If it was only $100 extra, maybe we could live with it. But let me give you an idea of some of the real economic issues involved with making an ebike, since that's what we're discussing here:
- To make an ebike end-to-end you need space. Lots of space, like a warehouse type thing. But, you know, we're not in China, we have something called 'winter' and warehouses need to be heated to make sure the metal goodies in them do not rust or get covered in mold. Also workers shouldn't freeze to death. But heating is stupidly expensive, even for households let alone businesses. Also, businesses pay a lot more (like, twice the rate) than individuals for these sorts of services.
- Now, you also need workers: engineers and factory floor people. Well I happen to live in a country which has the worst designers imaginable. The store fronts, ads, everything is ugly beyond belief. It's just like China, basically. So doing this in-house is unrealistic anyway because aesthetics isn't something people are taught.
- Factory operators... as far as I'm concerned, the zombie apocalypse has already happened here. The 'lower skilled' workers are irresponsible, meandering drunks. They categorically do not want money, they don't want to work, they just want to magically have their life sorted for them. I have friends who run all sorts of businesses and the 'labourer' demographic is zombieland.
- Metal... now this country is one of the major producers of metal, but since 2018 Rusal (Russian Aluminum, that's what we use to make frames) is under sanctions.
- Machinery... needs to be imported, also from China because we don't produce this kind of stuff anymore. Also, on a like-for-like basis, it is easier (proven by experience) to buy Chinese equipment and reengineer it yourself than pay 4x and get it from Germany or Finland. And this is where the fun begins. I have no problems paying for, say, a hydroforming rig. It's a dream of sorts. But the problem isn't in paying for it, it's the actual import process. You see, apart from the 30% import fees (I can live with those), the process of clearing customs can take, like, a year, and requires Kafka-esque amounts of bureacracy, long queues and government officials trying their best to prove that you're importing dual-use equipment.
- Ebike-specific components need to be bought from Germany anyway. If you buy a motor or a battery that's all tax-free and good, if you buy a dozen, that's 30% on top of everything and long customs clearance procedures once again. The current lead time for Bosch is what, 6 months anyway, so it's up to a year before you can actually build anything.
- There are no training companies here for these products. Bosch, Yamaha and others are not present here to do repairs if something goes wrong.
- You cannot dump hazardous chemicals into the sewer system. You cannot throw away lithium arbitrarily. Obvious stuff, what's not obvious is that utilization has costs too, and those need to be factored in to the bike's cost.
- Finally, the internal market has no demand for these bikes anyway. It's mainly USA and Europe. Well, apart from the issues of transporting Li-Ion (or setting up logistics so that the frames and the batteries join somewhere), there's bureaucracy in export control and an additional layer of bureaucracy if you repatriate foreign income (export control, currency control). It's a huge, meaningless bureaucratic mess, the whole point of this is that you can be accused of money laundering at any time. Your own bank can block any transaction it doesn't like for security reasons. It's easy to paralize someone's business this way.
I mean, I could go on, but in reality it's not realistic to have production here. It's easier to give up your IP but be able to build something worthwhile. The only realistic way of doing something like this in Europe would be to go to a special economic zone (e.g., Canaries) and set up shop there. Hey, I might do that someday!
