Pizza Man

If Walmart can make a road bike for $150, why can't someone mass produce a decent 15 pound Ti racing bike for under $1,000? It's not like titanium is a precious metal like gold, or even silver. The amount of titanium needed for a frame costs about $20, yet bike makers charge $2K - $5K for a high end Ti frame alone. Is it really that much more expensive than aluminum to make the tubes & put them together?

High end bikes can easily cost $5K or more. Heck, you can get 2,000 pounds of metal, glass & plastic with an engine in a new car for $10K. I imagine that the raw materials and labor involved in building a car would be at least 10X that of a bicycle.

And bike tires are like $40-$50 for a half pound of rubber? That's about the same price as a steel belted car tire. How can that be?

Someone is making a lot of money off of us suckers and it's not the LBS.


I'm just ranting because I've been drooling over cool new bikes I can't afford.

Ih8lucky13

It is called economy of scale. I would explain it but I am too damn tired to.

Jakey

Bikes are just like divorce....they are worth every penny.

mrkott3r

feed the troll. feed the troll!
Next you'll be spruiking the low prices of motobecane/bikesdirect.

Yes I realise the irony I am feeding the troll

blandin

Having been through the divorce thing, it may be worth doing it, but I'm not so sure I can attest to the every penny part of the equation. In my case, those pennies amounted to far too many dollars. On the other hand, bikes can indeed be worth every penny, they never complain and always are willing to do whatever you'd like and on your schedule.

ken cummings

If They were making a lot of money there would be more people making what ever it is. Please go back a couple of centuries and read "Wealth of Nations" by Adam Smith. I ride on of the best upper end touring bikes made from a one man shop in Petaluma, California. He IS They and the lbs all rolled into one and is barely making ends meet. I could have gotten a just barely adequate tourer for half the price but it would not have been what I had lusted for for 20 years. I paid an extra $975 in the pursuit of happiness, as is my Constitutional right. A $57.00 geared Wally MTB that gives a man the only way to a job that keeps his family fed and housed would be just as treasured.

Kenal0

Maybe Walmart takes a loss on the bike and makes it up on the 55 gallon drum of 10-40 motor oil you just loaded in your car after the 5000 economy pack of Reeses Peanut Butter Cups?
Kenal0

shakeNbake

Because it's a hobby and people are willing to pay for that price.

Same like a guitar, nowadays you can get one at target for $150, why do people still buy $7000 PRS Customs?

tvphobic

I think the best answer to this question is, Mr. Pizza Man,
YES! YES, you should DO it! Imagine how much money you'd make after you put all the other bike companies practically out of business with your superior product at what is finally a sensible price!!

OK, I'm done now.

Ih8lucky13

If this was a BikesDirect post it would go something like this.

After studying about cycling and bicycles for a year, and receiving my Nobel prize in economics I have learned that purchasing a bike from Bikesdirect, will actually make you a nice healthy profit, and put you on top of the Forbes 500. I purchased my bike from Bikesdirect 3 months ago, and with no mechanical experience what-so-ever, the bike magically built itself, after test riding for three months, I have become the best cyclist in my area, and my receding hairline actually stopped receding.
Women now dig me, even though before I received my bike from Bikesdirect, women told me I was disgusting and vile.
Bikesdirect should be nominated for sainthood.
Sincerley Mr "Not a shill"

donrhummy

It's due to every guy who says, "I went in and told the LBS salesperson that I wasn't going to spend over $1500, and he showed me a $3500 bike just for comparison and I liked it so much I bought that and $1000 of accessories." For some reason, that's 75% of cyclists.

ViperZ

Same Reason an Audiophile with a lot of money would pay $3,299 for a 3 meter Nordost Valhalla Power cable,






Or $9,129 for a 3 meter Nordost Valhalla speaker cable....

They swear it makes a difference in sound

pinkrobe

HOBBY!?!?!? It's not a ****ing hobby. A bike is like food or air. More like a way of life!

fmw

Prices really have gotten out of line. I was involved in high end audio once in my life. One day a friend who owns an A/V store loaned me a bunch of cables and power cords for me to take home for some listening tests. Out of 15 cables, I could hear a difference with two of them. The most expensive of these cables was $1500 and the least expensive was $4. The $1500 one was one of the ones that affected the sound. I could hear no difference at all from power cords when compared to a standard computer cord.

I took the two that I could hear back to him and asked him to measure their impedance (resistance with frequency.) The impedance should be pretty close to zero. In the case of these two it was not. These people had built cables to be tone controls. Both of them rolled off the high frequencies making a "warmer" sound which, of course, was not what the recording engineer had intended. That same day I got a copy of an audio magazine with a review of some wooden disks that the audiophile was supposed to put on his equipment and then orient until he had acheived the perfect sound. Wooden disks on an amplifier. You got to love it. That's the day I quit fooling around with high end audio.

