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

The inexpensive ebike market { under $1000} still has a market for alot of people. Yes, the components are low end but for alot of people, they just want something to zip around town, maybe only doing 20 mph top speed and a distance of 15 miles or less. Inexpensive ebikes will work for alot of these consumers, especially if they weigh under 180lbs. Many of these consumers are buying a ebike, in the same way people buy a treadmill, or pool table or swimming pool, in that it will get used when they first purchase it, but as time goes on, the fad wears off and it ends up collecting dust or just being in the way. If only 1 out 10,000 people buy/ own a ebike , most of those buyers will be " fad ebikers" and the low priced entry level ebikes are the perfect consumerist item for them. They can enjoy their fad ebik for a few months, for $700 , then be done with it, compared to buying a $4000 bosch system ebike or stealth bomber. Lets also factor in the ebike entry level markets and how it really caters to kids/teenagers. A 12 year old will be more then happy with a $600 sondors ebike and the parents are surely glad they dont have to spend thousands of dollars to satisfy the ebike itch for their kids.

Basically, im trying to say that no matter how much we criticize the inexpensive ebike offerings, that is where the major purchases are made by society. It also helps drive down the prices of better ebikes as time goes on.
 
Yep, but many of those would still be riding them bikes if they had started on a good one. Cheap crap bikes are responsible for a lot of gas burnt after they discouraged newbies off biking.
 
MadRhino
exactly, excellent point.
Crap BSO will start falling apart after 2-3 seasons and in many, most cases end up abandoned filling dumpsters of NAmerica.
Look what Europe did, introduced tax on China brand BSO.
Europe has only so much room in dampsters.
 
MadRhino said:
Yep, but many of those would still be riding them bikes if they had started on a good one. Cheap crap bikes are responsible for a lot of gas burnt after they discouraged newbies off biking.

BS.
 
Buk___ said:
.......BS.

Hey Buk, what is up buddy? Seems like you are on the war path lately......are you ok?

:D
 
MadRhino said:
Yep, but many of those would still be riding them bikes if they had started on a good one. Cheap crap bikes are responsible for a lot of gas burnt after they discouraged newbies off biking.

and many of those who buy ebikes, would NOT be riding them, even if they purchased a decent quality ebike.

Humans are notorious for spending their money on fad type consumer items or items associated with hobbies which they do not stick with. Ebikes is 1 of them. WHY ? Because people get this notion that they will buy a ebike, and it will become a regular replacement for commuting with their cars , but they soon realize that driving a ebike in the hot sun, rain, getting flats, etc is to much of pain in the ass, so after a few months, the ebike fad wears off and they go back to their climate controlled and safer cars/trucks for commuting.

Once again, we must admit that the average person that buys a ebike , are not into it like WE are on this forum. The inexpensive ebike market provides benefits for these types of consumers. Now, on the rare occasions that someone does buy a SONDORS and decides they are in love with ebikes for the longterm, they will advance and learn and they have the positive experience of starting their ebike hobby by not having to initially spend $3000 to try the hobby.

Inexpensive ebikes are not a completely negative venture and the more they lower prices on entry level ebikes, the better shot of decent made ebikes coming lower in price. Competition is a good thing.
 
e-beach said:
Buk___ said:
.......BS.

Hey Buk, what is up buddy? Seems like you are on the war path lately......are you ok?

:D

Don’t bother. Forums are like cars: Some people who are normally polite and caring in life, are suddenly posessed by antagonism when they are inside one. :wink:
 
rumme said:
MadRhino said:
Yep, but many of those would still be riding them bikes if they had started on a good one. Cheap crap bikes are responsible for a lot of gas burnt after they discouraged newbies off biking.

and many of those who buy ebikes, would NOT be riding them, even if they purchased a decent quality ebike.

Humans are notorious for spending their money on fad type consumer items or items associated with hobbies which they do not stick with. Ebikes is 1 of them. WHY ? Because people get this notion that they will buy a ebike, and it will become a regular replacement for commuting with their cars , but they soon realize that driving a ebike in the hot sun, rain, getting flats, etc is to much of pain in the ass, so after a few months, the ebike fad wears off and they go back to their climate controlled and safer cars/trucks for commuting.

