It's now Spring 2018.. Why haven't e-bikes gotten cheaper?

Joined
Apr 12, 2013
Messages
17
Location
Hamilton, Ontario
A few years back, the Currie eZip sold for $500 on Amazon, or as low as $350. It's since been discontinued. The Sondors was meant to be a $500 ebike. The Sondors Thin with the front suspension is now $1039 USD. Almost all online ebikes are in the 1500-2000 range or even higher. It's worth pointing out that you can buy a motorcycle that can go 250km/h for some of these prices.

If a hub motor is $80 in China, and a motor is just some coiled wires anyway, and battery cells are dirt cheap, then why can't I buy a full e-bike kit (including battery) for $200? Or a full e-bike for $500? It makes no sense. The ideal is to have quality components for cheap. Instead, we get either something overpriced, unreliable, unassembled, wires all over the place, taxed, etc..

I am well aware that these prices include overhead such as warranty, shipping, etc. That is really no excuse, e-bikes have been around for many years now. It doesn't have to be this way. You can simultaneously have good quality, and cheap. Someone should have had the bright idea to figure out how to sell some decent low-mid range components by now, and cut out all the middle-men, because as I've stated, we all know the true cost of the components. (The same applies to bicycles in general, actually.) That's what Sondors was supposed to do. Clearly it's possible, as the Currie eZip did it. The only thing you can find on Amazon now for that price are Chinese bikes from Ancheer and the like (which are possibly not too bad).

In my case, I'm looking at getting a BBS02 because of the climbing ability. With the 13.5Ah battery, it would cost me $1300+ CAD and that's without paying tax at the border. Can't afford that! I could use a hub motor, but then there's the weight, imbalance and overheating problems of a hub motor.

So to keep it cheap, I'll just stick to a smaller hub motor, light battery, and pedal up hills? (which kinda defeats the whole purpose of having an ebike, but it's still fun to cruise around..)

I was considering getting a Tesla welded pack from a forum thread here, it would have cost about ~$200 CAD for 360Wh.. then a cheap hub kit from Amazon is also ~$200 CAD, so we're already at $400 total for something of questionable reliability. That's a lot of money spent for an old 26" Raleigh mountain bike.

I've seen guides on how to make your own packs from YouTube, but I'm not very skilled so I can't do that.

I am looking to purchase a 24-36v hub motor kit (just motor, controller & throttle) for around $150 CAD, and a battery for about $150 CAD. Are there any such options available, or do I have to pay many many hundreds of dollars?
 
I think you just don't realize what overhead costs. I've spent an hour talking to customers spending 50 bucks. And I don't cost 5 bucks an hour. CS basically eats that profit alive, which is why the cheap prices come with none.
 
why would they ebike got cheaper ?
gasoline cars got cheaper also? - no?
if you want to move with speed , ebike must have expensive quality components
it is suicide to me to ride 30mph on cheap example 15 bucks front hub.
 
You should be able to get a BBS02 kit much cheaper than $1300. I think mine was around $800 to my door, a couple of years ago. Bought it off eBay but I can't remember which seller.

As for cheap battery options, there's always RC Lipo from hobbyking, their sale prices are pretty good you just have to be patient and keep an eye on them. You'll have to do a bit more work to maintain them, but you can get a decent capacity pretty cheap.

If you're willing to spend some time and wait for a good deal, you can save yourself a decent amount of cash, but ebikes are not going to get dramatically cheaper anytime soon. We're not really dealing with emerging technology here, motors and batteries have existed for well over a century, good ones aren't cheap. Cheap ones aren't good.
 
"You can simultaneously have good quality, and cheap"

Wow this is news to me.
 
Changing to meet the quality standards of EU and NA markets, ebikes are getting more expansive of course.

Looks to me that even the minimal effort to make them about acceptable for the western market requirements, are too much for you. Buy one that is made for the Chinese inside market, it will be cheap. Not all of them, because Chinese consumers are getting more concerned about quality, with their average income improving.
 
$1300 CDN is $1013 USD. I think I paid $550 for a BBS02 kit in 2016. THe battery was $550 for $1100 total. Lot of money to throw at a beater Diamondback donor bike. Until Luna came online, I recall BBS02 kits were around $700. Today, a BBS02 is $450, and I can get a battery from China for under $400. From my point of view, DIY kit bikes have gotten cheaper.

Even then, I cannot beat the price for a mass market chinese ebike that sells for around $500-700. Given what I've learned about ebikes, and there isn't much to learn, I'd be comfortable with them.

