A bicycle that is as reliable as a car.
I bought a top of the line cargo ebike from a German manufacturer that cost half as much as a cheap new car. It needs scheduled maintenance every 2000km. After 5000km the entire drivetrain needed to be replaced, the front brake completely failed when temperatures dropped below freezing, the motor sometimes cut out due to a firmware bug in the controller and the suspension seatpost broke when I rode down a curb.
Imagine any car having safety-critical faults like that after 5000km.
Due to the nature of bikes there’s probably a ton of weight saving that’s going on, which is why stuff breaks so easy. With cars they’re so over engineered that they weigh a (few) ton(s) and are generally over built for their expected stress levels.
Because bikes are so small they’re harder to add in that element of over building.
Oh, and the manufacturers are greedy and want the largest profit margin
For normal bikes I agree. Ebikes and especially cargo Ebikes suffer from lack of specialized parts. All the parts are the same as on a 10kg mountainbike. My bike with me and a load on it weighs 170kg. Make it 3kg heavier, triple the beefiness of all components.
And I don’t need 11 sprockets that are millimeter-thin when I only use 3 gears (for flat ground, uphill, and an emergency bailout for when the battery dies).
My e-bike (Onyx RCR, basically a motorcycle) hasn’t needed anything of the sort. So it might be either a specific manufacturer thing and/or a cargo bike thing. I can imagine them using regular bike parts even though it’s taking way more weight/stress.
For pedal bikes, they can be that reliable if you want to pay for it:
hub gearbox (a rohloff gets 100,000km minimum)
decent belt drive (30,000km)
solid tires get 5,000km. Not as good as car tires but there’s a reason; any additional durability will add noticeable drag/weight. Super thick e-bike tires could probably get 70,000km like a car
A bicycle that is as reliable as a car.
I bought a top of the line cargo ebike from a German manufacturer that cost half as much as a cheap new car. It needs scheduled maintenance every 2000km. After 5000km the entire drivetrain needed to be replaced, the front brake completely failed when temperatures dropped below freezing, the motor sometimes cut out due to a firmware bug in the controller and the suspension seatpost broke when I rode down a curb.
Imagine any car having safety-critical faults like that after 5000km.
Due to the nature of bikes there’s probably a ton of weight saving that’s going on, which is why stuff breaks so easy. With cars they’re so over engineered that they weigh a (few) ton(s) and are generally over built for their expected stress levels.
Because bikes are so small they’re harder to add in that element of over building.
Oh, and the manufacturers are greedy and want the largest profit margin
For normal bikes I agree. Ebikes and especially cargo Ebikes suffer from lack of specialized parts. All the parts are the same as on a 10kg mountainbike. My bike with me and a load on it weighs 170kg. Make it 3kg heavier, triple the beefiness of all components.
And I don’t need 11 sprockets that are millimeter-thin when I only use 3 gears (for flat ground, uphill, and an emergency bailout for when the battery dies).
My e-bike (Onyx RCR, basically a motorcycle) hasn’t needed anything of the sort. So it might be either a specific manufacturer thing and/or a cargo bike thing. I can imagine them using regular bike parts even though it’s taking way more weight/stress.
For pedal bikes, they can be that reliable if you want to pay for it: