, but after that it’s rip off city.
Easiest measure to illustrate this, is the price of motorcycles. You can drop £10k on road bike or mountain bike, and still not really get top of the range. Look up what kind of motorcycle you can get for that money and then make a value judgement .
Not just marketing. Carbon fibre and weight reduction can get very expensive.
Of course, you pretty quickly hit diminishing returns, and most people don’t actually need that for a short weekend trip.
But it can make sense to spend a few thousand on a bike, if you’re using it to commute or you use it for work (deliveries, etc.).
price of motorcycles. You can drop £10k on road bike or mountain bike, and still not really get top of the range. Look up what kind of motorcycle you can get for that money and then make a value judgement .
Don’t know much about bikes, but I remember reading the story of someone who had bought something insane. Think a high end ducati. Anyway, he was complaining about how it overheated and/or got to hot at traffic lights. Someone pointed out it wasn’t designed to idle at a traffic light or cruise highway speeds. He was driving it too slowly for it to cool the engine properly. He’d bought a bike that was designed to go fast, only to find out it wasn’t actually that good at riding around at relatively slow speeds.
Don’t know if that’s true, but it does illustrate that more expensive isn’t always necessarily a better choice for an individual user.
Yeah, nah, Ducatis are like the carbon road bikes of the motorcycle world - all about dick waving. A little while back one of the larger YouTube channels took the latest Ducati to a track and put it up against a cheap 7 year old Suzuki, and the Suzuki was still faster … and if you buy a Japanese sport bike it’s not going to have the mechanical problems of a Ducati either.
Source: I have owned, ridden, repaired and raced a lot of motorbikes, including some fast-ish ones.
I think I watched that video. Ducati Panigale vs a GSX-R?
Not just about dick waving. The Ducati was prettier and Italian.
From what I know of cars, that means it was more reliable than something Japanese, because they replaced breakdowns and technical issues with temparement and character. Because humans are irrational, that’s not unlikely to cause the user to anthropomorphise their overpriced but technically flawed vehicle. (“She sometimes gets stuck in 3rd, you need to be gentle.”)
That’s the one.
It’s all just horseshit, if you want a motorbike with character, get a classic one. Hell, even my '82 Montesa manages to be reliable, yet has character out the wazoo.
I see no evidence that these bike manufacturers are super profitable, so I doubt there is much “massive profiteering”. Good bicycles are a high tech but low volume industry.
I spent 1.2k on a lower-end-good-bike 11 years ago. It’s the best fun per dollar purchase I’ve made in my 60ish year life. I wish I’d spent a few hundred more for an Ultegra group set.
10k mountain bike is like 95% the same bike as what a professional mountain biker would use in a competition. 10k motorbike is consumer grade junk that would probably break within minutes if you abuse it like you do a pro bike.
So, as an example. The Honda CBR650R is $9,899.
You can absolutely abuse that for thousands of miles.
I somehow doubt that’s anywhere compareable to the bikes they use on motoGP or such. A quick google seems to put those anywhere from 1 to 4 million USD.
Warranty will often mention that it’s void if you race it. But I don’t think the comparison’s fair.
Even in circumstances where it isn’t literally illegal to ride even a ‘budget’ motorbike anywhere near full potential, it’s still incredibly dangerous for an amateur. You literally can’t abuse it like a pro, without likely killing yourself.
Pro-level bicycle? Often no problem. You’re less likely to get into trouble at 20mph/30kmh than 120mph/200kmh on a cheap motorbike. Forget about motogp bikes which IRC do 0-300kmh(190mph?) in under 10 seconds.
Superbike championships use road bikes with a change of fairings and upgrades to things like exhaust, brakes, and suspension.
Hell, Isle Of Man TT lightweight class has used stuff like the ER6f as a base which is a budget commuter bike, lol
A halo model super sport is basically a street legal race bike.
Remember when NASCAR racing meant “stock” car racing? Me neither.
Poor camparison, Superbike championship and the TT etc use the frame and engine (and quite a few other bits too). A stock bike in the right hands can get reasonably close to their lap times, and one with light mods (say, €1000 extra and a bit of elbow grease) can be halfway between the two.
