July 10th, 2008
Out of Sync
One of the things that has always attracted me to recumbents is their varied and ingenious designs. Even after 30+ years of development, there is very little consensus within the recumbent community on what constitutes a “standard” design. Sure, comfort, good handling, durability, reasonable weight, and many other traits are universally considered desirable, but the designs created to meet these criteria are still quite varied. The fact that a carbon lowracer and tadpole trike both fall within the definition of “recumbent” shows what a wide realm these bikes encompass.
Upright bike designs, on the other hand, are far more standardized. Touring bikes, racing bikes, hybrids, cruisers, and commuting bikes may differ in components, wheels, frame material, and geometry, but these differences are insignificant in comparison to the wildly differing designs seen among recumbents. Even a bike as radical as the Big Dummy is still pretty much a standard upright bike with a long tail on it.
Combined with their inherent complexity and low production numbers, this lack of standardization among recumbents makes them much more expensive than uprights. Comparing like materials and similarly priced components, recumbents can cost as much as 50-100% more than upright bikes of similar quality. I now believe this is the biggest obstacle the recumbent industry must overcome to have any hope of reaching the mainstream (the perception that recumbents are “strange” is a big one as well). No amount of marketing, racing achievements, or clever designs has a chance of offsetting this price imbalance. When a newcomer can purchase a perfectly serviceable commuting bike for under $500, yet a similarly outfitted recumbent is closer to $1000, the recumbent is not going to sell unless the customer was already predisposed to purchasing a recumbent for some other reason (this may explain why so many riders take up recumbents only after suffering through physical issues on upright bikes).
None of this is intended as a dig on recumbents; quite the contrary. I still believe recumbents are ideal for a variety of uses and offer many advantages over uprights in certain circumstances. I’d love to see them take a more prominent place in the market. They have the potential to bring many new people into cycling that would otherwise not ride a bike due to comfort or balance issues. But no amount of added value is likely to overcome the extreme disadvantage resulting from pricing that is completely out of sync with the larger industry.
21 Responses to “Out of Sync”
I think the day will come that $500 bents of good quality will be out there. We are trying and had a sub 1K bike for a number of years. The highest cost over the frame is the seat, we are really excited about two new cost cutting seats, that are both lightand comfy.
I have long been advocating standardization of seat attach systems, and boiling down bents to maybe 3 most common configs. But is like your recent graphic of the evolution of bikes, starting at low BB LWB all the way to high racres, there is literally every thing in between, whew! We need to narrow it bit to have this concept go mainstream.
So now I am curious. What 3 configs could go mainstream? I love my high-racer but the height and step over make it awfully difficult for my wife to ride. (Though she was amazed at how much she liked the ride once she managed to get up on it.) The LWBs I’ve tried can be ridden by just about anyone but they are a major pain to store, transport, park, put on the bus rack etc. Upright designs are adaptable to just about any situation without losing their general utility. A mountain bike is less than ideal on the road but as long as the design isn’t too exotic you can take it everywhere you can any other upright and expect to be able to transport and park it without problems. I have yet to see a bent design that I can say the same about.
I spoke Matt “regular bike” shop owner recently on the flight to Hays KS, and he paralleled the same thoughts. He was well aware of recumbents, but didn’t know where to start and get his feet wet. LWB, CLWB, SWB, HR, LR, MBB etc. Accessories are mostly universal on DF’s, but do not readily adaptable to some bents without a little fidgeting. But on the flip side Matt didn’t seem to mind stocking so many overlapping DF’s models from different manufacturers, which is further support by the what most roadie’s would call “selection.” Of course we got to talking about crank forwards and the questions more easily flowed. He was able to identify with them, and inquired primarily about on their handling, comfort and of course …price. Hopefully these tweener CF’s will be the catalyst to getting more shops to also stock full recumbents, as the aging demographic thinks harder about their next long term commute or recreational fitness purchase.
