Cargo bikes are obscenely expensive (the cheapest I’ve seen was double what I paid for my car) … what I do see being used here sometimes are old rusty mountain bikes with homebuilt trailers (dexian, plywood, two wheels from a kid’s bike), which seems like a more sensible solution given the trailer can be swapped between bikes or even reconfigured depending on needs
Cargo bikes are obscenely expensive (the cheapest I’ve seen was double what I paid for my car)
The Lectric Xpedition starts at $1400.
I bought one (chosen specifically because it was the cheapest I could find, although I ended up springing for dual batteries and some accessories) and love it. In particular, it was a great upgrade from my old formerly-rusty (until I had it powder-coated) mountain bike with an old Instep trailer.
which seems like a more sensible solution given the trailer can be swapped between bikes or even reconfigured depending on needs
Incidentally, if I need to carry a lot for some reason, I can still hitch the old trailer up to the new cargo bike. In theory, I could haul four kids at once!
In other words, the cargo bike isn’t an alternative, less “sensible solution” to the trailer, but rather a straight upgrade.
The average American drives ~14,000 miles per year. People who get electric cargo bikes tend to be able to substitute the bike for about 20% of those, or 2800 miles. Counting gas and vehicle depreciation you can expect to spend $0.65/mile to drive, so choosing the bike avoids $1820 in expenses. You’ll probably need to spend $100 or so on things like electricity, replacement tires, chain lubricants, and maybe a shifter cable or something in that time, so you end up with about $300 in your pocket you didn’t have, along with a big smile.
You’ll then end up with around $1800/year for the useful life of the bike.
People get them because the modestly higher speeds make it possible to pull off the trips they’re trying to do within their time budget. That electric assist roughly doubles the number of people for whom a bike is an option.
That’s unfortunate, but I’m not sure it’s reasonable to hope for much less – I was also considering DIY, but based on what I saw shopping around online, even just the electric parts (motor/battery/controller) alone, sourced straight from China, are more than half of that cost. And then if you subtract that out, the rest of it would be a complete non-electric heavy-duty cargo bike for <$700, which itself would be damn cheap. It’s hard to see how that cost could be cut much more, either: there’s a limit to how cheap the materials and manufacturing costs can get, after all, as well as a limit to how much you can reduce component quality without compromising the safety of the thing (e.g. ditching the hydraulic disc brakes in favor of rim brakes on a bike designed to carry 450 lbs might not be a smart idea).
Point is, it might be expensive relative to what you can afford, but IMO it certainly isn’t expensive compared to the raw costs of materials and labor that go into manufacturing it.
Anyway, if you live in a part of the world that’s so poor that new bikes in general are out of the question, then yeah, I guess you’ll have to wait a while for cargo e-bikes to become more available in the used market.
New bikes are affordable here, they’re about 100€. 1700 would get a really nice second-hand 125 scooter that can be used as the sole mode of transportation by many
Hmm, interesting! In that case, I’d expect it to be possible to get the price of a non-electric cargo bike down to 150€ or 200€ (in the sense that a long-tail frame doesn’t use more than 50-100% more metal than a standard diamond frame, and the rest of the components are more-or-less comparable).
How much are non-cargo electric bikes there, and how much are e-bike components? Do online Chinese suppliers like Aliexpress etc. charge your market the same prices they charge Americans?
Non-electric cargo bikes are still very expensive, last year I went to a bike expo in Valencia and the ones being shown were European-made and started at around 3000€, they were being marketed as lifestyle accessories by boutique manufacturers.
Then I go home (a more rural and poor area) and see normal working people using Chinese mountain bikes or small capacity petrol scooters to get to work and lug around their shopping, and the whole bike show thing seemed like ridiculous consumerism.
I don’t know the prices of electric bike parts, I suspect they’re a similar price to what Americans pay. The electric bikes I see here are generally mountain bikes being used by people with plenty of money to spare.
Cargo bikes are obscenely expensive (the cheapest I’ve seen was double what I paid for my car) … what I do see being used here sometimes are old rusty mountain bikes with homebuilt trailers (dexian, plywood, two wheels from a kid’s bike), which seems like a more sensible solution given the trailer can be swapped between bikes or even reconfigured depending on needs
The Lectric Xpedition starts at $1400.