True, but there are grades of racing. I don’t know what the current class structure is, but a 7k CBR is spitting distance of super street or whatever that AMA class is called now. I think the point being made is still valid. I can’t go out and buy a motogp bike, and the manufacturer isn’t pretending to sell me one.
Yeah, I’m just trying to illustrate that many people don’t quite seem to appreciate the level on engineering that is put into these things. What your average weekend warrior is doing with their mountain bike is not that far away from what a pro enduro racer would do in a competition. That’s why you need pro level gear too and that comes with a cost. A walmart bike simply just can’t handle the abuse and there’s plenty of videos on YouTube demonstrating that.
That’s like comparing a road-model Subaru to a rally-model Subaru, they are obviously built for far different purposes
No… That’s my point. 10k mountain bike basically is that rally subaru. That’s why it’s not fair to compare a bike like that to consumer level motorbikes. That mountain bike is pro-level.
Ninja 400 for 6000 and that’s basically the honda civic of motorcycles. Very reliable even after being crashed multiple times
Nonsense
10k gets you a brand new Yamaha MT-09: A sick-looking naked motorcycle with a 3 cylinder 118hp engine. It’s really frickin fast.
In around 2012 the costs of Tour the France bikes ranged somewhere around 4k to 8k (with a rumoured 12K€ bike). Source: French TV :-)
Training bikes was about half (source my lil bro^^), but as the frame were mostly carbon and glue, they were actually quite used at the end of the season.
It’s 90% ripoff.
Let’s be honest, in the “regular” bike area there hasn’t been a meaningful innovation in the last 15-20 years. Bike chains are literally the same for what? 30 years? Yet, this extremely simple stamped metal in oil costs 20€. For what?
I mean, even a normal, reasonable bike costs easily 800€. That’s as much as a baseline MacBook Air. The pinnacle of engineering costs as much as a product that’s literally 19th century technology and easily mass-produceable .
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.
Something I haven’t seen mentioned in these threads is economies of scale. Most cars are kind of engineering and machining marvels especially for their price, with a huge amount of their manufacturing being automated to a very high level. Fancy bikes probably do not have the production volume to justify that kind of automation. Their price represents their actual production being less efficient, not being able to amortize the R&D costs over as many units, and general luxury premium.
What make bikes so expensive?
R.: The willing of people to buy them.
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.
It’s just wild how the pandemic made the previous numbers double.
Got a great decent bike for $700 in 2015. Same bike runs $1600 now.
Everyone saw a convenient economic scapegoat and just “forgot” to lower the prices again after the crisis was over. Now, everyone has been paying these new and improved prices for 3 years, so they’re never going to go down again.
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.
mmmmm… at least they’re getting exercise biking while not wasting gigatons of water.
“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.
I don’t know why you’re being down voted. I’m I’m on of the cyclist with a huge ass-belly.
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.
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.
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.
Can you tell me where that is?
This is for the US, not sure about elsewhere, but…
The easy and reliable way for most people is probably just bikesdirect.com
I’ll fully admit that their website looks like you’re immediately gonna get scammed, but it’s legit and I’ve ordered from them. Don’t just trust me though, search around and find people who have posted and can verify that they’ve ordered and it’s legit.
They’re importers who sell branded and off/non branded bikes direct from the manufacturers at a heavy discount. Shipping is free, but it takes a pretty long time since they’re shipping it from ChinaThe hard and less reliable way is to ask around. I got to be good friends with the owner of my local bike shop, and he’s the type of person who organizes races and does a lot of custom work, so he knows a couple people who run small bike factories/workshops in the US. They sometimes have bikes that have some marks on the down tube or a slightly messy weld etc. but otherwise perfectly great bikes that they can’t sell. So it’s definitely a long shot and more likely in cities with a big biking scene, but this is where you get the best deal. I got a frame for $300 and they would have sold it for over $1500 but didn’t because the holes for a water bottle cage were milled slightly off center.
I’ve seen a carbon fiber fork withstand the weight of a car (equivalent, not an actual full size car)
I’ve also seen a carbon fiber rear triangle fold from bumping into a rock at an almost-standstill.
Gotta say, I like the idea of a titanium bike.
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.
Fortnine did a great video on this
I am never going to buy a motorbike. Why do I keep watching his videos?
Because Casey Affleck is just way way too good in this series