As a primarily recumbent bike dealer, I’d be happy to see more standardization in the bike industry. Maybe start with wheel size and limit ‘em to 20″/406 etrto and 26″/559 etrto sizes. Standardize road tires with reflective sidewalls. That’s sure simplify things.
How about standard bottom brackets, say 68mm wide BB shells and go back to the square spindle BB. I prefer 5-arm 94/58 crank bolt pattern cranks and low gearing (slightly bigger gears on 20″ wheel bikes) and wide range cassettes (are freehubs/cassettes really better than freewheels?). Most of us could do fine with a 14/21 speed gear system with its more robust chains and easier-to-maintain shifting.
Internal gear hubs, single chainring cranks and enclosed chains are cool.
Yes to standard recumbent main frame tube size - 1 3/4″ or 2″ would be great.along with standard seat mount systems - RANS does have a nice system.
And standardize fork steerer tube sizing to 1″ and drop all the specialized frame specific headsets. Limit seat tubes or derailler stalks to 1 1/8″ standard. I’m not that impressed with some of the newer derailler designs and would like some standardization there, too.
I’d probably go for “V” brakes and levers as standard, too.Cable disks for practical cyclists, commuters, loaded tourists and mountain travelers.
Yes to cromo, under seat steering, clwb w/equal or slightly lower BB to seat height, swb (around 45″ wheel base), same size wheels, no power side idlers.
All the rest on special order. Priced $$$$$ accordingly…
edde
I would guess a low riding HR, then the Stratus type bent, which has been popular for 35 years, and works well for those who can handle the length, and rounding it out would be something like the V3 or Xstream. That gives you a progression of BB heights, the longer bikes are going to cover most touring, some performance aspects, and the HR will cover the need to be compact, and can be configured to do all, but will always have a select appeal due to the high BB. I guess a swb with an BB that could be adjusted from low to high would be one desgin that could pretty much do it all, maybe I better hit the drawing board…
In my mind’s eye, the SWB in the 406/559 wheel configuration represents the “standard recumbent ” design. For many users it is the most practical configuration; easy to ride, easier to handle in traffic conditions, much easier to store and transport. P-38, V-Rex, Street Machine, Giro are all great examples; an amalgamation of these models features into one more “standardized” unit with mountain bike components might result in a pragmatic model for a broader public acceptance. Current makers would have to be willing to share a design platform.,
upright makers do so by default of the upright configuration.
Having just bought a used Rans Vivo, which is no longer in production, I understand the confusion that some people have with recumbents. However, my criteria wasn’t only price.
There is size to consider - and that doesn’t mean where I put my feet but where I put the bike. I live in an apartment, fortunately on the first floor, and the primary issue was where do I store my bike? A long wheelbase bike of any brand would be unwieldy to lift on my stoop, open the front door, wheel it around to my door and park it just inside my apartment. So, I’ve come up with a new classification for bicycles - apartment size or garage size. If I had a garage, I probably would have gone with a longer wheel base bike except that…
Maneuvering on city streets, curvy bike paths and very tight corners is easier on a short wheel base (SWB). Last night night, I had to maneuver around broken tree limbs after a storm and the Vivo did that quite well. (Actually, I had fun on that little puppy.) A LWB would have been more problematic. Then, with urban cycling becoming the rage, I would break down the classifications to urban bents and rural bents.
The big issue I have right now with the Vivo, is practicality. Aside from getting used to starting it at street corners, stop lights and in traffic, it’s a sprightly bike for getting around town. Except that, you can’t hang a lot of racks on it. I have front and rear racks on my Trek 720, which I use for grocery shopping. So, do I get a trailer ( one wheel or two?), keep my Trek for shopping, get a crank forward bike or get a bent that’s “rack-able.” Low and behold, when I got to my local bike dealer last night after dodging trees limbs, a V-Rex appeared on the showroom floor. God is testing me!