Here in the USA, buyers want bikes that shift themselves while beeping and booping out GPS location and tomorrow's weather. They want the full car dealership experience for service. Well, they're paying for it.
 
docw009 said:
...
Here in the USA, buyers want bikes that shift themselves while beeping and booping out GPS location and tomorrow's weather. They want the full car dealership experience for service. Well, they're paying for it.

I believe most are likely to look for good brakes, a fork that is not a pogo stick toy, good wheels, modern indexed shifters...
 
docw009 said:
Here in the USA, buyers want bikes that shift themselves while beeping and booping out GPS location and tomorrow's weather. They want the full car dealership experience for service. Well, they're paying for it.
Hmm. We have a pretty large bike community at the place I work (400+ people) and almost 100 who ride ebikes. No one has expressed the desires listed above - and in fact are often on our mailing list asking questions about maintenance, range extension, replacement part recommendations etc.
 
ebike prices have come lower....RADROVER for around $1500 is a solid deal for the performance/specs it offers. There are other option near this price range that are also decent choices. Sondors may be a bit cheaper in price, but their specs can be lacking.

Several years ago, you couldn't find many ebikes for that price, with solid battery pack, motor, specs.

There are many sub $1000 ebikes being offered nowadays, but once you go to that low price range, you cannot expect any impressive specs. In the end, the battery is still the biggest cost. In order to see prices come down substantially more, we must see battery technologies improved and their manufacturing costs come lower.
 
A basic bike with 7 speed rear shifting that's just good enough to not be a disgrace costs a little under $400 where I work. I'm actually surprised it's still possible to sell it that low. To that amount, add the cost of a basic motor kit and battery, plus some more for integrating all these things to a consumer product level. To me, that starts to look like about $1000 minimum for a non-disgraceful basic e-bike.

Let me share a story about what low e-bike purchase price gets you. The last turn-key e-bike I did major service on was an $800 mail order Vilano Pulse. It was a total disaster as received. All the components were garbage quality and set up to self-destruct if ridden (bearings way too tight, unlubricated assemblies, etc.) The best detail is that there was NO DISCONNECT PLUG between the hub motor and the battery/controller enclosure. In order to take the rear wheel off the bike, I had to unbolt the rack, unwrap the cable bundle, unscrew the electrical box/battery receiver from the rack, open up the controller compartment, unplug four connectors, and drag them back through a crowded conduit in the frame. Then reverse the process after servicing the wheel. This was what Vilano's version of "customer care" confirmed would be necessary when I brought the lack of a plug to their attention.

Does this seem like a reasonable operation to say, fix a flat tire?

IMG_20180429_044737.jpg

Of course the wheel arrived severely out of true with the rim something like 7mm to one side of center, and it had a rubber band rim strip on a deep section double walled rim. So I had to get the wheel off to correct both these problems. The customer paid about $100 for labor to make her brand new bike usable, and I took a grievous beating on the work considering the time it took to set that flaming turd into some sort of order.

The $800 piece of junk thus became a $900 piece of junk which worked a lot better for the moment, but is still junk that won't hold up to regular use. I circumvented the worst future problems by putting the motor cable connectors outside the electrical box and zip tying the cable to the frame rather than running it back through the conduit. The solution is not pretty, but it won't take an hour plus to fix a flat.

I've worked on Sondors fat and thin bikes. They are made with extremely low quality, non-durable rotating parts other than the motor. The paint and finishes are good and the frames seem adequate. They don't have the inexcusable problems that the Vilano e-bike had, but the only way they'll hold up in the long term is for the owner to keep replacing bad components with better ones until he has spent enough to have bought a more satisfactory bike to begin with.

Things cost what they cost. You can't work around it. If you don't pay enough to have the manufacturer care about it, you get something made by folks who don't care. It's dumb to pay extra for insubstantial hype, but it's also dumb to pay so little for something that the amount you do spend is wasted on essentially useless garbage.
 
Prices may drop as more people pick up riding them. Example: If everyone decided to not drive cars anymore and they all decided to buy ebikes then ebike prices initially would skyrocket. All the car manufacturing companies would stop making cars and instead make e bikes, and after everyone bought their bikes the market would be saturated with ebikes and since they were being mass produced by many, many companies then the price would drop to a respectable amount over what they cost to manufacture them. Some companies might go out of business and sell their inventory at clearance prices too, which may even be below manufacturing costs.

