It's really life changing. I used to ride a motorcycle, and I still own one, but I seldom use it anymore; the ebike is absolutely perfect for short commutes (under 20 km each way).
That said, complete ebikes are more available now, and at good prices, so conversion kits are becoming less relevant.
You can get cheaper and way more expensive but I think this is the sweet spot. (For comparison My non ebike is a hybrid commuter which was about 600)
Besides people always get suckered into getting way nicer/newer cars than they really need (myself included). Financing is a difficult thing to keep at the low end. So in practice it’s not really comparable. But cars obviously have plenty of other benefits.
So do high-end non-e bikes.
The ones I like are $2000 to $12,000.
I'm waiting for a Henry Ford type of guy to bring those costs down. I guess the lithium batteries are a big factor in costs?
In the mean time, I'm sticking with my old Zapp bikes. I need a battery though.
You can already see a litany of comments expressing support for regulating ebikes so they remain a novelty niche in this very thread.
There is SO LITTLE material overall in a bike, with 99% of the tech having changed little since the '70s, so I guess it's not patents or IP either. It's not the wheels, I can buy replacements for little. It's not the shifting system, a crappy one is 100 EUR and a decent (low-end) Shimano is under 200. It's not the chain, those are 10 bucks, maybe 25 for the higher strength ones appropriate for an e-bike. It's not the motor, as I can get a conversion kit off ebay for 150-200, which includes a wheel and electronics.
Yet, 25kg of ebike costs 12% of 1000kg of a low end city car, while using 40 times less material and not having to undergo all the same rigorous testing, homologation and what else.
What am I missing? Is it all in the frame? Is it all profit? Am I looking at this from a completely wrong perspective ?
Also there's been a lot of consolidation, and there aren't many big bike manufacturing companies, so some illegal collusion is not out of the question.
If you look at bicycle parts then it seems like half the parts get updated once or twice a decade. Yet the old stuff was mostly fine.
Anyway, the cost of ebikes has gone down a lot over the years, especially as more and more competition shows up and production of various parts (batteries, motors, control units) has scaled up. I just had a quick boggle, ebikes start at around €1200 at the moment (cheaper too, but those are folding bikes).
The e-bike has maintenance costs close to 0.
Cars need insurance and fuel at the very minimum.
Not perfectly true. You have to renew brake pads, tires, chain and cassette at regular intervals if you ride a lot. They cost way way less than car maintenance though.
Depending where you live, how much paperwork you can cope with and how much you earn, the government will give you up to 50% of the purchase price back.
Most of the cost of a used car comes after you purchase it, though : )
Very true! French cars are certainly no exception to that rule :-)
This. I gave up after reading the list of documents I would have to produce.
It varies by metropole. Here in Nice it seems straightforward.
He got the better part of that deal. (You have to put a price down on the title when you sell. In this case it was technically $1...)