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Comment by mootothemax | Hacker News Reader

Granted, it'll be a truly dreadful bike, but it'll be OK as basic transport. I don't understand the emphasis on cheapness. Making cheap bikes is a solved problem.

But a bike for $60-90 is not a new idea. They're out there right now.

I very much disagree with your stance on this. I have yet to see a cheap bike that will stand up to more than a few months of daily commuting without various bearings wearing out. Use of non-standard parts makes fixing them uneconomical, as you could quickly buy a decent bike for the replacement value required.

I'd argue that the cheap bike problem is only currently solved in that cheap, good quality, second-hand bikes are available in most markets.

If this bike barely lasts as long, it'll at least have sold the problem of having all these useless lumps of metal lying around once your cheap bike has died.

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> I very much disagree with your stance on this. I have yet to see a cheap bike that will stand up to more than a few months of daily commuting without various bearings wearing out. Use of non-standard parts makes fixing them uneconomical, as you could quickly buy a decent bike for the replacement value required.

Agreed, but the article seemed to be arguing that there was demand for a cheap, essentially disposable, bike and that's what I think is a solved problem

It's not clear from the article whether the bike is any better from a waste/disposal point of view than a traditional metal bike. I expect it could be, I just don't know.

It's not clear from the article whether the bike is any better from a waste/disposal point of view than a traditional metal bike. I expect it could be, I just don't know.

Good point, I think you and I probably agree here, but I was presuming this bike would be a lot easier to recycle. The fact that there's no direct mention of this in the article is a bit suspicious, so you may well be right and there's no real advantage here.

Not necessarily. The costly part of recycling is separating materials. If this has cardboard with a waterproof coating or plastic skin (as it appears) or is glued to other components like the rubber tires then it could be very expensive to process. And at the end you are left with almost worthless cardboard.

An aluminium or steel bike is recycled in exactly the same way as a car - and we have got very good at that process - and at the end you have valuable scrap aluminium.

This bike is most likely (some large percentage) glue. It is basically a fiberglass and epoxy design only using cardboard. Recycling THIS thing is going to be a real bitch. I think it should be built, but it isn't an _answer_ to anything other than human curiosity.

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