A quality bike is worth at least $500 so $1000 or more for a decent ebike seems reasonable. The battery is important as quality cells are not cheap, and ebikes require lighter weight components. You can save money by using cheap batteries, but they will be heavier and not perform as well.

You can build an ebike yourself for a reasonable amount right now. It is not like these things need to be manufactured, just take a donor bike and put a motor and battery on it :)
 
MadRhino said:
docw009 said:
...
Here in the USA, buyers want bikes that shift themselves while beeping and booping out GPS location and tomorrow's weather. They want the full car dealership experience for service. Well, they're paying for it.

I believe most are likely to look for good brakes, a fork that is not a pogo stick toy, good wheels, modern indexed shifters...

I exaggerate, but on some forums, like EBR, the tone is that a bike ain't no good unless it costs at least $2999.
 
In the classified ads you see quite a few ebikes of the types of bike Chalo spoke of where the owner found out even though the price they paid for the bike was fairly high (in their eyes anyway) it turned into a money pit with components falling apart, it might have cost a bit over $1000.00 new which sounded like a lot when they bought it. So they figure they'll be able to sell it for $700.00, "needs new battery" and "in great shape, just needs a tune up" etc etc.
 
Raisedeyebrows said:
...it might have cost a bit over $1000.00 new which sounded like a lot when they bought it. So they figure they'll be able to sell it for $700.00, "needs new battery" and "in great shape, just needs a tune up" etc etc.
Yep. They usually end up collecting dust in a garage for a few years, then sold 100$ to save some space. One was given to me. I said thanks to be polite, and gave it away the next week. :wink:
 
I stopped trying to sell my high-end bbs02 converted fatbike. Most people don´t know the difference between a quality bike and a shitbike so they go for the cheapest. Bad tires, bad brakes, bad rims, heavy, and a small battery.
 
filtvet said:
I stopped trying to sell my high-end bbs02 converted fatbike. Most people don´t know the difference between a quality bike and a shitbike so they go for the cheapest. Bad tires, bad brakes, bad rims, heavy, and a small battery.

It's the same situation faced by the bicycle industry generally. People who don't ride bikes think a bike should cost $100. So they buy a hundred dollar bike and try to ride it. It sucks or doesn't even work, so they go back to not riding it. One-size bikes that suck and don't work greatly outnumber real bikes. But real bikes tally a lot more total miles.
 
Chalo said:
A basic bike with 7 speed rear shifting that's just good enough to not be a disgrace costs a little under $400 where I work. I'm actually surprised it's still possible to sell it that low. To that amount, add the cost of a basic motor kit and battery, plus some more for integrating all these things to a consumer product level. To me, that starts to look like about $1000 minimum for a non-disgraceful basic e-bike.

Let me share a story about what low e-bike purchase price gets you. The last turn-key e-bike I did major service on was an $800 mail order Vilano Pulse. It was a total disaster as received. All the components were garbage quality and set up to self-destruct if ridden (bearings way too tight, unlubricated assemblies, etc.) The best detail is that there was NO DISCONNECT PLUG between the hub motor and the battery/controller enclosure. In order to take the rear wheel off the bike, I had to unbolt the rack, unwrap the cable bundle, unscrew the electrical box/battery receiver from the rack, open up the controller compartment, unplug four connectors, and drag them back through a crowded conduit in the frame. Then reverse the process after servicing the wheel. This was what Vilano's version of "customer care" confirmed would be necessary when I brought the lack of a plug to their attention.

Does this seem like a reasonable operation to say, fix a flat tire?

IMG_20180429_044737.jpg

Of course the wheel arrived severely out of true with the rim something like 7mm to one side of center, and it had a rubber band rim strip on a deep section double walled rim. So I had to get the wheel off to correct both these problems. The customer paid about $100 for labor to make her brand new bike usable, and I took a grievous beating on the work considering the time it took to set that flaming turd into some sort of order.

The $800 piece of junk thus became a $900 piece of junk which worked a lot better for the moment, but is still junk that won't hold up to regular use. I circumvented the worst future problems by putting the motor cable connectors outside the electrical box and zip tying the cable to the frame rather than running it back through the conduit. The solution is not pretty, but it won't take an hour plus to fix a flat.

I've worked on Sondors fat and thin bikes. They are made with extremely low quality, non-durable rotating parts other than the motor. The paint and finishes are good and the frames seem adequate. They don't have the inexcusable problems that the Vilano e-bike had, but the only way they'll hold up in the long term is for the owner to keep replacing bad components with better ones until he has spent enough to have bought a more satisfactory bike to begin with.

