Compare what's comparable... a top of the line watch cost 50k+ so cars are all cheap I guess ?
In 1990 you could buy a Golf GTI for 77k french francs, which is 19000 euros today. And that was the best golf money could buy.
Today the absolute base model Golf costs 32k euros. The current GTI starts at 48k. Even the polo starts at 19k+, and that's the shittiest vw you can buy.
The bottom line is back in the day any working person could buy a bas model shitbox, now the low class workers needs a 10 years loan to do the same
Nothings stopping you from buying a 90s beater. For the rest of us the safety features are worth it. I’m betting it costs more to manufacture a safe modern car than a 90s one.
>It turns out that a driver of a car 18 or more years old is 71 percent more likely to die in a bad crash than the driver of a car three years old or newer.
A lot actually, it's not legal to drive them in a lot of city centers
71% more than virtually 0 is not really a problem imho. And still, we could have modern cheap cars with modern crash safety for much less than the computers on wheel they're trying to sell us
The same car model just 10 years ago went for half the price. Same for the fiat Panda (my parents bought it in 2008 for 8k, now the most base model I can find is 19k). In the meantime salaries have not double at all (in some nations they even fell)
This is something that has been on my mind for a long while: are cars super cheap or bikes super expensive?
Looking at how much material it takes to make and how complex it is, I would expect a car to cost ~100 more than a bike, but in reality it's more like ~10 more
Regular bikes are super cheap, but if you buy a top of the line, specialised and low quantity bike you're paying a premium of course.
Price is never about the material used... an iphone would be $200 if it was the case. Look into economy of scale, how money is made through maintenance/parts/after sale services, &c.
I'm not talking about 10k bikes, but also not supermarket bikes.
I said complexity and materials. An iPhone is extremely complex but it's only so cheap because electronics scale extremely well, probably only software does better.
Logically there should be more bikes than cars so the economy of scale should be in their favor. Bike maintenance isn't cheap either. Cars need to go through much more certification etc.
The more I think about it the less sense it makes. I think there's crazy competition on cars, but not on bikes.
A supermarket bike, not suitable if you're a bit serious and many repair shops will refuse to repair them because it's not worth it. For a decent bike you'd probably paying at least 3-4x more.
>There are twice as many cars than bikes in France from what I can find online, not sure about the rest of the world.
Google tells me worldwide daily production of bikes is 300.000 and cars 100.000. (IMO It would really be sad if it was otherwise)
> You can buy a basic city bike for <250 euros new
Fair point but what I meant in my initial post is even a top of the line Trek Slash doesn't have a quarter of the technology included in the lowest end Fiat Panda. Even the best e-bikes are still quite simple compared to a car.
