Folks:
I love my Trek electric bicycle and now a friend wants to get one. It seems that she must pay a minimum of about $2,800 if she wants to get a name-brand such as Trek or Specialized. The question for today is why. Back in 2009 Costco was selling electric bikes for $899. You can find Chinese-made electric bicycles retailing on Alibaba for $500-1000.
If we can go into a neighborhood bike store and buy a mainstream Trek for $440, why is the first rung of the electric bike ladder at $2000+? What is stopping Trek, Specialized, and Giant from throwing the electric components of a $500 Chinese electric bike onto one of their $440 bikes and selling the combination for under $1000?
Related: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-06-02/electric-bike-makers-woo-americans
I was thinking of spending ~$600 to upgrade an existing bike, but couldn’t really justify spending that much.
Also I heard the sad news last night about a pickup truck driver killing five and hospitalizing four more bikers yesterday near Kalamazoo.
Over 200 million electric bikes have been sold in China. Chinese pedal bikes already have the entire low end of the US market (virtually all of the bikes that get sold in Wal-Mart and other chain stores). Trek and Specialized are at the high (er not highest) end of the US pedal bike market so naturally their electric products are also expensive. I am guessing that the Chinese electric bike companies have stayed out of the US market due to regulatory and legal liability concerns (and likewise Wal-Mart has not tried to sell these bikes for the same reason). Eventually though they may come around and the prices will plummet.
Beware low-price Chinese electric products. As people are discovering with products ranging from vape pens to “hoverboard” scooters, part of the reason the prices are so low is because the manufacturers are scrimping on the safety mechanisms for charging and managing the batteries.
Without proper management, all the energy in the battery is released at once, resulting in the same sort of explosions & fires you get if a small gas tank is ignited.
You can buy kits and DIY modify a bike fairly easily and cheaply. It looks ugly, though. It must be liability concerns keeping ready-to-go cheap e-bikes off the US market.
I sold off my electric bike stuff because it killed the social aspect of biking – being able to ride with friends and use Strava. It is good for commuting though.
If I were doing it now, I would only get the latest and best Bosch or Shimano STEPS drive system.
Something like this:
http://ebike-mtb.com/en/exclusive-lapierre-overvolt-e-mountainbike-range-2016/
@John—I was going to post the same link. It is curious to me that ebikes in the U.S. haven’t gotten cheaper. There is some intelligent commentary over at Hacker News, though it appears that no one answers the essential question.
The number of companies working on ebikes indicates, though, that someone is going to achieve the economies of scale needed to really drive prices down.
From my experience hacking and riding DIY electric Frankenbikes, every component that’s not extra-super-tough takes a beating, and falls into parts long before any warranty would elapse.
A $450 bike must only be sturdy enough to deal with the riding style of people who put $450 in a mountain bike: not that much legpower, no super technical tracks, etc. With an engine providing much more power and giving access to trickier rides, I’ll bet it would fall into parts quickly. Moreover, looking at the example you’ve linked to, V-Brakes on an electrical MTB is an accident and a trial waiting to happen.
Let’s say you can make a MTB ridable, safe and sturdy enough to support engine + driver for $800. A decent battery will set you back another $400. If you’re putting that kind of money, you want a decent engine too, let’s say another $400 with controller, display, sensors etc, we’re already at $1600, for something that’s usable but not inspiring. Now, those bikes take quite a lot of R&D: bike manufacturers typically don’t know that much about electrical engines, most of what they know about geometry and weight distribution is challenged, they can’t afford to hurt their brand with a bike that looks dorky, and the field evolves very fast. Moreover, those R&D costs needs to be amortized over few units sold. I wouldn’t expect the result to sell for less than $2000-$2500; more if there’s a recognized brand label on it, and/or if you want a truly fun and effective ride.
TL;DR: for the same reason you can’t get a decent 4WD car for the price of a horse cart + a moped engine 🙂
Also there is a battle going on right now. The Audubon Society has been fighting very hard to ban all mountain bikes from wilderness hiking trails. Turns out that those people who eat granola, wear sandals, and identify each other by carrying walking sticks feel that their ambiance is ruined by merely seeing a MTB pass them.
Wilderness already bans “motorized vehicles.” I think that pedal-assisted bikes of 350 watts or less and limited to 20 kph (I would settle for 250 watts or less but I think it should be 25 kph) should be ruled as regular bicycles. This would help a growing industry and offset the evil carbon of automobiles.
Mountain bike organizations who are already generally against electric bikes are afraid that their existence will give the Audubon Society more of an argument to ban bikes in general.
The manufactures are aware of all this.