Things cost what they cost. You can't work around it. If you don't pay enough to have the manufacturer care about it, you get something made by folks who don't care. It's dumb to pay extra for insubstantial hype, but it's also dumb to pay so little for something that the amount you do spend is wasted on essentially useless garbage.


Rewiring the motor so it can be unplugged sounds super easy...Hell I rewire all my hubs to use Anderson power pole connectors. I mean for all your technical bike skills not developing skills with technology long as you been here is pretty bad. Changing connectors and cable management is noob stuff.
 
It should still have been done at the factory. Making a simple routine act such as fixing a flat a total PITA is an example of what sets a cheap, poorly designed product apart from a more expensive, well designed one.

People that want to buy an ebike to meet their transportation needs don't want (nor should they need) to rewire them in order to make them suitable for daily use.

Imagine if someone tried to sell a new car in a state like that? Most car users don't have the knowledge required to do anything beyond adding fuel, but they manage to drive them thousands of miles each year, because said cars have been designed with these "noobs" in mind.

The owner of the bike Chalo worked on brought it into the shop to fix a flat, so not even comfortable performing a basic repair like that. You think this person should consider themselves qualified to rewire their motor harness? High current/voltage wiring exposed to the weather isn't a "noob" job. It should be sorted before the thing is put in the hands of the customer.
 
Flyingpants,

That Currie low end bike that went on sale for $ 500 or on Clearance for less than that, was over that price when a current model at a store that sold Curry and E-Zip/I-Zip bikes.

Those bikes had many problems and had just 2 lead acid batteries.

Even then Curry , E-Zip / I-Zip had $ 1,350 dollar e-bikes that went up to a high voltage ...36 volts . Which we now consider low voltage. the $ 1,350 ones had 3 small , lead batteries .

I tried to sell the bikes for a couple of years , but lived in a town that was just 2 miles across so everyone I talked to could easily just peddle anywhere they wanted to.
All I got was plenty of calls of people who bought those cheep bikes from places up to 90 miles away , wanting me to sell them a part that failed and wanted me to fix their bikes for next to nothing. It would have cost me more money to drive to them and fix the bike , than what I would have made on the parts and labor.
So I got out of selling/ being a registered dealer after just a year and a half.

I have been watching Specialized for a few years now since I live close to them , and the Turbo is now cheaper, and better compared to the ones selling just 4 years ago,
And they have many different priced models with very good components .

In reality it is your perspective on what you ... think is expensive that is Off.
Many people start off like you and come to terms with the Reality of the cost of parts/shipping/warehousing/employee pay/customer service, and the many other costs involved.
 
boytitan said:
Rewiring the motor so it can be unplugged sounds super easy...Hell I rewire all my hubs to use Anderson power pole connectors. I mean for all your technical bike skills not developing skills with technology long as you been here is pretty bad. Changing connectors and cable management is noob stuff.

I do it all the time at the pedicab fab shop. But at the bike shop we have neither the supplies nor the tools for it. And to be fair, there's no reason we should.
 
dogman dan said:
I think you just don't realize what overhead costs.

Luckily I covered this topic in the first post. Overhead should be eliminated or minimized, at least for the very cheapest options. For that price, I don't expect any warranty or "customer service", really.

miro13car said:
it is suicide to me to ride 30mph on cheap example 15 bucks front hub.

I don't need to ride at 30mph. Pedal assist is good enough.

docw009 said:
Today, a BBS02 is $450, and I can get a battery from China for under $400. From my point of view, DIY kit bikes have gotten cheaper.

rumme said:
In the end, the battery is still the biggest cost. In order to see prices come down substantially more, we must see battery technologies improved and their manufacturing costs come lower.

The battery thing is interesting, as cell costs have fallen greatly since 2012 because of Tesla. Yet I remember prices being in the $300-500 range for a 36v15Ah or 48v10Ah from BMSbattery, and things haven't changed much. I understand there's less profit to be made on the smaller batteries, but come on.

If cell prices reach $100/kwh by the end of this decade, as is expected, that means the cells in your 360Wh pack will cost $36. And it'll be roughly 20 battery cells in a very, very small pack. 100% Waterproofing should have been standardized on all battery packs too, this is another very strange oversight.

docw009 said:
Even then, I cannot beat the price for a mass market chinese ebike that sells for around $500-700. Given what I've learned about ebikes, and there isn't much to learn, I'd be comfortable with them.

