>> life cycle of the new Segway bikes is three to five years.
...then I guess it's promptly thrown off a bridge into the river. The idea that a bicycle lasts 3 years, even with hard, year-round riding, is from the disposable tech consumer mindset. A well maintained commuter bike - not an expensive one - lasts 10+ years. These aren't really bicycles, but computerized, electric mopeds.
It's about mileage, not age. A chain is good for maybe 2000 miles - a commuter might get a year or two out of it, but a courier or serious roadie could wear it out in a matter of weeks. The same basic equation applies to wheel rims, bearings, cassettes, chainrings and (in the case of e-bikes) batteries and motor-gearbox units. If you're changing those parts often enough, eventually something will strip or seize badly enough to write off the frame. Most casual cyclists will never experience it, but an aluminium frame will inevitably succumb to fatigue cracking around the bottom bracket after a few tens of thousands of miles, no matter how well it's cared for.
Three to five years is incredibly good for a bike that's potentially being ridden all day, every day under very harsh conditions.
> but a courier or serious roadie could wear it out in a matter of weeks
worked as a cycle courier for almost 3 years here, full-time (6 days a week) + a commute of 20 Km (back and forth) as my parents lived in the suburb, wasn't rare to work in the rain (113 days of sun in a year)... NO FUCKING WAY you can destroy a bicycle chain in a matter of weeks! unless you don't know how gears work, which i doubt couriers don't know (and most of them use single/fixed gears, which the chain is waaay sturdier than 8,9,10 speed ones)
still have my +20,000 Km without previous experience 'hand' centered/aligned aluminum entry category wheels on my 1996 road frame
I can certainly wear out a bicycle chain in a matter of weeks.
If you use a fixed gear bike, your tolerances for chain wear are far looser and you can always adjust the spacing to compensate. But for anyone using a modern drivetrain, you will rapidly wear the chain to the point where it will damage the cassette fast enough for it to be economical to replace the chain in order to avoid replacing the expensive cassette (and having poor shifting/skipping cogs).
On an e-bike you can wear your chain even faster, especially if you stay on the small gear too much.
At the end of the day it's not really an issue though, a chain is 10-15$.
That said you're right about the frame lasting far beyond, a good aluminum frame could certainly last over 100'000km
While this kind of failure is certainly not unheard of, it's not exactly the norm for good quality frames in my experience; I've had quite a few old and well used but high quality frames.
One of my frames did start to crack, but it is now 35 years old - it's an Olmo record
I didn't know fixed speed bikes were popular among couriers. Do you know if this is regional? I've always thought fixed speed would be a nightmare in somewhere with any elevation gain like the hills of San Fransisco. Or, is fixed speed with electric assist the combination that makes this tolerable?
Brazil here... city had lots of hills tho i always said it was a 'mild hilly city', my cycles when i measured were around 700-2000 meters of altimeter, between 35-60 kilometers; sometimes we had bad days of few workers (motor and bicycle), so they had to send bicycles far away from the center (which was flat). i remember 3 or 4 people having fixed gears, some single (i had one for a short time, with a ratio of 1.6 or 1.8:1 i think) speed but the vast majority used gears
didn't read much on the internet but fixed gears is quite popular among couriers in flat cities (London, NY). maintenance is simple and cheap. salaries are quite low too :)
i never saw an electric fixed gear bicycle, nor much electric bicycles down here (i can remember only 1 guy with an electric bicycle back in 2017 and never saw him working much... maybe it was a occasional teen worker that was there to get some dime for parties (we had a bunch of them)). lately people here ride four-stroke engine adapted bicycles... it's quite rare to find a human-powered bicycle courier nowadays. basically Ycombinator liberated a grand for a super anti-competitive and non-ethical company (Rappi) and they destroyed the local courier scene here, later Uber also entered the scene. now you either work on a motorcycle (which also got effected) or you probably be working as most people back in my days; if you don't love cycling in 3 or 4 months MAX. you will give up from the job and you are doing strictly as an extra income or till you find something better (basically any legal job as far as i know)
People have ridden fixed in SF for decades. I have as well. You learn to prefer certain routes, and when the hill is steep, you just deal with the low cadence.
If properly cared for, and under common urban all-weather cycling conditions, yeah your chain is going to last for more than a few weeks.
1500 miles is what I get on my 12sp MTB chains, which get exposed to more severe service than urban bikes do.
I have taken a chain from new to letting the .5 gauge barely slip through on the chain checker in about a week though. It required riding through all manner of mud and crap for about 18 hours a day during an ultradistance race.
