Why are bike tyres so expensive?

[TrevA]

I recently bought a new tyre for my car - £55 including fitting and it will last 30,000 miles.

Bike tyres can cost just as much, even Conti Gatorskins are now nearly £40 each and typically last 2-3,000 miles. So why are bike tyres so expensive? Is it down to economies of scale, or are we just being ripped off?

[The Path Racer]

No idea but I guess the amount of rubber compound used in a car tyre far exceeds that used in a bike tyre.

[Paulatic]

Certainly nothing to do with rubber prices as there’s so little in them compared to car tyres.
Maybe because of small production lines.

That’s a cheap car tyre btw and will it really do 30000 mls?

[rareposter]

Bike tyres can cost just as much, even Conti Gatorskins are now nearly £40 each and typically last 2-3,000 miles. So why are bike tyres so expensive? Is it down to economies of scale, or are we just being ripped off?

There are various comments relating to pricing etc on this thread:
viewtopic.php?t=157862

Smaller production runs, specialist equipment, completely different engineering - bike tyres are built for light weight, car tyres don't really need to consider that (at least, not to anything like the same degree).

[TrevA]

Certainly nothing to do with rubber prices as there’s so little in them compared to car tyres.
Maybe because of small production lines.

That’s a cheap car tyre btw and will it really do 30000 mls?

Yes, I tend to go for budget brands and have just replaced my second set of front tyres (on a front wheel drive car) at 65,000 miles. I’ve had the car for 10 years (almost from new). The first set were replaced at 30,000 miles. Vauxhall Corsa. Rear tyres last even longer. The recently replaced rear was on the car from new. Even a Conti tyre for the car is only £100.

[PH]

Are you making a fair comparison? Halfords sell bike tyres from around £15, Wilco's used to have some from £8. While the sort of sporty car tyre that might be comparable to Gatorskins seem to start from around £130 (From a 10 sec google search)
Maybe the equivalent of a budget reasonable quality car tyre would be something like a standard Marathon, so £50 V's £20. That might still be considered disproportionate, but a lot of the price will be taken up by those elements of a sale which have nothing to do with product costs.

[Bonefishblues]

Small volumes?

[axel_knutt]

I saw a video of bike tyres being made just recently, and was surprised how labour intensive it was. Laying up layer upon layer, bunging it through various machines, trimming with a knife etc, I can't imagine car tyres aren't automated more than that.

I've had 14,000-15,000 miles out of Marathon HS368s, I've also had little more than a few hundred miles out of cheapies.

[Nearholmer]

You can get very good value for money out of bike tyres if you’re not looking for some aspect of “high performance”, whether that be speed, or off-road capability, or something else.

You can get £15 ones, but personally I reckon the king of VFM is the Continental Contact Plus, which come out £20 to £30 depending on where you buy them, because they have good puncture resistance, roll well and comfortably on paved surfaces, cope with off-road if you don’t expect miracles, and seem to last c6000 miles.

I’ve now changed to lightweight tubeless, for the considerable extra grip and comfort off-road, and my tyre cost per mile has increased very considerably (double the price, less than half the lifespan!), so I’m certainly paying for “high performance”!

[simonineaston]

Market forces.
Having (glibly) said that, and speaking as someone who is on the receiving end of a double whammy, ie paying more for them being for bicycles and then paying more again for them being for small wheeled bicycle, I can report that now and then, they do crop up in heavily discounted form. Recent examples have been 406 Nutrack slicks and 349 Continental touring tyres, both quite good! Phew…

[PT1029]

May be also for repairing. In the days of having a shop van, getting a (Transit) van puncture repaired was the same as we charged to fit a new tube to a customer's bike. And the transit wheel tyre needed a big thing that sat on the floor to fit (force!) the tyre onto the wheel rim, where we used fingers in the shop to do the same.

[simonhill]

I've seen bike tyres in Asia for under 2 quid.

Rather heavy, rather knobbly, but cheap.

[Pinhead]

Really!

I use Continental and or Maxxis and at £25-30 I think they are a bargain for the pleasure they give

You are lucky when I last bought tyres for my Grand Scenic I used only good ones and they were £75 each

[Jon in Sweden]

I think that much of it is the relatively small volume in which cycle tyres are sold and the relatively high R&D costs with the higher end tyres.

You can quite easily get decent road/gravel tyres for £15-20 if you're prepared to snap up special offers. If you're set on running Conti GP5000s, then it's going to be fairly expensive.

The tyre you ride does make a big difference to the ride quality and speed though. I've recently switched from 30mm alloy training wheels with mid range all condition tyres (don't recall the make) to 50mm Roval CLXs with 25mm GP5000s and it's much faster and more comfortable too. I ought to use the poorer quality wheels in the current weather, but balls to it, it's more fun on fast wheels and fast rubber!

To the original point though - you have to consider just how many millions more road tyres are produced, and also how much finer the tolerances have to be on bike tyres too. It all adds up.

[simonineaston]

bargain for the pleasure they give

Blimey! There’s a measurement what startel the calculator and no mistake. It remind me of the metric they display that attempt to measure the Happiness of people that live in Denmark ect….