I bought one (chosen specifically because it was the cheapest I could find, although I ended up springing for dual batteries and some accessories) and love it. In particular, it was a great upgrade from my old formerly-rusty (until I had it powder-coated) mountain bike with an old Instep trailer.
Incidentally, if I need to carry a lot for some reason, I can still hitch the old trailer up to the new cargo bike. In theory, I could haul four kids at once!
In other words, the cargo bike isn’t an alternative, less “sensible solution” to the trailer, but rather a straight upgrade.
Sorry but here 1400 for a bike is obscenely expensive for me and many other people
The average American drives ~14,000 miles per year. People who get electric cargo bikes tend to be able to substitute the bike for about 20% of those, or 2800 miles. Counting gas and vehicle depreciation you can expect to spend $0.65/mile to drive, so choosing the bike avoids $1820 in expenses. You’ll probably need to spend $100 or so on things like electricity, replacement tires, chain lubricants, and maybe a shifter cable or something in that time, so you end up with about $300 in your pocket you didn’t have, along with a big smile.
You’ll then end up with around $1800/year for the useful life of the bike.
This is an insanely good deal.
Why the fuck would you get a electric bike then? You can get a good 2nd hand commuter and probably a acoustic cargo bike for less than that.
Recommending ebikes as “budget option” is like suggesting heroin for weight loss. Insanely stupid, even if it just works in paper
People get them because the modestly higher speeds make it possible to pull off the trips they’re trying to do within their time budget. That electric assist roughly doubles the number of people for whom a bike is an option.
Sure, that’s a valid reasons to get ebikes. Just that trying to cut on budget is really not one.
Thing is, it saves money too.
It may save money.
In general, any advice to budgeting questions that start with “buy this” is stupid or malicious.
I’m in Spain. I mostly ride a 125 motorbike that gets 2.1l/100km and cost less than your cargo bike … last week I covered 2000km on it.
That’s unfortunate, but I’m not sure it’s reasonable to hope for much less – I was also considering DIY, but based on what I saw shopping around online, even just the electric parts (motor/battery/controller) alone, sourced straight from China, are more than half of that cost. And then if you subtract that out, the rest of it would be a complete non-electric heavy-duty cargo bike for <$700, which itself would be damn cheap. It’s hard to see how that cost could be cut much more, either: there’s a limit to how cheap the materials and manufacturing costs can get, after all, as well as a limit to how much you can reduce component quality without compromising the safety of the thing (e.g. ditching the hydraulic disc brakes in favor of rim brakes on a bike designed to carry 450 lbs might not be a smart idea).
Point is, it might be expensive relative to what you can afford, but IMO it certainly isn’t expensive compared to the raw costs of materials and labor that go into manufacturing it.
Anyway, if you live in a part of the world that’s so poor that new bikes in general are out of the question, then yeah, I guess you’ll have to wait a while for cargo e-bikes to become more available in the used market.
New bikes are affordable here, they’re about 100€. 1700 would get a really nice second-hand 125 scooter that can be used as the sole mode of transportation by many
Hmm, interesting! In that case, I’d expect it to be possible to get the price of a non-electric cargo bike down to 150€ or 200€ (in the sense that a long-tail frame doesn’t use more than 50-100% more metal than a standard diamond frame, and the rest of the components are more-or-less comparable).
How much are non-cargo electric bikes there, and how much are e-bike components? Do online Chinese suppliers like Aliexpress etc. charge your market the same prices they charge Americans?
Non-electric cargo bikes are still very expensive, last year I went to a bike expo in Valencia and the ones being shown were European-made and started at around 3000€, they were being marketed as lifestyle accessories by boutique manufacturers.
Then I go home (a more rural and poor area) and see normal working people using Chinese mountain bikes or small capacity petrol scooters to get to work and lug around their shopping, and the whole bike show thing seemed like ridiculous consumerism.
I don’t know the prices of electric bike parts, I suspect they’re a similar price to what Americans pay. The electric bikes I see here are generally mountain bikes being used by people with plenty of money to spare.