We (family of 5) live in Vienna and we're pretty multi modal. We have an annual ticket for the public transport system, have a minivan, a cargo bike and individual bikes for all of us. On top of that kick scooters. So money is really not an issue when it comes to picking the right vehicle since we have pretty much all the options. Within the city, the cargo bike and the kick scooters by far get the most utilization. The kick scooters in part because they are super useful to speed up the way to public transport.
But man the cargo bike is just a whole different game. Yes, it's a bit heavy but you can use pretty much all infrastructure with it and you can haul a lot with it. Particularly in the summer time when we go to the pools or other activities it's a no brainer. Parking is not an issue, neither is being stuck in traffic.
The cost obviously is a massive hurdle for most families probably, and so is over night parking for many.
Within the city we have more kilometers on the cargo bike than the car by at least double.
> The cost obviously is a massive hurdle for most families probably, and so is over night parking for many.
Cargo bikes have an absurdly and inexplicably high cost. It's unbelievable how they can easily cost over $5k. That's nearly half a brand new car like a Dacia Sandero. The economy is barely there with all this price gouging.
Comparing a cargo bike to a new car only makes sense if that new car requires no fuel, no significant maintenance, no tax, and no insurance.
A $5k cargo bike it’s almost certainly a e-bike, additional cargo bikes haven’t really hit the manufacturing scale needed for automation to make sense. So there’s a significant amount of labour involved in effectively hand building, and hand welding these bikes. Something that simply isn’t true for cars.
I also don’t think there is much price gouging happening with cargo bikes. Unlike cars, the barrier to entry for new manufacturers is practically zero, so if it was easy to build new cargo bikes cheaper, someone would do it.
But even if there was significant price gouging involved. Economically, a $5k cargo bike will have a total cost of ownership orders of magnitude lower than a car, regardless of cars price.
There's a vicious cycle of automobile orientated development creating demand for cars. Cars are considered essential transportation tools. Bikes are considered nice to have recreational, fitness, or kids' toys. So people aren't willing to spend thousands on a bike unless it can replace a car.
You’re making some very big assumptions about “consumers” here. Unlike the U.S. most European cities have decent public transport, and a car isn’t seen as essential.
I live near central London, can easily afford a car, have a private location to park a car etc etc. But I don’t own a car, or consider a car essential, driving in London is simply the slowest, most expensive and stressful form of transport. I do however consider my bike an essential transport tool, alongside my Oyster card.
If we need a car, then we just rent one (and have it dropped off near our home). So we rent a car when going on trips out of London, or needing to move items that we can’t using our bikes.
> So people aren't willing to spend thousands on a bike unless it can replace a car.
That’s a very large assumption, you also make it sound like a bike can’t replace a car. Which simply isn’t true, for many European cities the opposite is true, a car can’t replace a bike.
situation is exactly reversed where I live. Car is a recreational luxury (get out of the city for a day, road trips). A bike is my essential day to day transportation.
The luxury status of cars is cemented by the wide availability of car rental apps that mean I have a car or van always available for the few times a year I need it for a trip to ikea or whatever.
Privately owned vehicles should be banned from city centres.
> So there’s a significant amount of labour involved in effectively hand building (...)
I call bullshit on that take. Some brands sell electric cargo trikes for around $1k, while other brands sell their cargo bikes for >5k. You can buy a brand new Opel Rocks Electric for 3k more than a cargo bike. Are we expected to believe that an electric mini car is less labour intensive than a bike frame with a bucket and a COTS electric motor? Unbelievable.
I'm sure you could recruit the same bike frame welders in China/Taiwan to make a bike for you. There are some that are willing to make custom modifications on demand for a very reasonable price. If they can do that for one-off welded bikes, then making a standardized cargo frame is absolutely doable for a reasonable budget.
Sure, there's more material, more bending, more welds, and it'll cost more, but you could certainly do that within reason. Like much of the bike industry, these markups are rooted in a foundation of bullshit.
I imagine economies of scale are much greater with cars than cargo bikes. If it was possible to charge, say, 50% less for a cargo bike I’m sure someone would be, and they’d be taking the entire market with them.
Not to mention, every government tripping over themselves to hand out all kinds of multi billion dollar subsidies to any car manufacturer willing to set up shop in their jurisdiction. And a slew of implicit subsidies to car manufacturing, use, storage/parking, legal frameworks ("if you want to murder someone and get away with it, do it with a car"), etc.
