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Comment by thelastgallon | Hacker News Reader

One solution that exists in third world is motorbikes. New motorbikes cost ~$1000. These are perfectly acceptable, ideal for the western economies, if there are enough of them on the road, it will get safer. One bike in between 10,000 cars is hard to see, but enough of them create bike-awareness.

China's EV cars are known, but it also has 350 million electric motorbikes.

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They will not get as safe as cars. They are inherently dangerous, it's like taking a car and removing every safety feature. Removing doors, windows and belts. There's a reason that there is a legal requirement in many countries to wear a helmet.

I spent some time in Vietnam back in 2005, after getting a few lifts on the the back of mopeds in both Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, I decided to look up some road traffic accident stats for those cities: I never took another lift like that again.

You keep quoting prices that make no sense in 2026 such as cars under 20k. See https://www.theautopian.com/americas-cheapest-new-car-now-co...

Please link to some prices for motorcycles that can go 75 miles per hour (necessary on the highway) that cost < $1k. 5 seconds of googling says they start at around $5k. I have a moto so I agree with the premise broadly that more should consider them. They are not as useful in all weather and of course there is risk of injury which most poor people will have no ability to pay for in our US health care situation...

You are right (and other comments). I still have last years info when there were a few models available for under 20K. I guess with inflation, the cheapest 2026 cars seem to be 22K-ish. Some 2025 models are available for ~19K, but they won't last long.

My honda NC750 at 10 years old cost me $4200. I had to replace wheels once (rubber, $600) and the transmission failed on me ($850) all within my first 8k kilometers.

My last car was a Subaru forester that did cost a little less, was older tho, on that I spent about $800 in total per year on to keep it alive, easily doing 20k kilometres a year.

Motorcycles arent so much cheaper necessarily.

You got scammed if by rubber you mean that 2 motorcycles tires cost $600.

Wheel cost alone was about $300 for both, rest is work time and new breaks.

Is it wheel or wheel+tire (you mention "rubber").

The tire alone is about $300, about $200 in work and $100 or so was a break replacement.

If you're not changing your own tires a lot of cycle shops charge a good bit for labor to mount tires.

Seems like most shops around me want $200+ in labor to do tires. That got me to just start doing it at home. Although it's a pain to do it right with spoons and not mar up the rims (or your fingers). I'm not bothering to invest in the space for a whole tire changing station in my garage. I definitely don't blame people for just eating the cost and doing it at a shop.

It's different with car tires because there's tons of places that do car tires. Far more competition with big national chains all over the place. Not always true with bikes. The labor costs they charge for dang near any little bit of work really drove me to do almost everything I can at home.

Every motorbike shop has the tooling amortized already. It takes less than 5 minutes to swap a tire and motorcycle tire tend to be cheaper than highend bicycle tires due to economy of scale.

The Honda NC750 isn't a superbike, there is no reason to spend that amount of money on 2 tires.

Ok, you go tell that to the two shops within a reasonable distance to me. Last time I tried telling them that they didn't budge.

I'm well aware they're charging a lot for it. They do it because that's what people around here pay for it. And given they've got a few days of work queued up before they even got around to fixing up the fork tubes I removed for them, it seems like they're not hurting for business charging what they charge.

NC750 is 750cc. Very big super costly bikes are an American thing. Third world works perfectly fine with a 50CC - 150CC for under $1000, to a super premium bike 300CC if you want to show off.

You always have the option to spend more. America has this macho bike person stereotype to live upto where you must buy a bike close to 1000CC.

I live in Switzerland tho. But might be true, it's "big" because of mountains and because I actually use it to commute and travel on the autobahn which is no fun if you are slower than anyone else. Most people here have 500-800cc

I think if anything, this shows that cheap cars aren't that bad of a solution. Motorbikes are viable, and people still go for the cheap cars.

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