Well, it takes about the same amount of labor to manufacture a cheap bike as it does a 'good' bike. The only thing you can control is the cost of the materials used.
That Schwinn Ranger 26, and my Cannondale F-1000 have almost the exact same part count (ignoring the suspension forks) Both of them are stereotypical MTB's with V-brakes, and cable operated 3x7/8 shifting. It wouldn't take any more time to build up one of them or the other. Why is the Cannondale 5X more expensive than the Schwinn? It all comes down to the materials and components used. (I'm sure the USA-built 'Dales' frame was much more labor intensive to make, but that bike also weight half of what the Schwinn does)

'Assembly' on a department store bike is even less intensive than you realize, pretty much just installing the front wheel and the (already assembled and cabled) handlebar on to the stem.
The contract assemblers get paid by the piece, so there's no incentive for them to check anything that isn't glaringly obvious, and there certianly isn't time or space for anything more than a basic function check, let alone a test-ride.

My guess, after reading the sentence in question a few times, is that UniChris meant that manufacturers should use higher-quality steel to build more-durable rear derailleurs for entry-level bikes and should offset the added expense by refraining from installing front derailleurs on those bikes.

It appears that those three-speed rideshare bikes are heavy but well-built bikes, designed to be durable enough for many miles of use without frequent maintenance being needed. If there are hundreds or thousands of them being retired from service and essentially discarded, Uber, etc., should be able to get substantial tax write-offs by donating them to bike coops in areas where low-income people, non-binary and otherwise, can buy them for a reasonable fee that would serve to support the bike coop.

In other words: at least some low-income people in the U.S. want or need affordable and reliable bikes. Coincidentally and concurrently, companies that were renting large numbers of rideshare bikes want out of the business. Two birds, one stone. I'm sure that it can't be that easy. What am I missing?

By the way, that "ship pallets of frames and pallets of parts for assembly in the U.S." idea---don't see that working, to put it politely.

Yep.

If you want the bikes to be as affordable as possible, you have them assembled overseas, where labor costs are much lower. OP's fantasy about "camps" where people assemble their own bikes, or some such scheme, would likely only raise assembly costs since you would need people to teach, manage, and correct the unskilled bike assemblers.

I'm thinking local within a couple of miles. So for example, NYC's citibike system does some of their re-balancing using trailers pulled by a bike (okay it's an e-thing but still). And that's hauling a bunch of tank-like share bikes. In a lot of places loading 4 - 6 in a pickup truck may be what happens. In some places things may be close enough that you could ride them over and walk back.

I've done small volume assembly of some of the products I've designed in other industries, yes.

One of the base assumptions is that this isn't a constant flood of bikes to be built, but rather relatively low numbers built up as needed to re-stock the store's very limited storage and showroom space - could be 3 one week, 20 the next.

Bike co-ops are already doing this sort of work, via a combination of volunteer and trainee effort. My thinking was to get them better parts to work with, and an opportunity for their trainees to make a business of it.

Indeed, you'd need to keep a very limited range, and a high degree of parts commonality - really I'm thinking a 20, a 24 and a 26, and make them all in say, bright green.

But note that bike co-ops try to do this kind of thing when their feed is overwhelmingly eclectic, narrowed only by the point at which they start declining / throwing away what is just too oddball.

Of course, you should be able to buy them there, too. Or build your own there under guidance, if you can spend the time to do so. But it's important that they be in the big box store. Ideally with signage about how they were assembled at the co-op and what hours you can drop in there for help.

Hyper local would indeed be the point - the article was from an NYC perspective. Elsewhere such as where I am now Walmart and adjacent larger of the two local grocery stores are roughly a 40 minute walk, 50 if you do it from the center of town. I prefer to ride or drive there for efficiency, but I walk it sometimes. Come to think of it, there are some vacant storefronts in that plaza - though realistically, it's situated for the convenience of drivers, it would make more sense for a bike co-op to be more central.

There's still final assembly, which is done on site in the back room of the store today - and done quite badly.

What it makes sense to do at the factory vs. what should be done on site has tradeoffs - I do think doing more of it at the point of use makes it more possible to keep faulty components out of the bikes (vs trashing the entire bike worth of parts), but that's something to be evaluated during the actual running of such an endeavor.

