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Bike Manufacturers Are Making Bikes Less Repairable

Just like cars, tractors, computers, and seemingly every other product category, bikes—and especially e-bikes—are going all black box on us.

These bikes are built to fail: badly engineered, constructed from low-grade materials and fabricated in countries with inhumane labor standards,” writes cycling advocate Josh Bicker on StreetsBlog NYC. You can’t reach into the spare parts bin for a brake caliper if your bike uses a proprietary disk-brake design, whether that’s a super-high-end model, or a closed unit with more plastic than metal. Newer, more exotic specs and components encourage us to “upgrade,” just like with smartphones, laptops, and cameras, and they also turn the perfect machine into an unknowable black box that is often not worth the cost of repair.

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