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The cycle rickshaw, which is a variant of a cargo bike is quite common in Asia. The price for a new one ranges from $100-500. Meanwhile, a bike with elongated rear rack, e.g., a longtail cargo bike (barely counts as cargo bike) can cost $1,000 in the West, and that is the entry level "cargo bike." A front load cargo bike costs $2500 and upwards. An Urban Arrow (tm) cargo bike can cost a whopping $6-7k.
A lack of infrastructure driving a lack of demand. I love my cargo ebike but it's too bulky to ride on winding sidewalks. I try to avoid roads and unprotected bike lanes wherever possible. My local bike trail network is essential to feel safe when the speed limit for cars is 50kph+ and my bike maxes out at 32kph. Most US cities don't have trails like that where you can easily get anywhere you need to. While I have the battery capacity to get to the next town over, there's no bike lane and the roads are 100kph.
It's also important to note that something like 97% of US bike components come from China. The bike industry was struggling before with low demand post-COVID, but the tariffs are going to be devastating for their entire supply chain.
I personally believe that riding on the sidewalk is more dangerous than riding on the road. You have high risk of getting T-boned by cars pulling out of driveways, they usually don't look left/right for cyclist, scooters, and people on mobility devices on sidewalk. It is completely legal to ride bicycles on the road, you literally paid for the roads, you paid as much taxes as everyone else so make your presence known and assert your place on the road. However, I acknowledge this is me speaking from privilege, being able-bodied and having no kids. I'll probably have second thoughts and similar consideration if I have to carry my kids on a cargo bike in US roads.
That aside, what kind of baffled me is that even in countries with excellent bike infrastructure like Denmark and Netherlands, cargo bike still costs an arm and leg. The industry justify the markup because in these places the cargo bike utility-wise is competing with a small car (people mostly use cargo bike to take their toddlers to school, buy groceries, and take items from hardware stores). This is somewhat fair, but the price is still preposterous compared to brandless cargo bike you can get in Asia.
This region is a major training area for professional cyclists. It causes a lot of friction with drivers who act aggressively in response. Road riding should be safer than sidewalks, but culturally here it isn't. On sidewalks I have a higher risk of being hit by drivers turning/pulling out so I just slow down at each crossing and always let them pass me.
Everything even slightly good for society gets upcharged and only produced small-scale. I think e-bikes only getting marketed as like a personal, moral choice and not a societal necessity is going to keep them and anything related to them expensive for years to come.
Because the bike companies are trying to be the new car, and would love to charge the same price.
At least one small reason is that Americans like lots of features on their bikes. Cycling in Asia is a simple mass produced mode of transportation meant to mobilize a people vs in the west it's a niche hobby funded by do gooders and urbanists who can afford good but expensive components
I don't think this rings true in like central europe, the netherlands and such, where cargo bikes are still pretty expensive
The bike in that image appears to be a manual bike, like your peddling supplies all the input for movement. The cargo bikes you are mentioning are all e-bikes, they are all custom designed for a relatively small number of orders, are overengineered/overbuilt to handle the extra weight of an e-bike, have hydraulic brakes because it is so heavy, and have a battery and motor. That's what the Urban Arrows are, for example.
You can get a used cargo bike (not electric) for around $500-750 in the US.
Thia is still somewhat expensive but part of that is the overall bicycle industry being based on new expensive components.
The longtail Yuba Kombi is $999 and fully manual, this is to my knowledge the cheapest new MSRP cargo bike in North America and it is just a normal bicycle with elongated rear rack. One can get used longtail cargo bike for $500-750 like the Yubas or Terns, but I highly doubt you can get a cargo bike with similar carrying capacity as fully manual Asian rickshaw for $500-750, unless someone in your area did a DIY welding project and decide to sell it on Facebook Marketplace.
That thing weighs 50 lbs so it at least takes a good chunk of welding steel to put it together and it is probably made overseas and shipped. But there are a ton of brands out there that are basically US designers and sellers where the quality of what you get vs. what you pay for it varies a lot. I don't have a cargo bike and haven't really evaluated the different companies there, but I think this trend applies to alll bikes.
Though to put things in perspective a half decent standard bike with similar specs is $500-1000 new in the US. That bike has low end Shimano components and Tektro disc brakes. Those aren't oo-la-la expensive bike nerd parts but they are pretty good parts and a company selling such a bike knows this and is pricing according to what others charge for such things. I see a similar REI bike for the same price that has hydraulic brakes and would probably go on sale this year.