Yeah, scale is the problem. The market is tiny compared to cars and even motorcycles. Brands like RAD and Lectric do compete on price and as a result they sell higher volumes than the nicer expensive R&Ms or Urban Arrows or whatever.
You might have missed the exchange rate a little. The cheapest Dacia Sandero is over $18k USD, more than 3x the $5k idea. But you can get very nice e-cargo-bikes for $2-3k, and you’re comparing one of the cheapest cars anywhere to the fanciest electric cargo bikes available, which is almost like comparing a $100 Walmart Huffy with a basket to a Porsche. Look for reasonably priced cargo bikes, and you can easily find them.
My suspicion is that prices would drop a bit there was more competition on the market. That said: they are not really “mass” manufactured so I do understand the cost. One could probably learn a thing or two from car manufacturing to crank them out at a higher volume and lower cost. Presumably the investment cost into automation however doesn’t pay off.
Price gouging is short term and localised. If you truly think you’ve identified a mispriced product, this is HN. You’re capable of more than loosely complaining about it.
> Price gouging is short term and localised. If you truly think you’ve identified a mispriced product, this is HN. You’re capable of more than loosely complaining about it.
I don't understand what point you tried to make. Whenever I see price gouging, my reaction is not to "disrupt markets" or put together elevator pitches. I move on with my life because I have better things to do with my life than planning to startup a company whenever I'm baffled by something.
In this case, if I see companies price gouging cargo bikes, I solve all my problems by not buying one. Easy. No elevator pitch required.
But that doesn't mean that people aren't being fleeced by these cargo bike companies.
> don't understand what point you tried to make. Whenever I see price gouging
You’re describing a product that’s too expensive for you. Just because something is expensive doesn’t mean price gouging.
You may also be confusing profiteering in general with price gouging. Even then, you’re made no argument. Unless you’re looked into the BOM, labour, inventory and certification costs, “this feels expensive” isn’t insightful.
> I have better things to do with my life than planning to startup a company whenever I'm baffled by something
Then it’s not price gouging or profiteering. It’s someone providing a niche product conveniently.
Maintenance on bicycles is also insane. An "oil change" (clean and lube the chain) every 300 km or so. Even if you consider that bicycles don't travel as fast and far as cars, that's quite an annoyance to deal with about every 20 or so operating hours.
If you were to actually pay a shop to do the maintenance, I suspect a bicycle would be more expensive per km than a car.
> Maintenance on bicycles is also insane. An "oil change" (clean and lube the chain) every 300 km or so.
In the Before Times (pre-COVID) I cycled 5km to work and 5km back, rain or shine, every workday from March to December in Toronto, Canada.
Every spring I'd spend $100 on a tune up, which usually included a new chain, and every ~second year I'd need a new rear cassette too and some new brake pads too. I've had the same tyres for 10+ years (though I get flats 1-2 times per year so needed new tubes). I lubed the chain once a week from a bottle that I purchased for $10 which lasts for 1-2 years.
I have no idea where you get your bike maintenance ideas from, but my experience was quite different after a decade of experience.
After over 15.000 Km of cycling with our bakfiets, I think I oiled the chain maybe 20 times. Replaced the tires once (and a few spokes due to user error/ring lock still locked+kick stand+two kids in the bike is not a good combo). Still on the first chain and cassette. I have never cleaned a chain.
Maybe your carbon bike with expensive options to save every last gram of weight requires so much maintenance, but any proper Dutch city bike or bakfiets made of steel will last very long with minimal maintenance
I find it a bit odd that people do so much service. Is there something about modern chain oil that makes it less effective than in the 80s? I'm pretty sure I forgot the chain most years, though whatever bike I had was always an example of survivor bias.
Modern derailleur systems use very narrow chains that won't tolerate being dirty. A hub gear setup with a 1/8" chain (or an old 5-speed derailleur setup) will tolerate much more abuse. A traditional roadster bike (stadsfiets) with full-length mudguards and an enclosed chaincase throws much less dirt into the drivetrain than a sporting bicycle with neither.
I don't know if it's actually necessary, but it's the upper end of the recommendations I've seen/heard, and I noticed a surprising improvement in performance after I cleaned/lubed it.
I assume it's also more important on e-bikes (and especially cargo e-bikes) since the chain sees higher forces over longer periods of time.
Maybe more important, however in my experience these things are neglected more often with ebikes than traditonal bikes, because the motor compensates the dirty chain or if the tyres could use some air... ;-)
It takes 5 minutes. Nowhere near as involved as with a car oil change. And it’s simple enough that unless you’re basically inoperant as a being, you don’t need to pay a shop to do it.