Because bike lust reared its ugly head and like with many important purchases in my life, it comes to self image. And that, my friends, is how recumbents separate us from the flock. Do we buy a bent to look like the rest and blend in with the rest of the flock or do we buy what’s right for us? Do I buy an Apple computer or a PC? I have an Macintosh and I have a bent, hmmm, let me see how I fit in. I live in Madison, WI, do I get a ‘bent or a Trek (or Schwinn, GT - all of which are headquartered here.)
Does a dual 20″ bike look as macho as a bike with a larger wheel in back like the old hot rods and Schwinn Sting Ray used to look? Does size really matter - appearance-wise? Is it cheating to use fairings? Gosh, I’m so superficial! ;-))
Why aren’t more people riding bents? Because there aren’t more people riding bents - silly. Have you ever noticed when you bought a vehicle then it seems that other people are buying the same vehicle as well? I’d be danged if on my first Sunday at church with my Vivo last weekend, lo and behold, there was another bent (Longbike) in the parking lot that I hadn’t seen before. Afterwards, while in the parking lot, two people approached me about my bike. We must be prophets, God forbid. To which I say, we ought to rally and sally forth enmass a few times a year to proclaim to good news about bents. And that you don’t have to as old as a prophet to ride them. And on other days besides Sunday.
So, in short (ha) buying a bike is more than price - it storage, ease of use, and self-image.
I can draw parallels to photography ( I used to sell cameras which can be confounding in their own ways) or general aviation and sport aviation aircraft (I was a student pilot and EAA member. Wonder how I found out about Rans and bents…) But I’ve ranted long enough.
I really enjoy this blog,
Darryl
Bents are niche products. Niche products are sold in lower volumes, have far fewer economies of scale and cost more. I love my Rans Stratus XP. My health and vigor are dramatically improved over what they were before I bought it, and really started riding again. It is worth far more than I paid.
If you only look at the cash outaly of a product purchase one might miss the big picture. How much money will save being healthier the next 20 or thirty years? How much will I save on meds now that my blood pressure is 114 over 74?, How much will I save on medical or life insurance being slimmer? how much gas will I save now that I WANT to ride to work? I could go on and on.
My bent is a bargin. I thank GOD for it.
I don’t think that we need to standardize on any X number of recumbent frame designs. It may seem that the DF bike manufacturers have all gotten together and said, “This is a bike, we will all build basically the same thing.” But that is not the case, their frame designs are all indivually conceived and constructed. The reason they look so similar is basic economics of manufacturing. If the UCI says, this is what can compete in races, and a manufacturer wants to get in on the big bucks of selling race bikes, then that manufacturer is going to construct a frame building gig that will produce bikes that meet the UCI standard.
So, if that manufacturer also wants to crank out 100 cheap bikes for every 1 high end racer, is he/she going to create a whole bunch of new frame gigs or are they going to use the gig they already have? Of course it makes good sense to re-use the same gig.
The big win for the recumbent industry would be in interchangable parts. As Randy and others have mentioned, we should standardize the seat mounts, head tube diameters, and BB shell sizes. This would go a long way to reducing costs.
Sombody would then be able to set up business as a recumbent seat manufacturer for example and be able to sell enough seats to drive the costs way down. You could still have many different kinds of seats, (the DF bike industry has 100s of seat designs), but the seat mount would be standard, so that customers could pick and choose which seat they wanted, introducing more competition in the seat biz, and again driving down prices.
Win #1
This would also allow bike frame builders to get out of the seat building business and focus all their resources on frames. Thus lowering their overall costs of running their business, or being able to produce more frames at the same cost.
Win #2
So, the seats get less expensive, and the frames get less expensive, and all the rest of the parts are already pretty much standard. Recumbents would then come into the price range of regular DF bikes.
End of lecture. ;-)
Establishing “standard” in the recumbent industry, at this point, is pretty far fetched. The ‘why’ is simple: Everyone wants their product to be the standard and the heads of the (figurative) five families aren’t that familiar with each other so when brought together no one wants to back down.
