Well, it depends on where, seemingly you forget Europe in the years around (before and after) WWII and of course whole China.

Bicycles seem really expensive to me, relative to cars, considering how much simpler they are and how much less total material's involved. Plus they're a whole lot easier to ship. Not TCO, sure, but sheer cost of the manufactured object at retail. And on the cheaper end they often barely work correctly at all anyway, and all of them seem to require a lot more maintenance than a car, per hour of use or (especially, by long shot) per KM travelled. I assume these are economy of scale issues that may be sorted out if bicycle use grows significantly—though I'm not sure about the reliability.

To address costs: most bicycles on the market are sport/racing bikes. Road racing, time-trial, track, cross-country, downhill, trials, BMX. If all cars on the market were sports cars for road racing, track racing, or off-road racing, cars would be far more expensive than they already are.

Commuter and touring models are a small part of the bicycle market, particularly in the west. Inexpensive commuter bicycles with very little maintenance requirements are more common in other parts of the world. Even so, a name-brand commuter bike can be had in the US for $300 (Giant Escape, similar bikes from competitors exist) that will run with minimal maintenance for many, many years.

I paid $800 for a bicycle in 2008, have put thousands of miles on it, gone through three chains, two cranks, perhaps a half dozen tires. All that for maybe $200-$300 of total cost. That’s equivalent to four or five low-end car payments. And the bike is in great shape and has thousands more miles in it. Doesn’t seem to bad when you compare actual quality bicycles meant to last.

i think this is off base. Don't forget the cost to own a car with depreciation, insurance, fuel, maintenance etc etc. Not even mentioning the cost of infrastructure required to drive said car.

I don't recommend it, but you can buy a bike from Walmart for $78.

I'm from the middle of the US so all my experience is with $200 and cheaper bicycles (maybe $300 adjusted for inflation) since I'm not in the racing "scene" and bike commuting's infeasible outside very small areas (though I was able to, and did, do it for a while), but bikes never seem to quite work right—one set of brakes keeps slipping no matter how many times you fix it, a couple gears that you just cannot get to hold, tires lose enough air every 48 hours you have to add more to ride yet don't seem to actually have a leak and anyway you changed them once (and god is that a pain) and they still do it, chain keeps getting loose, that kind of thing. The best bicycle I've used I'd have raised hell and tried to return it under lemon laws if it were a car and had that many little problems. Meanwhile $300 is still, what, 1/50th the cost of an entry level new car? That's why it seems high. It seems like you should be able to get 50 very good and reliable bicycles for the same cost as a car. Not 50 that suck. There seem to be improved bits of hardware that fix some of the problems but then you're talking more like 1/20 of an entry level car, which, yikes.

I'm fortunate to have a bicycle Co-op in my city. It's a do it yourself workshop to fix your bike and upgrade parts when the time comes. The staff are volunteers and the bikes they sell are all donated. Great tuned up second hand bikes can be purchased for $50. I enjoy using top of the line 1990s technology in my commuter bikes which can be had for a fraction for the price of new bikes.

We are also lucky to have youtube with lots of tutorials which I wish I had when I was first learning.

I agree the relative maintenance of cars is much lower, but I equate the time it takes to clean my chain to be the same as stopping to get fuel for my car.

I'm not against cars, I just feel the cost of ownership is underestimated.

Cost of ownership is nuts. My car basically just sits, but I have to pay $1000 a year just to keep it legal. My bike was $50. And that was it.

The cost for a Bike is all in the little things like brakes, shifters, etc. As long as we're talking Steel/Aluminum frames (not Carbon Fiber) the difference in cost between bikes is largely put into these important parts. Hence the $300 bike not being great but the $600 bike will be so much better.

I bet if you were buying 50 bikes at a time you'd get a nice bulk discount.

Did you ever try a bike from a bike shop? This sounds like a department store bike experience. Multispeed bicycles are not generic widgets you unbox, hop on, and go. They need tuning, like a musical instrument, and a lot of the adjustments are interdependent on one another.

That's like saying you can't just buy a harbor freight engine and expect the carb to be properly tuned. 99% of people are going to have no problem with how it performs as configured right out of the box.

You are mistaken. https://www.sheldonbrown.com/gloss_da-o.html#department

> The average department-store bicycle is ridden about 75 miles in its lifespan from showroom floor to landfill. The manufacturers know this, and build them accordingly. Department-store bicycles are most commonly sold in a partially disassembled and un-adjusted condition.

I should also clarify that SINGLE SPEED pedal brake bicycles ARE nearly maintenance free, and those DO work for most people out of the box in whatever state it might be in.

you can buy a quality bike from 10-20 years ago for ~$300 right now on a second hand website, and probably put $50 in maintenance / year. Lower quality, second hand bikes will be a lot less than that.

Bicycles were heavily used for transportation before cars at least in those countries where they were available at reasonable cost. Anecdotal, but my grandpa and his pals ride bicycles their whole youth and even later, got his driver's license when he was 50, and didn't give a about any environmental issues (though he was no fan of consumerism and made pretty much everything he needed himself and overall preferred simple life, but also deeply hated "those hippies who can't actually do anything useful with their hands", which still characterizes 99 percent of the so called environmentalists...). Back then the distances were smallish, usually under 30 km which made bike the most convenient way for travelling.

I see nobody recognizing that bikes need pretty good roads to be efficient. That was the main reason to prefer walking in some areas even if you had a bike.