Once again, we must admit that the average person that buys a ebike , are not into it like WE are on this forum. The inexpensive ebike market provides benefits for these types of consumers. Now, on the rare occasions that someone does buy a SONDORS and decides they are in love with ebikes for the longterm, they will advance and learn and they have the positive experience of starting their ebike hobby by not having to initially spend $3000 to try the hobby.

Inexpensive ebikes are not a completely negative venture and the more they lower prices on entry level ebikes, the better shot of decent made ebikes coming lower in price. Competition is a good thing.

I consider ebikes to be in the same category as treadmills or pool tables or even boats. Many people buy these types of items, thinking they will regularly use them for a lifetime , only to end up using them for a short time, and then those items just sit around and are " in the way". When this happens, things like treadmills sit in the corner, unused, and have clothes hanging off them, pool tables end up becoming storage space like some type of large dinner table, and it is often said the 2 happiest times during being a boat owners life , is buying the boat, then selling it after the owner realizes they dont use the boat anymore.

Ebikes are only a passion for a few of us , the rest of the ebike community { which is the majority} are often fad buyers/users . They want to spend the least amount of cash to get into the fad and once the fad has run its course in a short period of time, the ebike is either sold or sits in the corner of a garage taking up space and collecting dust.

I am hoping someone comes out with a decent quality mid drive ebike for $2000 or less. It seems the mid drive ebike market does not have much competition when it comes to good quality and lower prices. Sondors saw the potential in the hub motor ebike market, for a $700 ebike that looked decent and he made a ton of money on it. The mid drive ebike market is still waiting for a fairly priced mass produced offering that would have ability top use throttle only - 30 mph top speed, at least 80-120 NMS of torque in a 48 volt/20AH battery system. IMHO, there are to many 36 volt mid drive ebikes, that are only pedal assist that are way overpriced. Some of these are $3000 or more for pedal assist only and 36 volt-11 AH battery systems.
 
Case in point:

"Ebikes are only a passion for a few of us , the rest of the ebike community { which is the majority} are often fad buyers/users . They want to spend the least amount of cash to get into the fad and once the fad has run its course in a short period of time, the ebike is either sold or sits in the corner of a garage taking up space and collecting dust."

The original Sondors. As cheap as you could even imagine and thus wildly popular with thousands sold, and surprising to me delivered. But how many have you actually seen in the wild. I have yet to. This doesn't mean they all are not being used but it does seem to point to the fact that the lion's share are in the above quote category.

The success of online bike sales in the $1500 category has that segment of the market covered. But you do get what you pay for. Most are serviceable bikes that if used as intended can be just fine for casual use or even more with a few "upgrades" which of course adds to the total cost.

The industry will keep making "improvements" that can justify keeping costs the same or even higher. The price of the current Li batteries may be settling downward but when new cell technology is introduced I don't think they will cost even less as ROI is king in the bike industry. I doubt that the bike industry, at least the manufactured whole bike solution type, have any designs on getting costs down any time soon. But in the Open Source world you can at least cherry pick tech as it happens and defray the cost of having to get a totally new bike.
 
Ebikes and ebike components have gotten less expensive for the most part. So the title of this thread is incorrect .

Battery packs and hub motors have definitely improved and prices have gotten lower over the past several years. I remember the typical no name 1000 watt hub motor combo { without battery pack} used to be around $300 delivered and now you can get em for almost half that price.

The sondors styled ebikes are for the masses, most of which are not diehard ebikers. The more and more sondors styled ebikes we see come into the market, will FORCE the other well made companies to lower prices because companies like BOSCH, YAMAHA, etc , will realize they could be making alot more $$$$$ if they started offering ebikes under $2000 , instead of only offering ebikes in a $3000- $6000 price range, which will automatically eliminate 90% of ebike buyers, from purchasing their products. I dont know how BOSCH ebikes division , is able to stay in business, because almost everything I see they sell in ebikes, is outrageously priced. Maybe Yamaha will create a solid mid drive ebike for under $2000 with a 48/20 AH battery pack. If it had average front suspension, suspension seat post but a solid frame/ crankset, and looked sleek, I think it would be a big seller around $1900 .
 
