Bike Prices.

ChroniC said:
At cost of £100, are you justifying the price of £1000+ bikes to be totally production costs?
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Why are you focusing on bikes anyway? They are far from the worst.

Overclockers sell a cpu for almost £2k. It contains a few grams of metal and some silicon. Material costs are probably less than £1.

I want you to give me a logical explanation why overclockers are ripping me off at 2000% markup!
 
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touch said:
Why are you focusing on bikes anyway? They are far from the worst.

Overclockers sell a cpu for almost £2k. It contains a few grams of metal and some silicon. Material costs are probably less than £1.

I want you to give me a logical explanation why overclockers are ripping me off at 2000% markup!
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Because I can understand the technology involved in micro processing design, my processor doesn't work with some metal slapped on some sand, the intricacies of micro production are infinity more difficult than welding some tubes together. Stop focusing on material costs, if you can't back up why bike design is so expensive?
 
ChroniC said:
Because I can understand the technology involved in micro processing design, my processor doesn't work with some metal slapped on some sand, the intricacies of micro production are infinity more difficult than welding some tubes together. Stop focusing on material costs, if you can't back up why bike design is so expensive?
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And bikes don't work unless you know exactly what you're doing with 6-12kg of carbon fibre, resin, aluminium, steel, rubber, etc.

This simply boils down to you not understanding something and then claiming it's too expensive. There's more than enough that you can read if you want to understand why a frame costs as much as it does or is as difficult to manufacture as it is, or why VCLS means something and is important, and so on.
 
touch said:
Which is exactly what everybody in this thread has been telling you...
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But!! yet not a single person has been able to justify why design is so expensive? Other than saying it is......
I want to know why! I haven't been trying to derail this thread in saying I don't agree with the costs, I have been asking why the hell they are so high.

Vonhelmet said:
And bikes don't work unless you know exactly what you're doing with 6-12kg of carbon fibre, resin, aluminium, steel, rubber, etc.

This simply boils down to you not understanding something and then claiming it's too expensive. There's more than enough that you can read if you want to understand why a frame costs as much as it does or is as difficult to manufacture as it is, or why VCLS means something and is important, and so on.
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You say this but I can't. I cannot find anywhere that explains a frames cost above the cost of the aluminuim and a man to bend and weld it. I have watched how it's made and the likes and looked into the process, and it is very simple and most mechanically done, and mass produced.
 
ChroniC said:
But!! yet not a single person has been able to justify why design is so expensive? Other than saying it is......
I want to know why! I haven't been trying to derail this thread in saying I don't agree with the costs, I have been asking why the hell they are so high.
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It's simple.
The people resource time and cost to develop the ideas, research the materials, design the machines to manufactuer the prototypes, then test them and repeat until the product passes quality control is very high. The market sets salary, pension rates and material cost based on demand and availability.
 
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High end production is probably more difficult than you think. Snip from the new CAAD12 design, this is an Alu frame in bikes from £1000-2000.

The Cannondale advanced aluminium design – CAAD – has been radically revamped with a new process called ‘Smartformed Alloy’. This is a mix of hydroforming, taper butting, mechanical shaping, 3D forging, and using double-pass smooth welds and post-weld heat treatments.

The process controls the material distribution and tube shapes with a new design protocol called tube flow modelling. This computing-heavy analytical design tool works through hundreds of virtual simulations to find the optimal tube shape and material needed from engineer-designed parameters.

The process has enabled Cannondale to modify tube shapes and thicknesses throughout each individual tube to allow the tube to do exactly what it wants it to do. The tubing cross-sections are the most complex you’ll find on any aluminium frame currently being produced. Take a close look at the frame and all you can see are smooth-flowing, almost organic, changes in profiles. We couldn’t find any crimps, indents, or abrupt shape changes that could create potential stress risers (or potential failure points).
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http://www.bikeradar.com/road/news/article/cannondale-caad12-2016-first-look-44620/
 
Check this out, a cheap Chinese knock-off frame vs the Specialized original

http://velonews.competitor.com/not-...k-deep-inside-the-carbon-in-counterfeit-bikes

Another one talking about the grades of Carbon available for bike building

http://www.bicycling.com/bikes-and-gear-features/how-its-made/carbon-fiber-peeling-back-layers

Bike manufacturing is in the diminishing returns level now, £1k get's a really good bike, spending £3k won't really gain much but hey it's a hobby :p

Have to remember as well that the more a bike costs the less of them they will sell, so prices start to jump up to still keep a profit on them.
 