Wrong you should change your chain every couple weeks if you ride eight hours a day otherwise you’re going to wear your cassette and then you are going to be skipping, and need to change the whole drive chain. Which is why fixed gear is popular among couriers the chain is thicker and the whole drive chain can wear together
chain rotation is nice, makes them even last longer..! you can also don't do it and fit a new chain when the 1° is over in an 'old' cassette and after some gentle rides it'll settle there and stop skipping (at least 2-3 times till the cassette comes to an end). you can even rotate the crank cog when you change your chain, so you have less tear as the crank arm tends to make pressure in only some parts of the cog (aka. concentric movements)... but i can't see a case where you destroy a chain in weeks, with our without rotation, doesn't matter if you are a 100 kilos or a 55. maybe without doing any cleaning and no oil, still i have my doubts as i rode for some months as a test, with my chain without oil just to check how much it would last! in my defense i cleaned it every other day or on a daily basis if there was rain (also i had mudguards)
> , but an aluminium frame will inevitably succumb to fatigue cracking around the bottom bracket after a few tens of thousands of miles, no matter how well it's cared for.
That is a urban myth.
I know several bikes with alu forks and bottom brackets who have been in use for more than 30 years and +50000 kms and they are all good. In fact the glue bond between the tubes is what fails and they have been reglued several times.
Stuff don't strip or seize if torqued correctly, the right kind of greases/compound are used and the bike is disassembled/reassembled once a year.
Having said that, I wouldn't expect a courrier to do it himself nor to have an LBS do this for him.
I've seen it first-hand. The old lugged and bonded Trek frames are much more resistant to this than welded frames, because that construction method minimises the stress concentrations that initiate macro cracks. E-bikes are probably more vulnerable, partly because the structure is compromised to allow for battery installation and wiring, but mainly because there's a bunch of extra torque going through the chainstays.
An aluminium frame used in all weathers is vulnerable to galvanic corrosion. Aluminium is less noble than steel, so steel fasteners will rot out aluminium threads. In a perfect world this would be prevented by a suitable assembly grease, but a delivery bike being used through winter in London or New York is about as far from a perfect world as you could imagine. There's salt on the roads, the bike never gets a chance to fully dry out, so any amount of aluminium-to-steel contact is going to lead to very rapid corrosion.
Tubes in the rear triangle are more susceptible to breaking as they twist ever so slightly during use. Steel will gladly take up this sort of springy torsion, aluminium not so much.
Yes the popular vitus and alan aluminium frames of the late 80's to mid 90's had aluminium tubes glued to aluminium lugs. Also many early carbon frames of that era from TVT, Alan, Vitus, Trek, Giant or Specialized) were built the same way with carbon tubes and aluminium lugs. In the early 2000's there were also some frames with an alu front triangle and a carbon rear triangle bonded together. Usually they were mid tier bikes below full carbon ones.
This is still a popular method for frames built with mixed materials.
It seems likely that the miles put on a "commuter bike" used for commuting twice a day for 10 years are within shouting distance of the miles put on a bike used for several hours of deliveries every day for 3 years.
The company is incentivized to get the most out of their investment. If the bikes can be maintained economically by staff mechanics, they will be — and these vehicles ought to be simple enough devices for mechanics to squeeze a long life out of them.
If there's a difference, it would be in the lack of an ownership mindset by the riders: they might abuse them akin to how drivers abuse rental cars.
Rented equipment is treated like trash by an unfortunate number of renters. This is true even for things like apartments and homes. For short term rentals of cheaper goods like bikes and scooters it is far, far worse.
Once you factor in that the bikes are fully utilized, rather than ridden a few times a week, and 3-5 years actually sounds pretty good.
I am not really convinced that 3-5 years is not a reasonable useful life. You are comparing one person owner bike to an electric bike ridden throughout the day but all sorts of people. Maybe it gets trashed and maybe it gets broken down and recycled parts where possible.
The issue is that you can't repair these bikes because they all have proprietary parts that only licensed mechanics are allowed to touch. And the ebike companies are dropping like flies at the moment.
Maybe the frame does, but aside from that I expect it to be a bike of Theseus after a decade.
And the original commenter is of course right about the "computerized, electric mopeds" part. That's what makes those bikes useful. The drive unit is likely the expensive part. It also means many parts get a lot more wear because the bikes accelerate faster (= much bigger forces involved) and drive faster on average (= heavier vibrations/bumps).
Combine this with accidents (from the bike falling over while stationary, to the rider wiping out, to car crashes) and the useful life of the vehicle is limited.
> Combine this with accidents (from the bike falling over while stationary, to the rider wiping out, to car crashes) and the useful life of the vehicle is limited.
This.
I don't see how a bike can be used daily, year-round, for ten years, without falling or being hit by a car driver.
And I would never ride again an alloy or carbon bike that has been involved in a crash with a car.
...then I guess it's promptly thrown off a bridge into the river. The idea that a bicycle lasts 3 years, even with hard, year-round riding, is from the disposable tech consumer mindset. A well maintained commuter bike - not an expensive one - lasts 10+ years. These aren't really bicycles, but computerized, electric mopeds.