But it is a very silly market that wants to charge more for new hype because that delivers more profit. With some exceptions I recommend buying used instead. Kind of like with cars, half the value is lost moments after sale. Cargo bikes with that design are a fairly new trend, and so are disc brakes on anything other than a mountain bike, so it might take a little while to find a used one. But if you wanted a 2000s mountain bike or road bike with rim brakes man you could get one free from a dumpster or buy one for $75. And then throw on $200 of racks to hold stuff.
PS there's a Walmart one (Mongoose) for $600 new.
This isn't strictly relegated to cargo bikes as per bicycles. Bicycles (normal) are also oddly expensive new. I mean sure, you can get your local equivalent of a walmart bike for the local equivalent of $100 but it'll kind of suck a lot, mostly because it's overloaded with features and parts that will fail and be somewhat expensive to replace.
At some level I think comparing new cost of cargo bikes to everything else is also sort of an odd deal, an Urban Arrow is a premium cargo bike, an equivalent car costs anywhere from $60,000 upwards to $200,000 depending on where you want to draw the line. That said, bicycles are still very much oddly expensive, even if just compared to how much raw material you get out of like a dacia sandero vs. an urban arrow.
Theories are abundant. Me personally I believe it is both that nigh nowhere in the west has the stranglehold on politics that car companies have and that give them direct and indirect subsidies in a similar amount, but also: I don't think anyone's really done the ford factory of bicycles yet. There just isn't a plant cranking this shit out all the time. Euro Big Box Store Decathlon probably gets closest, but even their cargo bike is comparably expensive. Maybe that's a time issue, they'll sell you REALLY solid normal bicycles at very reasonable prices for what you get.
EDIT: There's also probably some regulatory fuckery going on. You can get, in europe, a chinese EV cargo trike like a Volta VT-5 for 2000€. It's legally a small motorcycle, carries way more than any cargo bike and also beats all of them on price. I know for example that in germany, bike lights have to be individually approved by the federal car agency, while for anything for engine powered vehicles a EU self-cert is fine. I assume similar things happen elsewhere.
The west likes expensive toys, Asia likes stuff that just works. Look at the picture, that thing looks like it was improvised in an afternoon and repaired twice a month for the last ten years.
They haven't been walmartized...
Because they want you shackled to an automobile and all the shit that comes with that
If there was a single American company making something comparable to the Urban Arrow they would easily be shave off a few grand in cost and seize the whole market
Yuba is an american company and their frontload cargo bike still costs $6k upwards. I guess one of the problem is that cargo bike is bulky and unwieldy, unlike regular bikes. So if the cargo bikes are not assembled here, but assembled elsewhere and shipped in a container whole, then it takes a ton of space and shipping cost. And these days, the demand for cargo bike doesn't quite justify having assembly line in the US. Damn, where is Trumpo tariffs when you need it, make American cargo bikes great again, put 500% tariffs on cargo bikes assembled elsewhere and pay people a living wage to assemble cargo bikes here.
In the west, any new object that isn't corn syrup based costs more than it should because of middlemen and FIRE rentseeking. Further, in the west cargo bikes are marketed as a luxury/weekend productivity enhancer, not as something that is a poverty necessity.
Also, the US had literally 40x GDP per capita compared to India, and still 20% lower gas price. Carbrains don't realize how much of a state subsidized welfare queens they are.
Never heard of them, but glad it exists. They're competing against Dutch wages and imports so they should be able to do pretty well. Doesn't look as comfortable as my Urban Arrow, and more of a general cargo bike than the family specific one from UA.
I gave them a deeper look and it's really competitive with Urban Arrow, imo. The motor and brake setup is equivalent to the 8k Urban Arrow. the UA comes with two built in seats to Yuba's 0, but its only another $350 to get 3 seats where UA needs another $250 to get to 3. And it has a built-in long tail rear rack. It's also more suitable for actual cargo. I'd probably recommend this first over the UA to people with all that in mind.
I realize this is tangential but:
At least right now (tariff pricing doesn't seem to have kicked in yet) ...
You can get a decent motorcycle for not that much more than what OP cites as a front load cargo bicycle cost, and less than an Urban Arrow cargo at 6k to 7k.
'Royal Enfield' is actually the longest continually operating motorcycle mfg in the world, based out of Chennai...