Jonny69 said:
A handmade 'lightweight' in the early 1950s (i.e. during the 'golden era' of British cycling) built in Reynolds 531 with hand-cut lugs and derailleur gears would have set you back around a months wages.
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That is a good comparison TBH. My entry level road bike cost less than a weeks take home pay. Pretty good VFM really
 
ChroniC said:
I rode my brothers £800 rode bike recently and apart from the weight and slightly slicker gear changes, i didn't find much difference from a £100 racer from 30yrs ago.
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How many thousand miles did you do on the groupset to test wear and aging of it? How many mountains did you climb to test the efficiency and benefit from the lightness? How much power did you put through the frame to really test the stiffness and responsiveness?

If you don't cycle and didn't cycle far you really cannot draw any comparisons other than the rather unique 'feel' to yourself in your basic 'test'.

ChroniC said:
-Frame based on the same assumption of $5 for carbon fibre, that's around $100 for a full 8kg frame.
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Heavier bikes cost more money? Quite the opposite! ;)

ChroniC said:
Personally paying £800-£1000 for a bike is (imo) insanity.
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I wasn't aware that a £1000 bike was high, maybe this is where you're going wrong. You would be better running this argument asking for justification of prices between a £800 and £4000 price 'hike'. You would certainly get better more informative replies, your current post is seen as trolling.

ChroniC said:
I can if the **** is turned into ****, which is cheap. **** are dificult to make because of the *** added to *** and the research.
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This argument could be used for anything to explain cost, not just processor/bicycle manufacture. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_cost

ChroniC said:
This is the answer I am looking for, what part of bike manufactoring is so complex that it requires the cost equivalent of processor design, one of the most complex things on the planet?
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This would have been a better question to ask in your first post!

More applicable information found by quick googling:

Direct 'markup' by distribution/retail discussion: http://forums.roadbikereview.com/bikes-frames-forks/how-much-does-bike-manufacturer-make-113503.html

2008 look at increase in Giants sales/production: http://www.economist.com/node/12270958

Jonny69 said:
A handmade 'lightweight' in the early 1950s (i.e. during the 'golden era' of British cycling) built in Reynolds 531 with hand-cut lugs and derailleur gears would have set you back around a months wages.
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Great analogy of costs and inflation (ie don't use values!).


Ripped from the forum post I linked above:
I agree that it's a tough question to answer. When you say "cost" are you considering the bike company's insurance costs, medical benefits for its employees, workers compensation insurance, advertising costs, cost of inventory, cost of obsolete inventory, theft, salaries, taxes, rent, and then all the material costs?? I would be surprised if their gross margins are much over 10%.
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ChroniC said:
This is the answer I am looking for, what part of bike manufactoring is so complex that it requires the cost equivalent of processor design, one of the most complex things on the planet?
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Processors are one of the few products where the manufacturer decides how "good" it is within certain parameters after production

two chips could come down the line minutes apart and be binned to be sold at either £50 or £500 depending on numerous factors, not all of them performance related.

A bicycle is built to a certain specification from the very start of manufacture, and as you go further and further up the range, returns diminish. the higher end stuff requires better materials (£££) more labour (£££) and those materials are bought in lower volumes (£££)

your nan's Celeron and your i7 extreme edition actually don't cost the manufacturer that much different an amount of money to make


The £3000 bicycle is the "extreme edition" processor, it's actually only a few percent better than the £500 bicycle, but it costs MUCH more
 
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