Comment by asark

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.