[safepants]

i think this is off base. Don't forget the cost to own a car with depreciation, insurance, fuel, maintenance etc etc. Not even mentioning the cost of infrastructure required to drive said car.

I don't recommend it, but you can buy a bike from Walmart for $78.

[asark]

I'm from the middle of the US so all my experience is with $200 and cheaper bicycles (maybe $300 adjusted for inflation) since I'm not in the racing "scene" and bike commuting's infeasible outside very small areas (though I was able to, and did, do it for a while), but bikes never seem to quite work right—one set of brakes keeps slipping no matter how many times you fix it, a couple gears that you just cannot get to hold, tires lose enough air every 48 hours you have to add more to ride yet don't seem to actually have a leak and anyway you changed them once (and god is that a pain) and they still do it, chain keeps getting loose, that kind of thing. The best bicycle I've used I'd have raised hell and tried to return it under lemon laws if it were a car and had that many little problems. Meanwhile $300 is still, what, 1/50th the cost of an entry level new car? That's why it seems high. It seems like you should be able to get 50 very good and reliable bicycles for the same cost as a car. Not 50 that suck. There seem to be improved bits of hardware that fix some of the problems but then you're talking more like 1/20 of an entry level car, which, yikes.

[safepants]

I'm fortunate to have a bicycle Co-op in my city. It's a do it yourself workshop to fix your bike and upgrade parts when the time comes. The staff are volunteers and the bikes they sell are all donated. Great tuned up second hand bikes can be purchased for $50. I enjoy using top of the line 1990s technology in my commuter bikes which can be had for a fraction for the price of new bikes.

We are also lucky to have youtube with lots of tutorials which I wish I had when I was first learning.

I agree the relative maintenance of cars is much lower, but I equate the time it takes to clean my chain to be the same as stopping to get fuel for my car.

I'm not against cars, I just feel the cost of ownership is underestimated.

[silversconfused]

Cost of ownership is nuts. My car basically just sits, but I have to pay $1000 a year just to keep it legal. My bike was $50. And that was it.

[henryfjordan]

The cost for a Bike is all in the little things like brakes, shifters, etc. As long as we're talking Steel/Aluminum frames (not Carbon Fiber) the difference in cost between bikes is largely put into these important parts. Hence the $300 bike not being great but the $600 bike will be so much better.

I bet if you were buying 50 bikes at a time you'd get a nice bulk discount.

[silversconfused]

Did you ever try a bike from a bike shop? This sounds like a department store bike experience. Multispeed bicycles are not generic widgets you unbox, hop on, and go. They need tuning, like a musical instrument, and a lot of the adjustments are interdependent on one another.

[dsfyu404ed]

That's like saying you can't just buy a harbor freight engine and expect the carb to be properly tuned. 99% of people are going to have no problem with how it performs as configured right out of the box.

[silversconfused]

You are mistaken. https://www.sheldonbrown.com/gloss_da-o.html#department

> The average department-store bicycle is ridden about 75 miles in its lifespan from showroom floor to landfill. The manufacturers know this, and build them accordingly. Department-store bicycles are most commonly sold in a partially disassembled and un-adjusted condition.

I should also clarify that SINGLE SPEED pedal brake bicycles ARE nearly maintenance free, and those DO work for most people out of the box in whatever state it might be in.