Beyond that, the the elephant in the room is that there is a VERY distinct philosophical divide between the companies that are having frames built in Taiwan and the companies that have managed to keep production out of China. The difference between Easy Racers and Bacchetta, in the minds of those who work at each company is, is as vast as the difference between Bianchi and Huffy.
If the cash flow into the industry increases the market will determine a design victor and you’ll see a degree of uniformity and some general “weeding out.” But, if you’re waiting for a collective agreement to be reached between a bunch of head strong rebels regarding what is “normal” or “standard” in a business that is anything but, you’d best change your name to Blue Boy now, because you’re bound to be holding your breath.
I think Crank Forwards are what mainstream recumbents look like. You get much of the same comfort as recumbents, in a package that looks similar to a regular bike, at a lower price than most recumbents.
Speaking of mainstream, owners with at least one trike (17 in all) now outnumber two wheel only members of our South Chicagoland Recumbent Riders group, and I expect the ratio will continue to grow. It is a function of our aging population and the pure fun trikes provide to those of us entering our second childhood. If you look at the latest Hostel Shoppe catalogue you will see that pages devoted to trikes now equal those given to two wheeled recumbents and crank forwards. Rolf knows his business.
Ater busting my chops on “regular” bikes for years, I saw my first bent, a Stratus XP. It was lust a first sight but I decided on what I called a transitional bike and bought a RANS Cruz. Now I like the Cruz so much, I’ve decided not to transition. The Stratus is good looking and comfortable but the Cruz is far more manueverable and looks sort of like a chopper. I can ride it far longer than my old road bike and for some reason I climb better. I also get stopped a dozen times a day by all sorts of people, cyclists and non-cyclist alike, all telling me how much they like the Cruz. I tend to think that crank forwards may be the best blend of the bent and the “other”. I think that Randy may be onto something with his standardization theme and I hope he standardizes around the Cruz.
This is off-topic, but is there a term used to describe crank forward bikes that is accepted throughout the industry? Within the recumbent community, “crank forward” is commonly used, but in the mainstream bike market I see many other names being used: Townie, Lowstep, Suede, Flat Foot, etc. I haven’t seen any manufacturers other than RANS using the “Crank Forward” moniker. Just curious…
Alan
I’m amused by the comments on this topic because 20 to 30 years or more, I’ve heard the same “standardization” rant about photographic cameras and why brand X camera company lenses don’t fit on brand Y camera company lenses and visa versa. That’s because when 35mm SLRs were in their infancy, camera manufacturers were swimming blind in the market as to what works best. That market has matured enough that the weaker fish have left the waters and independent manufacturers adopt to the stronger designs. In any niche and new product line, there will be a Darwinism in the design and marketing of the product.
Bents and well as the fashionable “Dutch” or urban bike designs will also go through several permutations. Mountain bikes were the same way - hard tail, suspended, fully suspended, Y frames, hydro-formed frames, BMX, and cyclo-cross all figure into the bike design mix. Gary Fisher spoke in town a couple of months ago and he said the new trends are commuter bikes and cargo bikes. If you think recumbents - bikes and trikes - are varied in design, then hang on to your hats, or helmets. Pretty soon there will be a mind meld of bents and cargo bikes looking like boxy velomobiles with or without power assist.
The best way to ensure design acceptance is to buy the design you like the best and ride the heck out of it so that people will get familiar to seeing it well enough to ask for it in the store. It doesn’t matter if it’s Dutch, bent, folding, English, mountain, steel, aluminum, titanium, carbon fiber, American or foreign. Be an evangelist for your desgn favorite. But most importantly, be an evangelist for cycling and to accept different designs on the street and give a thumbs up to all early adapters.
If one looks at the history of General Motors, they bought / absorbed competitors. Now they could control what would be standard across a variety of models.
The Pontiac was brought into existence because of a large price gap between the Chevrolet and the Oldsmobile line. Their thought was that if they did not fill that price point, someone else would.