I was just in Vienna for a week. I was surprised to see just how many people biked through the city. We obviously spent our time where the tourists do in the center, but how far out from there can you live in Vienna and still have what you said above remain true?
I don’t think the distance to the city center matters but the trips you take. A have a colleague who lives very far out but he cycles his kids by cargo bike to the daycare which isn’t too far away, then to the train before commuting into the center.
> What are you primarily using during winter and rainy months?
In the Toronto, Canada, I cycled 5km every workday to/from work, from March to December, rain or shine: as long as the roads were clear I added layers for winter, and during rain I put on rain gear (like even a simple poncho):
Since our older kids go to school themselves I don't have to cycle them any more. The last few years I dropped two kids of at day care by cargo bike regardless of weather. The alternative is basically public transport because the combination of traffic and lack of parking locations in the city make dropping them off by car impossible for me.
So I basically have the choice of cycling in the rain (the kids are rain protected in the bike anyways) and taking the bus and subway. However at either one of those sides I need to walk a bit anyways and then the kids also get wet.
So despite potentially wet and snowy weather, it's still the best option.
All bakfiets models come with (optional) rain tents, so young can kids stay dry and out of the wind. Cold is usually more of an issue than rain on longer trips. In a bit of snow, I feel a lot safer on my bike than in a car. Just adjust speed and do controlled braking to feel the grip (or lack thereof). It helps a lot that I live in a flat country (Netherlands), as snow/ice and slopes are a really bad combination with cycling.
The most interesting part of the website is that first it asks for permission to use cookies.
"we and our 864 partners"
864!!!!? Who knew? In the US maybe it is 200,000 partners? And be sure to click on the "learn more" button to find out all the information that will be collected, how information will be stored on your device, etc.
The article itself was in my opinion uninteresting. Written by someone in high school? When you take out all the links, and click-ables there is less content than the comments on hacker news!! I have to say the comments here are much more informative and interesting.
And right now this is the TOP article on hacker news. Double WOW!!! The internet today! Who knew? This is hilarious!
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.
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.
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.
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.
I live in Leipzig, Germany, there are more and more cargo bikes for parcel delivery and families are often seen with bikes to get to the lake or to go to the parks.
Nevertheless I think cargo bikes have a big con, which is the price as well as their "single" use.
That's why I personally prefer trailers, they are cheaper, not coupled to the one bike to function, and there are some which can be stored very good in a small flat.
Somehow they are not financially supported in Germany, what makes me sad.
I love my cargo bike, still I can't help but smile when I think about how we're complaining about too-big-cars and are switching to bigger and bigger bikes instead.
For good reason but still... An electric cargo bike is a long shot from its protoplast.
It's the combination of power, weight, no barrier to entry and overall lack of imagination/consideration in the general public that concerns me.
Still, I find cargo bikes are cumbersome enough that people tend not to ride them too quickly. The "SUV" bikes and electric mopeds pretending to be bikes that concern me more.
> I love my cargo bike, still I can't help but smile when I think about how we're complaining about too-big-cars and are switching to bigger and bigger bikes instead.
At least there's a bit more friction involved (some of it literal!) in choosing to ride an unnecessarily large bicycle.
As a person who was way ahead of the trend in America, having had a (non-electric) family cargo bike 15 years ago, I have come to agree. When you see any kind of vehicle, whether a pickup truck, SUV, or cargo bike, just try to imagine what will happen if the most clueless person you know buys one. These days in my town the bike parents ride their ebikes right up to every place and leave them there, so a playground or park is totally surrounded by parked bikes now. Say what you will about SUV drivers, but at least they had to leave them parked on the street, instead of parking them on the actual park.
It is easy to think it's going to work when only the 1% most socially conscious people are riding them, but you have to create a system that continues to work well even when average clueless American is participating.
I see it the other way around. Yes, I am annoyed by some cyclists (like the lady with a cargo bike carring a full crate of beer trying to get it in the tram). But then, I always imagine that the same person could (and would instead) have been in a 3t tank. People exist and often do stupid things, so I prefer for them to do this in the least destructive way.
Renting a cargo bike is my default option to haul something bigish from ikea nowdays. Rich people love them, as you can put all your three kids and go haul them to school 300 meters away much easier in this thingy compared to both car and walking.
They are pretty useless unless e-powered, so the cost is like 5k upwards and it's kinda only useful on occasion. They are big and you have to store them somewhere. They are also kinda single-use once in a while. So target user groups are either deliveries, where it's a special kind of cargo bike or above mentioned rich people who have a spot on a pavement to park them.
