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What makes a bicycle so expensive?
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2023
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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 .
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.