The ancheer is now $636 USD including shipping. It looks fine, the only thing I'm concerned about is the old-style bottle battery. That design seems to add weight and there doesn't seem to be much need for it anymore. If that battery and controller were in a single plastic waterproof box, i'd be very impressed. Maybe change the name to Ancaster or something.

8KDCw9g.png


Not bad for $636 including USA shipping. (I made some simple edits in mspaint). Again, I'm not asking for the sun and the moon here. It's just a plastic box that's fitted to the frame, can't cost more than $10 apiece - but somehow, it hasn't occurred to anyone to do it on a cheap bike yet - not even within China, apparently.

Here's the Cyclamatic:

riM4YBW.png


$549.99 including USA shipping. 47lbs. Looking very nice indeed.. but if it's a fully assembled ebike for that price, I should be able to buy just the unassembled motor kit w/ battery for even cheaper.

Alan B said:
I'm not sure why ebikes should have gotten cheaper. We're seeing big companies get into the market, but they are driving prices up, not down. The drop in prices that might come from major economy of scale won't come from them.

This is troubling. Ebikes should have gotten cheaper because battery prices have fallen, and the Sondors fatbike was supposed to be the big pricing revolution. Presumably, others could have figured out how to do the same thing. Instead, as you pointed out, bicycle companies are strapping a $500 li-ion battery to a normal bike, and charging $3-5k for it. This is no good.

rumme said:
ebike prices have come lower....RADROVER for around $1500 is a solid deal for the performance/specs it offers.

Sondors may be a bit cheaper in price, but their specs can be lacking.

$1500 is again too much for the mass market. Sondors thin was advertised as $500-600 ish, it's now $849 USD + shipping. So over $1000 plus any customs fees. Also no good. Costco was selling ebikes for $899 a few years ago.

Everyone wants to start their own little "me-too" ebike company, so they can each hopefully make a million bucks a year by selling you on the whole 'green' spiel. That's good for them, and good for you, but not good for the billions of people worldwide who could benefit from a cheap kit.

Don't get me wrong, if I had money, I'd buy one of those Luna Fusion fatbikes for $3000 USD, it's a good deal when you consider it's going to last you many years. But it doesn't solve the main problem at hand, which is getting them to be affordable for everybody.

There's something in economics called 'commoditization', when a product becomes so standardised it's basically sold at cost, plus a small margin. This should have happened to ebikes a long time ago: a couple geared hubs, couple direct drive hubs, a couple mid-drive kits, a couple batteries. Instead we have 1250 different options for different motors and batteries, and they are all highly specialized and overpriced. Great for hobbyists, but not for the average consumer.

For those with a bike already, those Amazon kits for $150 seem great, but a bit too heavy.
 
Chalo said:
boytitan said:
Rewiring the motor so it can be unplugged sounds super easy...Hell I rewire all my hubs to use Anderson power pole connectors. I mean for all your technical bike skills not developing skills with technology long as you been here is pretty bad. Changing connectors and cable management is noob stuff.

I do it all the time at the pedicab fab shop. But at the bike shop we have neither the supplies nor the tools for it. And to be fair, there's no reason we should.

No reason you should, agree, especially if you are not advertising/offering Ebike repair, take an electric bike into most any shop that's not selling them and odds are they won't want to work on them and who can blame them, you basically need some electronics training/knowledge to diagnose and fix problems, which the average bicycle mechanic doesn't have. Plus knowing the ins and outs of different hubmotor models, mid-drives etc etc. Odds are if you bring one into a shop that IS selling them if it isn't what's being sold there they'll also not want to touch it. Can't blame them for not wanting to waste tons of valuable shop time figuring out the idiosyncrasies of whatever brand happens to walk in the door and the often bizarre and backwards approaches various brands use.
 
See how much overhead the "cheaply made" ebike Chalo talked about cost? The customer had to go to somebody for it.

I was talking about the overhead just to sell shit in the USA. Sure, no overhead to sell just a few units and then tell all customers to f off. But Jason spends a crapton to be a player in the e bike kit market, and now the ready to ride e trike market. This includes many trips to china per year, ramming better quality product down the factories throat. Otherwise they send you their rejects.

Like I was saying, I'd spend an hour on one dumbass that wanted to buy a 50 buck part, because we were not in the market for the short haul. We had to actually do CS.

Justin does the same. I think you really have to work in this industry to have any clue.
 
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