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Comment by cosud | Hacker News Reader

They are stil very expensive where I live(NL). EUR 4K+ on a cargobike or renting one for 150+ per month is A LOT for a normal family with 1-2 children. To add to that recently there's been a case in NL where more affordable manufacturer was deliberately selling cargo bikes with frames of sub-par quality[1][2].

I've been renting cargo bikes from two competing companies in Amsterdam (cargoroo and baqme) one offering super premium bikes bosch motors and the other with cheapie bafang motors. The build quality and riding experience is night and day.

Owing a cargo bike to me is more a life style choice or just virtue signalling. It's hard to justify the up front cost. Choosing cheaper options is risky since the maintenance cost is high or just unsafe.

[1] https://www.nvwa.nl/nieuws-en-media/nieuws/2024/02/14/nvwa-b... [2] https://www.nvwa.nl/nieuws-en-media/actuele-onderwerpen/freq...

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Spending 4000 EUR on a bike is all kinds of crazy, but nobody bats an eye at people spending 20k on a car.

And then nobody goes on to bat eyes at the galling maintenance costs, insurance, registration, or taxes on cars, but yeah $4k (or euro or gbp) for an e bike seems like a stupid idea to people for some reason. I think it’s either bad marketing on the part of the ebike folks or pernicious effort on the part of car manufacturers.

4000 seems high when you can get some type scooter or mobility scooter type of thing in that range... And some of them even have protection from rain.

Cost models are completely different too.

Bikes have very low maintenance costs and if you buy second hand you don't lose much on resale.

Of course, as cars and bikes serve different purposes.

You're not going to take your cargo bike on a weekend 200km trip or to visit family on the other side of the state/country unless you're bent on doing exactly that.

Spending this much just to move around the city? A hard sell considering a car also doubles as a moving room with AC.

My experience is that while people tend to be irrational in one-time decisions, they're asymptotically rational facing the same problem again and again.

> You're not going to take your cargo bike on a weekend 200km trip or to visit family on the other side of the state/country unless you're bent on doing exactly that.

How many times are those types of trips done, as compared to 'just' running errands around town? What are the fixed costs you are incurring for those presumably occasional occurrences, versus optimizing for the more likely common cases?

It's like the folks who buy pickup trucks "for towing", but:

> According to Axios, 63% of Ford F-150 drivers barely use their trucks for towing. 29% admitted to towing occasionally, while just 7% regularly tow. When properly equipped, many F-150 models can pull around 13,000 pounds.

> However, 28% of drivers say they use the truck for hauling. Meanwhile, 41% take advantage of the F-150’s hauling capabilities once in a while, and 32% are indifferent. It’s a shame considering all F-150 models can haul about 2,000 pounds.

* https://www.motorbiscuit.com/63-of-ford-f-150-owners-almost-...

Perhaps buy for what you actually do, and rent for when you need 'extra' capabilities.

> How many times are those types of trips done, as compared to 'just' running errands around town?

If you have children definitely more often the former than the latter. I think it's every 2-3 weeks in my case. That's also how my father would use his car and, coincidentally his father as well.

> Perhaps buy for what you actually do, and rent for when you need 'extra' capabilities.

I did. Perhaps you shouldn't make assumptions about people's habits.

> If you have children definitely more often the former than the latter. I think it's every 2-3 weeks in my case. That's also how my father would use his car and, coincidentally his father as well.

And of the couple dozen people that I know that have kids, precisely zero take regular 200km trips. Or 100km. Or 50km for that matter. And by "regular" I mean at least once a month: certainly on some holidays to visit family, but that is at most once a quarter.

I live in Toronto, Canada, and have neighbours with family all over southern Ontario (Windsor, London) as well as a some in the Maritimes. They regularly rent larger vehicles for trips (or fly there and rent/borrow).

> I did. Perhaps you shouldn't make assumptions about people's habits.

I made no assumptionsa about people's habits. I asked how often 200km occurred in general. In the US at least, 99.2% of trips are less than 150km, with 80% being less than 15km:

* https://evstatistics.com/2021/12/99-2-of-us-daily-trips-are-...

While 'road trips' do occur, they are the minority of events:

* https://www.utires.com/articles/road-trips-survey/

For most people, most of the time, considering 200km is a waste of time (using US data). That you just happen to perhaps be in the minority does not invalidate that: you are extrapolating a need to the general public from your personal experience which isn't statistically common and very anecdotal.

Well, I live in Europe and over here this is how we roll. There's plenty of places to visit within 100km and especially during the summer they're packed. You don't always have to drive, but at the same time some of the more remote places don't have a train station.

It appears that the US/Canada situation doesn't extrapolate to the rest of the world, but that's not surprising.

> Well, I live in Europe and over here this is how we roll.

I have several cousins in Europe with kids, and that is not how they roll. They rarely drive >50km.

So who should I believe: your n=1 sample size or my n>1 sample size?

> You're not going to take your cargo bike on a weekend 200km trip or to visit family on the other side of the state/country

Of course not. I will take the train for that, or fly if it's far.

I might consider renting a car if it's a more remote location. But buying? Why would I burn money like that?

My city rent them for 70€/month (limited to 3 month/year, 35€/month in winter), i rented one last time i moved house, honestly i want to buy one now. Bike maintenance is both easy and cheap tbh.

We justified the upfront cost by treating ours as a cheap second car, rather than as a very expensive bike. It's been an incredibly positive experience for our family.

For us it’s cheap, but that’s because it enables us to not own a car. And we’re in Hilversum which is pretty car focused.

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