If you'd read a bit more carefully, you'd have seen that the "camp" was a distinct endpoint from the path into stores, justified not on product economics but as the selling of an experience. The market for experiences is actually huge - both among adults, and among parents looking for a place to park their kids other than in front of the xbox. Indeed it would cost money - quite a bit more than the value of the bike built. But the point of that path isn't to become the owner of a bike, rather to become the owner of the experience of having built a bike, or at least gotten the teen out of the house for a week in some relatively benign direction.

That's why for example they'd have hand-built wheels - to maximize the experience, even though any budget bike destined for the store is of course going to have ones machine built in a factory half a world away.

(Co-ops routinely replace spokes and true wheels - the irony is that it's actually a lot easier for a newbie to build a wheel from all new undamaged parts, than it is to true a beat up one)

Corporate Inertia. The bikeshare companies could get a write-off whether they donated or scrapped them; Donating them would require contacting the co-ops and community groups (it would probably take several to handle dozens / hundreds of bikes) and arranging to have them transported and distributed. Any time you pick something up and move it, it costs money, especially if you need to hand-load it. Bulk waste collection doesn't care, it's mechanized, they just want to know where it is and how big the load is. Pay once and they haul it away.

On the other side of that coin, if I was a Co-Op bike mechanic, I'd be wary of taking on a bunch of ex bikeshare bikes. They use a lot of tamper-resistant fasteners to prevent vandalism, and the dockless bikes also have GPS/App-controled locks to prevent unauthorised use, so you'd have to defeat / convert all of that stuff, which requires time, and specialized tools that you typically don't find in any bike shop.

The rent-a-bikes that I've seen had lots of proprietary parts (e.g. weird wheel/frame interfaces) and I think the point was to make scavenging parts from them futile. So if a miscreant stole the wheels off of one, the wheels wouldn't work on any other bike.

Best thread ever.
OP reads an uniformed and ridiculous article that states that there is a ‘critical bike-equity barrier’ and he then surmises all on his own that the ‘unbanked’ need a quality $200 bike.
Nevermind that the unbanked represent only 5% of the population and half of them have plenty of money to buy a $500 bike. They are simply unbanked because they don’t trust banks or don’t want to pay bank fees.
Also never mind that there are many other options out there for very serviceable $200 bicycles.
SJW’s are so cool :cry:

Asking why we don't have a better, simpler, cheaper new bike is like wondering why a simple, cheap new car doesn't exist. And neither exists for the same reason - there's a used market sucking up all the demand at that price point.

Oh, but there COULD be simple, cheap new cars. There SHOULD be. Trainees and volunteers could lovingly assemble them from bulk shipments received from abroad. Assembled locally, of course, as demand necessitates, so inventory and storage would be minimized. People would come to build the cars not for the money but for the adventure and experience of doing so just for the satisfaction. Obviously it's better than just parking oneself in front of the TV all day. Pay's the same either way so why not?

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...f12baf9a16.jpg
Yep those are scrap bikes.

China tried to create a bike share program. The problem is a bike created too cheap simply isn't worth fixing no matter how well it's built. This is why bicycle co-ops are so important as they recycle quality used bikes to less fortunate people.

Those piles of scrap bikes had nothing to do with the bikes. There was a massive investment bubble, that poured cash into bike share companies. The quickest way to spend the cash was to buy more new bikes and leave the old ones to pile up on the streets. For instance, that was easier than hiring and managing people to round up all of the bikes ever day, and recharge them. Local governments started removing the bikes to get rid of the nuisance.

That is why in India, if someone wants a European car, it is a Mercedes or some other high end car. That is because it is not economical to ship anything cheaper.

I wonder if those supposedly in need for a cheap well made bike are toting expensive phones and wear things only until they get dirty, then chuck them out...

I can’t help but to notice that in our society we are indoctrinated from a young age to equate car ownership as a measure of self worth, social identity and status. It is not unique among those who can (or really can’t but are beholden to high interest big loans) afford it either. All the big bike manufacturers seem to or have reasonably priced city, college campus, urban utility hybrids in their line up. No matter how much they try to promote the idea of riding a bike as a fun, physically healthy, economically healthy means of short distance transportation it will never catch on. At best it has become the dominion of the freaks who hate cars, entitled snobs or the poor who are clogging the road where they don’t belong.

Thee idea of a reasonably priced well built reliable bike for local transportation is in fact smart for individual people and society. I’m sure it could be done in a manner that makes business sense too. However as I alluded to it will always be overshadowed by Subaru summer, Toyota-thon, and Lexus December to remember.