... if you're in the US, you can most likely fairly reliably find at least a few 2 or 3 yr old barely used ones near you between $3k and $4k, hell you might even be able to find some unsold new inventory as low as $3.5k.
They aren't massive speed demons... but they are pretty reliable, well built, and straightforward in maintenance terms.
If you put side panniers one on of these, and maybe jerry rig the rear part of your seat into a cargo mount, or use an aftermarket solution for that... thats a comparable amount of storage to many of these:
https://bikexchange.com/best-cargo-bikes/
I would absolutely love to have a fully electric solution, but so far, fully electric motorcycles are still fairly niche and quite pricey...
And if you have about $5k to spend on a transportation method?
At least with an ICE motorbike you're getting better MPG than even most "affordable" hybrid cars.
And a lot more roads you can drive on and a higher top speed than ebikes.
I am not actually sure if like... per capita of people in America who commute daily to work via Bicycle or Motorcycle, which of those is more or less likely to get murdered by the average American in their Sherman tank sized SUV/truck, but I am reasonably sure most serious Bicycle and Motorcycle commuting accidents are caused by other idiot drivers in cars.
EDIT: I think you can also find some lightly used CFMoto motorcycles nearing as low as $3k, and if you bump up to more like $5k, now you're also looking at pretty decent Kawasaki, Yamaha, Honda entry level motorcycles as well, depending on your location / how hard you look.
CFMoto is made in China so... they're probably gonna get uberfucked from tariffs :(
The problem is that motorcycle by far has higher death rate per mile traveled in US roads, moreso than bicycle because US drivers are just so not accustomed to motorcycles, and the road infrastructure is not built for motorcycles.
Doing a simple things like unprotected left turn is sketchy AF on a motorcycle. You make your turn sign, look behind, can't see through the tinted windshield of the cars behind you, and make your move, just hoping that the car behind you is not distracted by phone, fiddling with car settings, etc. Even when you are imposing yourself on a road, taking a whole lane, because how small your footprint is, some dumbass cars will still try to pass you. Even if you are not involved in a crash, the flying projectiles and debris from car crashes around you due to cars not knowing how to drive around motorcycles can take you out. Also a lot of multi-use bike paths purposely exclude gas motorcycle because how loud and fast they are (understandably, compared to ebikes).
I love dirtbiking, and the most dangerous part by far is sharing the road with cars going to the trails.
I completely agree that being a motorcycle driver is way, waaay more dangerous than being a car driver... as you say, because road infrastructure sucks, and most american car drivers seem to just have a selective blindness that makes them not see motorcycles... and you don't have a car protecting you from a collision or random debris.
But... I tried wording of my original post this way...
Basically, bicycle infrastructure fucking also sucks.
Very few places have actually protected bike lines, and a bicyclist making a blind left in the middle of a city, even from bike lane to bike lane, is still just as potentially fucked as a motorcyclist, perhaps moreso accounting for their generally lower level of personal outfit protection (bike helmet vs motorcycle helmet, etc).
Your graphic there doesn't include bicycles.
It would be interesting to see what that metric would be for regular bicyclist commuters, who aren't using like... park/trail bike paths, but are having to deal with either mostly shit tier bike lanes or sidewalks to get to and from work.
I know some cities have actually useful bike only paths, or truly protected bike lanes that can help you get to work... but most don't, in the US, or at least they are sparse and not present for all or even most of an average commute.
... As far as I can see, nobody actually tallies up US bicycle miles traveled, so you can't do the same comparison of fatalities per mile traveled.
I am seeing that in 2023 there were 1377 fatalities, and 937 of those were a collision with a motor vehicle.
I am also seeing that historically, the absolute number of motorbike deaths vs bicycle deaths per year is ... well, the proportion is roughly steady at about 6 motorbike deaths per bicycle death.
It could be that basically there are about 6x as many motorcyclists as bicyclists... or maybe 3x, and motorcycling is twice as dangerous as bicycling...
You'd have to actually have apples to apples data to do a reasonable comparison, and as far as i can tell... that data doesn't exist.
Like yes, motorcycles go much faster than bicycles, which is more dangerous... but you have to actually get a specific motorcycle liscense to drive a motor bike... you don't need any for a bicycle.
And every cyclist is basically equally fucked from being wiped out at an intersection or in a busy urban street where a car driver just doesn't see you or pretends you aren't there even though you are very easily visible and in their field view.
???