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.

My apologies did not know that.
 
Not sure about the fuss: prices have crashed here in europe. You get a hub motor ebike for less than 500€ including a (cheapo) battery - when 5 years ago you'd have paid way over a thousand euros for the same bike. I was considering entering the conversion market, but now prices are so low, it seems hopeless. The only thing that remains expensive - besides overpriced bosh mid drives - are (good) batteries, but even there you can hardly make some money. Also, the after-sale market seems completely overwhelmed: none of the bike shops in my city knows how to properly repair an ebike. They usually only work as middle-man between the wholesalers and the client, exchanging bikes on garantee and dropping the other ones...
I see a near future full of ebike graveyards, filled with chinese crap. Did you know there is no price-competitive way to recycle Li-Ion cells ? The only thing they do is shredding the empty cells and recover nickel + cobalt via electrolysis. The rest is just "discarded". Not really the "green revolution" everyone was expecting.
 
Many people prefer to buy a ready to go ebike then fiddle around with wires. I see this in the community coop bike store, they went from having bicycle that required repair, to selling bicycles already repaired and ready to go. Also some people that were selling ebike components before, are now building ready to go ebikes with bicycles from places like Bikesdirect which delivers to US but not Canada :(
 
Brand new Kona Lava Dome hardtail. $700
BBSHD Kit with chainring and 52v battery ~$1350
2k + for a "decent" ebike.

I could go out and drop $5000 on a full suspension bike, but Id rather go get a motorcycle for this much. I could buy a decent running used 4x4 for the amount some bikes cost these days.

to throw this in too, my bike is WAY better than a $3200 Giant store-bought.
 
boytitan said:
Chalo said:
[...]at the bike shop we have neither the supplies nor the tools for [installing plugs]. And to be fair, there's no reason we should.

My apologies did not know that.

Hey, no worries.

I would still have had misgivings about installing Powerpoles and JST connectors in a location where both water and filth abound.
 
miro13car said:
qwerkus,
I heard that some European countries introduced tax on those China cheap ebikes?

There are more an more countries charging devices like ebikes with a special "eco" tax, which is supposed to cover disposal costs. A comprehensive import tax on chinese ebikes I have not heard of. Would have to be agreed by all members, and the germans always block protectionist policies with china to protect there interests there.
 
qwerkus said:
Not sure about the fuss: prices have crashed here in europe. You get a hub motor ebike for less than 500€ including a (cheapo) battery - when 5 years ago you'd have paid way over a thousand euros for the same bike. I was considering entering the conversion market, but now prices are so low, it seems hopeless. The only thing that remains expensive - besides overpriced bosh mid drives - are (good) batteries, but even there you can hardly make some money. Also, the after-sale market seems completely overwhelmed: none of the bike shops in my city knows how to properly repair an ebike. They usually only work as middle-man between the wholesalers and the client, exchanging bikes on garantee and dropping the other ones...
I see a near future full of ebike graveyards, filled with chinese crap. Did you know there is no price-competitive way to recycle Li-Ion cells ? The only thing they do is shredding the empty cells and recover nickel + cobalt via electrolysis. The rest is just "discarded". Not really the "green revolution" everyone was expecting.

Any means of transportation that requires motorized mechanical power { other then human} cannot be 100% enviromentally green .

IMHO, a properly designed electrical motor on a ebike, will be more environmentally friendly then gas/diesel transportation because everytime you drive a fossil fuel vehicle, you are damaging the environment and creating pollutants . On a ebike, it costs around 7 cents to fully charge a battery pack, and that can be done just thru solar power . Yes, after 500-2000 complete cycles on the battery, you will have to dispose of it, but everything that we use that is mechanical or electrical , eventually wears out.