Too many gears and bad suspension. Exactly the opposite of what is being discussed.

What was being discussed is low end bike that's readily available to the "unbanked" and poor. you will get what the market gives you. It doesnt matter one bit what a group of bike nerds think people need.

I second this suggestion. And Youtube is your friend. If I can rebuild a crank nose in a sports car with no previous experience strictly utilizing you tube and a car forum, anyone can do the minimal assembly and tune of a bicycle via the same sources. Many seem to be advocating to some sort of handout all the time.

Nothing wrong with having a car.

https://medium.com/@eklochikhin/a-ca...p-b7d1bac751ae

I don't know if that article was intended to be ironic or not, but it's a marketing fluff piece from a guy who's selling some kind of tech enabled parking service.

A couple of the comments to the article point out the obvious, which is that car ownership as a necessity for mobility isn't exactly a choice for many people. The article mentions that single moms benefit from car ownership. No ****, Sherlock. That's because if they don't own a car, they can't function at all.

I think the point of the op was there's a need for an affordable alternative to a piece of junk like that. Read the reviews on your link, it really proves the point.

Solution: It's called the old bicycle. There are millions of them out there and they fit the bill of cheap, reliable, easily maintained transportation. They can often be had for less that $100 (plenty of personal experience there) and are often a few consumable parts away from being just as good or better than new. Most nine-year-olds can be taught to replace a tire or a chain. Here is a good example. This type of bicycle is the most produced vehicle of any kind ever, and it does exactly what it was designed to do.
https://cimg1.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...1b1132a38a.jpg

Other excellent options include the tons and tons of English three speeds sitting unused across the country, Chicago Schwinns, Free Spirits, etc.
We don't need new bikes. We need to use the ones we already made.

Wait...you expect me to volunteer my time to build bikes for free so that Walmart can sell more of them at a lower price thus enabling them to make more profit? And this is your business plan?

It was never a business plan.
Just another clueless SJW pipe dream :rolleyes:

No, but clearly I was mistaken in expecting you to be able to tell the difference between what I did, versus didn't say...

You're right that these are good solutions.

Where you're wrong is in that they're not sufficiently available where they're needed.

Availability is contingent on someone deciding to clean out the basement or garage, then putting it up for sale (or donation) in a path that gets it where it's needed. Just had a look at my regional craigslist, and in terms of what you are talking about, nothing. There are a couple of "steel is real" road bikes that might be almost temping if I were in the market for one though...

I'm looking forward to seeing whether the Manchester NH bike coop comes back to its pre-covid success. It was an excellent place for people to pay a very few dollars to learn to maintain their bikes and rent the tools and space for repairing and upgrading old bikes. I think the rate was $5 per hour, and there was a mechanic/advisor on site. They also sold used components for almost nothing.

I was there for a couple of weekends. A beehive of activity with a mix of all ages working on their bikes.

And yes, it is a non-profit.

Uhh, no. Actually no one here cares what you want to do with your time. But the whole point is to enable people to obtain decent, well-assembled bikes at Walmart-like prices. This would actually compete with Walmart. How would that enable Walmart to sell more?

I've owned a couple of Walmart bikes over the past couple decades. My observation is the ones I had were so poorly manufactured as to be maintenance proof.

Odd that you say they were so poorly manufactured yet you bought a couple.
Unless you bought them both at the same time I fail to see the logic. Fool me once...
Unless you were part of the unbanked masses and were ofc then forced to shop at Walmart and buy dangerously subpar items in general :rolleyes:

No, I'm right.

What you're saying is theoretical and does not match reality. Plenty of good options on the Western Mass Craigslist.

But Craigslist is one option of many. Bike Coops were mentioned - another option in some areas. Like it or not, decent old bicycles are very easy to find if one actually wants to. Key is want.

You're "solution" to this theoretical problem amounts to creating more garbage in the long run, not fulfilling some "need" that the next sensationalized portion of the population is lacking. It feels good for a month or a year, but eventually means another huge pile of unused machines. We don't need to make more junk to satisfy our conscience. We should want to put the stuff we relegated to the trash pile prematurely to good use. More waste isn't the answer.

yes

Well, the idea was that a store like that would be one of the main (but not only) places selling them.

But since they'd need less frequent replacement, indeed they'd ultimately sell fewer.
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