It also taught me to be sensible with my bikes. The most expensive frame I ever bought was $650 and I no longer have the bike. The idea of spending $4000 for a bicycle frame reminds of those wooden disks. I can afford any frame I want. I just don't want to use money like that any longer. It just doesn't make sense. When you cut through the nonsense, what really matters is health and family. We would all be advised to spend more of our time with those two aspects of life.

Pizza Man

FU!!

I'm not a troll, and I'm not going to mention any website that sells bikes.
Why don't you look at what I've posted in the past.
I've never even mentioned that site!!

I'm a guy who bought a Felt at my LBS and who just started racing this year, and am looking to get a bike a few pounds lighter so that I might save a few seconds in hill climb races, and unfortunately, that site you mentioned doesn't have very high end bikes.

SesameCrunch

I hear the frustration in your post and sympathize with it. Unfortunately, as you know, companies exists to MAXIMIZE profits. So even if they could sell one for <$1,000, why would they when they can create the marketing hype and get customers to pay $5,000? When something is new, the early adopters will pay big bucks for it. Then, as the technology gets older and moves into the mass market, prices will drop. The early adopters will then overpay for the next "big thing". The cycle continues (no pun intended). Aluminum used to be the new technology, then carbon, then Ti, next is Boron or something like that. If you want to buy a sub 15lb Ti bike for <$1,000, just wait a few years.

Pizza Man

If I had enough money to quit my job, and buy everything I needed to build a bike factory, I would just buy a Litespeed Ghisallo with top end components.

I realize that it's a niche market, so no one is going to build a factory making Ghisallo clones for $999. Too bad.

Cleave

Hi,

I usually don't reply to threads like this but...

Let me know who you get Ti from for that price. I work for a major aerospace company and we could sure use 3/2.5 Ti at that kind of price.

OK, once again, let me know where you can get any NEW car for $10K. After you get it, let me know how well you can do racing it against a 3,000 lb. Porsche Carrera GT that costs $440,000.

Sure, a high-performance bicycle tire runs about $50. Again, I must be shopping in the wrong places, but a name-brand, low end, high-mileage, low traction car tire runs about $70 (without mounting and balancing). Look up the price of high performance rubber for a car and let me know how much your sources will charge you.

Basically, you're comparing carbon fiber to bananas. You can't buy performance for $ per pound. However, if your conditioning is good enough, well, I would fathom to guess that Ivan Basso could beat most of us riding on a $150 Kmart bike (I don't shop at Walmart).

Yes, someone is making money off of this sport. I think that's how they earn a living.

BTW, a lot more people can afford or at least realistically save up for a high-end racing bike than those who will ever be able to buy a high-end sports car. And I, for one, would love to own a high-end sports car.

ViperZ

What's nonsense to you is somebody else's truth, It's only money, and if a person enjoys what they are doing and they can afford it, great!..

Some people only own 1 bike, how crazy is that to you? Same difference if a person owns an expensive bike frame.. It doesn't have to make sense to you what somebody else chooses to do. Sensible? Only when I choose to be on certain things

So I like nice things, how does that detract from my health or family in any way? I know whats important in life, and it sure isn't bicycles.... (although on the surface I can see where that perception may come from ) This is just a small corner of my life.

Eatadonut

Kia makes cars for under 10K. They burst into flame in my friend's driveway after being parked (true story). Does that make Corvette the Bikesdirect of the car world? It performs as well as 6-figure sports cars, but without the prestige?

Pizza Man

Thanks for the reply.

OK, maybe $20 for 1kg of Ti is a little low, what it is, like $80/kg?
Add $60 to the price of the bike.

I've been looking at the Toyota Yaris, which is about $10K for the base model.
But I live in SF, and only drive when I go to bike races, so I'll stick with the 1997 VW Golf that I bought used for less $ than my Felt F2C.

One doesn't have to spend nearly $440K for a car that will go as fast as that Porche. A Vette can go nearly as fast for much less, and if you're poor and want to go fast, a Kawasaki ZX14R can destroy it in 1/4 mile and it's only about $12K.

Yeah, I know that bike makers have to make money too, and that if everyone in the US wanted a sub 15 pound bike, someone would come along and mass produce them for a lot less $.

And again, no I'm not a troll who works for some online bike website. I think that the 15.1 lb claimed weight of the Al Motobecane with Ultegra is BS.

soda

um.... craftsmanship maybe?

Can you mass produce these welds? I own two Ti bikes and there is a difference in quality. And just for eyecandy, the last pic is of the entire bike.

mr.reyes

yeah, manufacturing is expensive. engineering the molds, the welding, heat treating the metal, stuff like that.

14max

My god that is a thing of beauty. Kudos...

ElJamoquio

My bald spot actually disappeared. Get it right.