Lets say, you have a well made battery pack, that isn't abused and you are able to get 1500 cycles out of it and each cycle you can get 40 miles of commute .--------- Thats 60,000 miles travelled, at a total cost of $105 to charge the battery if you use electrical outlet...if you use solar the nature charges the battery for nothing { except for initial cost of solar panel} . Then we must factor in the benefits of not having to change oil, oil filters, transmission fluids, and many other toxins/ pollutants associated with fossil fuel vehicles.

We can easily see, that ebikes may not be 100% green, but they sure are a improvement over fossil fuel engines for the environment.

I have a 72 volt- 26.4 AH lion-battery pack , and I have never discharged it to its 60 LVC , because I purposefully went with more AHS then needed, so I dont run out of power and I do not overstress the battery pack. Im hoping this will ensure that I get at least 1500 complete charge cycles and maybe 2500 .
 
rumme said:
Any means of transportation that requires motorized mechanical power { other then human} cannot be 100% enviromentally green .

IMHO, a properly designed electrical motor on a ebike, will be more environmentally friendly then gas/diesel transportation because everytime you drive a fossil fuel vehicle, you are damaging the environment and creating pollutants . On a ebike, it costs around 7 cents to fully charge a battery pack, and that can be done just thru solar power . Yes, after 500-2000 complete cycles on the battery, you will have to dispose of it, but everything that we use that is mechanical or electrical , eventually wears out.

Lets say, you have a well made battery pack, that isn't abused and you are able to get 1500 cycles out of it and each cycle you can get 40 miles of commute .--------- Thats 60,000 miles travelled, at a total cost of $105 to charge the battery if you use electrical outlet...if you use solar the nature charges the battery for nothing { except for initial cost of solar panel} . Then we must factor in the benefits of not having to change oil, oil filters, transmission fluids, and many other toxins/ pollutants associated with fossil fuel vehicles.

We can easily see, that ebikes may not be 100% green, but they sure are a improvement over fossil fuel engines for the environment.

I have a 72 volt- 26.4 AH lion-battery pack , and I have never discharged it to its 60 LVC , because I purposefully went with more AHS then needed, so I dont run out of power and I do not overstress the battery pack. Im hoping this will ensure that I get at least 1500 complete charge cycles and maybe 2500 .

Don't get me wrong. Nothing wrong with ebikes. I've just this feeling, that it's taking the wrong direction. I was hoping for a small conversion shop in each town where you bring your stuff to fix it or optimize it. Heck even frame welder would be in buisness again to meet the demand for mid drives. Instead we have large companies (bosh) taking over the high end market, letting you do basically nothing with their products, and cheap chinese stuff flooding the world with disposable crap. So if the OP is complaining about ebikes beeing so expensive, I say: it's way to cheap. Tax it to death! Force the big ones to pay for all the waste, an exempt small conversion shops from taxes.
 
Like most non essential consumer items, the ebike market is going where it needs to go. More products, more choices , more marketing, improved tech all = lower prices. I dont see this as a bad thing at all. This is how markets work...and it applies to most things like tvs, computers, iphones, etc.

I WOULD never buy a BOSCH ebike that costs $4000, has proprietary battery packs, connectors, etc...which makes it to hard to do custom work to the ebike itself. IMHO, the few consumers who buy such a ebike, have to much money or have not studied ebikes very long....such purchases are often " impulse" buys.

Mid drive ebikes will soon be more competitive. FREY seems to be 1 company that realizes there is a untapped potential in the mid drive ebike markets, kinda like SONDORS did for hub motor ebikes and mass producing them so the average person can afford it.

Eventually, the designer, yuppie ebike manufacturers that demand $4000 or more for their 36 volt- 48 volt mid drive ebikes, will either be forced to be more competitive in price, or go out of business. This is how markets are supposed to function.