I’ve been to several Bent factories. Some of the inefficiencies are appalling. The price reflects these shortcomings. But, as long as they can get the price -hey why bother with things like piece rates? Vision had a good thing going but over-extended itself, and now they are gone, as are several others we could mention, but for different reasons.
I love the variety of bents. I own a variety of bents. I look forward to experiencing a wider variety of bents. I think I have “bent” blood.
Alan;
Townie, Suede, are trademarked models, I believe, therefore not generic - yet, like Kleenix. Lowstep and Flat Foot. are apt descriptors but still too new to be familiar with the general public. Most people’s description of bicycles are as old as the bicycles in the garages or basements which could be 10 to 20 years. I’ve found that most bike sales people are familiar with “crank forward” such as Trek’s Lime or the Electra, but don’t necessarily refer to Rans, by name; well, because most shops, even here in Madison, don’t sell recumbents or are as familiar to them as we are.
DJ
What got me thinking about all of this was my recent purchase of an off-the-shelf Surly LHT. The bike retails for $980 and comes outfitted with a surprisingly nice mixture of components (XT derailleurs & hubs, Sugino crank, Shimano Bar-ends, etc.). I’m accustomed to recumbent pricing and I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the components (and the overall bike) at that price point. The overall fit and finish is like a recumbent in the $1500-$2000 price range. It brought back to memory the first time I went recumbent shopping and how I was unpleasantly surprised by how little you get in a recumbent for the money. I now understand recumbents are more complex, they’re made in small quantities, etc., etc., but the average person on the street looking for a new bike could care less. The expectation is for nice products at low prices, and a lot of what they’re going to look at when comparing bikes is the component spec. Recumbents fall terribly short in this comparison.
It’s only anecdotal evidence, but from talking to many, many people about my recumbents while out and about, it seems clear to me that price is a BIG issue. I’d say somewhere near 95% of the people that expressed interested in my recumbents almost instantly lost interest when I told them the price (as their eyes bugged out of their heads… LOL). I think, because we’re enthusiasts, we sometimes forget that most people feel $500 is a LOT of money for a bike.
Of course, if one wants the recumbent sector to maintain its current market share (0.5%) then selling at uncompetitively high prices is a great strategy… ;-).
There is, of course, already some standardization of parts as recumbents use the same components as regular bikes (cranks, bottom brackets, etc.). The frame and seat are the main differance and it can’t be that much more expensive to manufacture a Bachetta frame than a Huffy if done in the same numbers under the same wage conditions. The seat is another matter but should not be a large factor if Randy Schlitter is correct. The key factor is the numbers and the particulars of manufacturing. The matter of numbers is a vicious circle, of course. In terms of the mass market, as the bikes won’t be cheap until they can be built in large numbers, but until they can be built in large numbers, they won’t be cheap! Hopefully the high price of gas will continue to increase interest in all forms of biking, and recumbents will profit along with the others. There may turn out to be a critical mass effect that will lead to the economies of scale seen with other bikes.
Good comments, and within them is the reason we developed the Crankforwards, which is a word I coined and promote on http://www.crankforwardl.com, an open web site for the promotion of CF cycling.
Bents face some large hurtles to become mainstream, many of which were discussed here already. But it really boils down to three simple barries, the first two are price and learning curve. The Cf’s take care of the curve, and we are working on the price, however quality cost, and it the end if you buy one good bike instead 2 or 3, that is cheaper if you can afford it at the onset. The third barrier is dealers. Because of price and learning curve bents take more time to sell. The few dealers that are into bents have discovered them to be a good investment. Again our CF’s have been helping here by getting dealers on board with us through the CF’s then the bents. I still dream of the $500 bent that is on par with a $500 dollar DF, and who knows if some of the efforts to consolidate, or standardize happen, that price range and value may be common place. We plan being part of that happening.
The BikeE was an excellent idea produced by the wrong company. These recuments were simple and they worked. The basic BikeE was a compromise in length, height, and comfort at a price that was attractive. In my opinion a great all round commuter and fun bike though not for the performance biker.
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