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A nearly all (">90%") plastic bike is interesting, and I guess if you're a plastics company that wants to create a bike it makes sense, but the end product does

A nearly all (">90%") plastic bike is interesting, and I guess if you're a plastics company that wants to create a bike it makes sense, but the end product does not seem very compelling to me. 17 kg, 1200 EUR, one size, proprietary parts, and only 50% recycled. A comparable aluminum bike beats it in every metric except maybe fatigue life(?).

avtolik 1y ago
My first bike bought with my first salaries (about 2-3 months) just turned 20 years old. It's a basic aluminum hardtail MTB. Still going strong - I do about 2-3k kms per year.
alright2565 1y ago
Pretty much. I thought that maybe this is an electric bike, in which case the weight might be OK, but no, this is unusable anywhere with hills. As a quick reminder, metals can be recycled indefinitely. Plastic cannot, you always have to include some virgin material.
- userbinator 1y ago
  You can recycle via depolymerization (see the various plastic-to-oil conversion refineries), although that's a more expensive process than simply melting and recasting.
rz2k 1y ago
Furthermore, aluminum can be recycled with a lot less greenwashing required.
- hamdingers 1y ago
  Post-consumer aluminum has been in common use for wheels for ages, and some major brands (like Trek) are also transitioning their aluminum frames to use recycled material.
mtmail 1y ago
Reminds me of the hydrogen-powered bike from 2015, which totally made sense if your company is also a leader in hydrogen products. https://www.bikeradar.com/news/this-e-bike-is-powered-by-hydrogen https://www.bikeradar.com/news/this-e-bike-is-powered-by-hyd... "A regular e-bike battery can take several hours to charge completely, but the H2’s hydrogen cylinder requires just six minutes at a hydrogen filling station." Of course the company wanted to run the filling stations.
nine_k 1y ago
If we take this as an experiment, it's a useful experiment, showing how expensive and hard this path is. A negative result is a valuable result.
chneu 1y ago
Plastic recycling is dumb. All it does is keep plastics in the environment and encourages people to use more plastic. This is just a dumb token gesture to get people to buy a product that doesn't need to exist. This solves a problem nobody has.

avtolik 1y ago

My first bike bought with my first salaries (about 2-3 months) just turned 20 years old. It's a basic aluminum hardtail MTB. Still going strong - I do about 2-3k kms per year.

alright2565 1y ago

Pretty much. I thought that maybe this is an electric bike, in which case the weight might be OK, but no, this is unusable anywhere with hills. As a quick reminder, metals can be recycled indefinitely. Plastic cannot, you always have to include some virgin material.

userbinator 1y ago
You can recycle via depolymerization (see the various plastic-to-oil conversion refineries), although that's a more expensive process than simply melting and recasting.

rz2k 1y ago

Furthermore, aluminum can be recycled with a lot less greenwashing required.

hamdingers 1y ago
Post-consumer aluminum has been in common use for wheels for ages, and some major brands (like Trek) are also transitioning their aluminum frames to use recycled material.

mtmail 1y ago

Reminds me of the hydrogen-powered bike from 2015, which totally made sense if your company is also a leader in hydrogen products. https://www.bikeradar.com/news/this-e-bike-is-powered-by-hydrogen https://www.bikeradar.com/news/this-e-bike-is-powered-by-hyd... "A regular e-bike battery can take several hours to charge completely, but the H2’s hydrogen cylinder requires just six minutes at a hydrogen filling station." Of course the company wanted to run the filling stations.

nine_k 1y ago

If we take this as an experiment, it's a useful experiment, showing how expensive and hard this path is. A negative result is a valuable result.

chneu 1y ago

Plastic recycling is dumb. All it does is keep plastics in the environment and encourages people to use more plastic. This is just a dumb token gesture to get people to buy a product that doesn't need to exist. This solves a problem nobody has.