You don't really need a cargo bike, but it's a nice to have.
I'm in Seattle - I have a car and an e-bike. What I've found is that you can surprisingly get to many places using trails. For instance, you can get to the Costco in south seattle from places like Ballard or Interbay largely on separated lanes. The thing that stops me from getting a larger bike and doing that is the fact that I have no idea where to park my bike securely if I need to make another stop. Your shit is getting stolen in this city if you're not careful.
Initial cost (6000 euros buys you a decent second-hand car), storage cost (to protect it against weather and thieves), maintenance cost (bike mechanics get paid the same as car mechanics), limited usefulness. I have owned multiple cargo bikes and I believe they're a status thing.
The mechanics may be paid the same, but the maintenance efforts are exponentially different, thus also exponentially reducing the costs. You need to remove zero parts to do just about all forms of maintenance on a bike, truing a wheel is probably the most effort part and thats still less time than a typical oil change.
Probably depends on the crime in the city and location. Here (Vienna, Austria) a lot of people just store them outside. We store ours on one of the parking spots we have (since we only have one car) together with some of our other stuff. They do take space, but I'm not sure if that is the main challenge with cargo bikes.
Personally I think it comes down to cost and availability. They cost around 5000 Euro if not more, and they take sometimes months to be delivered.
They don't. You need to be rich, then you keep it chained near your front door or in backyard or wherever. You can't put them into the bike shed and people who have them also have a car, so parking spot is out too.
Look I dunno why people do the thing. Maybe one of the kids is going to pre-school. Maybe they go to the shop on the way back. I have no idea why honestly.
Dont these things have high labor per kilogram-kilometer costs? How would they ever be competitive? What am I missing?
Edit:
> Another study in Brussels looking at the operational advantages of cargo bikes over vans found that when you factor in insurance, maintenance, depreciation, and energy costs, vans have five to 10 times higher expenses per parcel.
I'm skeptical. I would imagine that the driver cost is the largest driver.
You're likely correct about the labor per kilogram-kilometer cost, and this e-bike solution is only competitive due to constraints applied by the government. This does ignore the negative externalities that result from the use of larger parcel delivery vehicles.
>a fleet of electric cargo bikes in Norwich to deliver thousands of packages per week.
Reading the article, this quote in particular stuck out to me because it is not uncommon for a single package car driver to deliver thousands of packages a week. This comes from my experience as a UPS Package Car Driver in Raleigh, North Carolina, which has a population density comparable to that of Norwich.
> I would imagine that the driver cost is the largest driver.
In addition to all the other things: Any immigrant can ride a cargo bike. But in Europe, getting a drivers license is quite expensive in many countries. So technically, the van drivers are higher skilled.
In a car-hostile/bike-friendly city, they're going to be able to move much faster than a car, so the only downside is that you need to plan shorter routes/return to the base more often. Which probably isn't as big of a drag in a compact city as you'd think.
A cargo bike with a 90x60x60cm box can fit 36 packages assuming a 15x20x30 size (weight will not be the limiting factor for the typical "one piece of electronics and some air" packages). 36 stops with 5 minutes per stop (travel + stopping and delivering the package) is 3 hours.
Depends on your city. Here in London the average driving speed is around 12mph, easily beaten by a bike any day of the week.
Further the bike routes tend to be much more direct than vehicle routes. No getting trapped in horrible one way systems, the ability to travel directly though low traffic neighbourhoods, because bike are allowed through model filters.
Honestly it’s not clear to me how van or car based last-mile delivery is viable in most parts of London.
>Dont these things have high labor per kilogram-kilometer costs? How would they ever be competitive? What am I missing?
Compared to a fume-spitting van, yes they can be more expensive to operate. Compared to a fancy e-van for which supply is limited, maybe not. You may be missing the local government not liking fume-spitting vans in the inner center.
I'm also skeptical. I worked for a delivery company using cargo bikes. These things were needing repairs all the time. Employees were passionate about bicycles and accepting a very low wage. The bikes themselves are expensive. In specific situations they make sense because they're narrow and quiet, but I don't believe they're cheap to operate.
But man the cargo bike is just a whole different game. Yes, it's a bit heavy but you can use pretty much all infrastructure with it and you can haul a lot with it. Particularly in the summer time when we go to the pools or other activities it's a no brainer. Parking is not an issue, neither is being stuck in traffic.
The cost obviously is a massive hurdle for most families probably, and so is over night parking for many.
Within the city we have more kilometers on the cargo bike than the car by at least double.
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