Whenever I see a ebike advertise they use a bosch mid drive, I automatically know it is overpriced. Thats not a good marketing edge and its 1 reason why you hardly ever see people buying bosch ebike systems.
 
dustNbone said:
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.

I dunno. It seems that the "super" HobbyKing battery deals are either out of stock, or they pull a "bait and switch" by listing a sale price on their search list that magically disappears when you click on the battery. Maybe some day I'll actually find one of those really good deals where the battery is actually in stock.
 
rumme said:
Any means of transportation that requires motorized mechanical power { other then human} cannot be 100% enviromentally green .

Whatever "100% environmentally green" means.

rumme said:
IMHO, a properly designed electrical motor on a ebike, will be more environmentally friendly then gas/diesel transportation because everytime you drive a fossil fuel vehicle, you are damaging the environment and creating pollutants.

Depending on who is doing the counting and lecturing, nothing a human bean does ever avoids damaging the environment. It seems that many consider human beans to be an obnoxious earthly virus of some sort.

rumme said:
Lets say, you have a well made battery pack, that isn't abused and you are able to get 1500 cycles out of it and each cycle you can get 40 miles of commute .--------- Thats 60,000 miles travelled, at a total cost of $105 to charge the battery if you use electrical outlet...if you use solar the nature charges the battery for nothing { except for initial cost of solar panel} . Then we must factor in the benefits of not having to change oil, oil filters, transmission fluids, and many other toxins/ pollutants associated with fossil fuel vehicles.

Yeah - and that "free" energy from the sun is way more expensive than the outlet power and possibly no more eco-friendly. And if you don't charge during the day, then you gotta add more costs for solar power storage.

And the reality is that most e-vehicles are powered by fossil fuel and not solar. So why even go there. Second, you didn't count the environmental costs of building and disposing of the solar panels.

The eco-friendliness of e-bikes has more to do with their low power consumption than anything else. A 45cc gas powered bicycle kicks butt on the footprint of cars and motorcycles too. Interestingly, I don't think a regular human bean powered bicycle does as well as either because fueling a human bean is expensive and not generally eco-friendly. But I guess that depends on how you want to evaluate various waste products as pollutants.

rumme said:
We can easily see, that ebikes may not be 100% green, but they sure are a improvement over fossil fuel engines for the environment.

Small, light, low powered vehicles have less impact than vehicles weighing thousands of pounds. That's the main thing and I think we all get that.

Sorry for being grouchy, but I haven't been getting enough sleep and I've kinda had it up to here with being told about what is and is not eco-friendly and why, and what's better and worse and niftier and on and on and on.

I know. I shoulda just skipped ahead. Like I said, "sorry 'bout that." I'll go home and get some sleep.
 
wturber....we all have the right to be a grouch, you included.

a ebike will always be more environmentally friendly, no matter how grouchy you are :mrgreen:

fossil fuels cars/trucks do much more damage to the environment during their production phase , usage phase and
maintenance phase { oil, tires, antifreeze, brake fluid, all other fluids, etc} then any electric bike .

Solar panels have initial costs, but that isn't much per watt and solar panels last a very long time. Some of them will output 80-100% over the course of 20-30 years with no issues at all . Finally a ebike has the option to be human powered, where fossil fuels cars/trucks dont. Its impossible to have any form of transportation powered by motors/engines, that doesn't have some effects on environment and I never claimed ebikes were 100% green, because that term doesn't apply to motorized means of transport in any scenario.

Yeah, you were just looking for a argument, we get it. :roll:
 
wturber said:
I dunno. It seems that the "super" HobbyKing battery deals are either out of stock, or they pull a "bait and switch" by listing a sale price on their search list that magically disappears when you click on the battery. Maybe some day I'll actually find one of those really good deals where the battery is actually in stock.

https://hobbyking.com/en_us/multistar-high-capacity-6s-10000mah-multi-rotor-lipo-pack.html

That's about the best one I see at the moment. Was in stock at the time of this posting at least :) $70 for 6S 10Ah, not super but a workable 10Ah pack for $140. Or 20Ah for $280.
 
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