When people take out insurance their expectation is that should the event occur they expect the insurance will put them back in the position they were in before the even occurred not in a better position. So if their 8 year old bike was stolen their expectation is to be able to buy another eight year old bike at say a police auction for perhaps a 100 Francs. They, unlike you, take into account the fact that they have had 8 years usage of the bike and would consider paying 50 Francs insurance on a bike that is only worth 100 Francs foolish. Now we know that is not your few, but it is how most people will look at it. And you are just going to have to agree to disagree!

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"There is no passion to be found playing small - in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living." - Nelson Mandela

To be fair, I can see why the topic heats up.


It takes only a little common sense to keep the bike in an as-new shape for years. I bet everyone treats their sport bicycle well, an ordinary commuter bike that depends. Cheap bikes are made of parts meant to wear out quickly. If you know what to look for you can buy quite good bike for ~600 CHF or a junk one. Anyway, if it's a sport bike either you maintain it in perfect shape or you stop using it because it won't give you the joy of riding it, so a 10 years old bike has virtually zero depreciation. An older one, perhaps was built with tech which is subpar to modern bikes so eventually you would be happy to sell it cheap to switch to a more enjoyable bike. My 8 years old sport bike is as-new and I would be very pi* off if some insurance told me it's worth a fraction of a new one.

Agreed. My bike is twenty years old and rides as new.

Periodically, cables, tyres, saddle, cable enclosures, brake pads, freewheel, pedals etc get worn out and replaced.

If it gets stolen and needs replacing, I'd want a bike with everything in tip-top condition.

This is just completely wrong. Not only does ANYTHING 10 year old NOT have zero depreciation (there are exceptions, but not a generic bicycle), but also in the last 10 years there have been so many developments and changes in bike tech that many things that are now commonplace probably did not even exist 10 years ago, or were rare (think frame geometry, dropper posts, tubeless wheels and tires, hydro disc brakes on road bikes... the list goes on). That is, if you are talking about a "sport bike" (whatever that means), not a city bike, where there were also some developments (think lighting tech / LEDs, for example), but maybe these are not so prevalent.


In many cases, standards have also changed, just think about the 26" -> 27.5" -> 29" wheel size transformation. Good luck finding a good quality suspension fork for your 26" mountain bike today - even the parts for these are hard to come by! This also accelerates depreciation.


The final nail in the coffin is e-bikes, did you notice that >50% of people are now on e-bikes, which are really the best option for the majority of people.

The only thing in favor is the last 2 years of covid-based bike parts shortage, basically if you bought a new bike in 2020 you could probably sell it for almost the same amount of money in 2022, as everybody was looking to buy a bike. This might be coming to an end though, the bike craze is over, and manufacturers are catching up.

My 8 years old bike, bought at a 5% discount because it was a model from a previous year, has all of that: perfect geometry, disc breaks, electronic shifting, feather light weight, etc.... You're thinking about bikes from 20, 30 years ago, time flies.

E-bikes, that's a category on it's own. There were great e-bikes 10 years ago, but I precisely didn't want such. I guess e-bikes are losing values much quicker as the bulk of the value is the battery and the e-motor. It's hard to buy a second hand sport bike because of the sizing, but regarding e-bikes, I wouldn't buy anything more than a year old.

First you claim zero depreciation, then you state that it already lost 5% of its value before being sold

Our household insurance is with La Mobilière/Mobilliär

you can insure any household item separately and specifically, and discuss terms and conditions with them. Bikes, cameras and lenses, expensive jewellery or watches, binoculars, etc, etc,

I'm curious why you wrote that?

Surely the majority of people need to take more exercise, not less?

(I appreciate that thankfully Switzerland does not have the obesity problem which other European countries do and people here seem generally healthier and eat more healthily too).

To quote you on you

I only have to agrees with the company itself, who already put in writing that they won't be applying depreciation. Fine with me. I am still researching the specifics of my homeowner policy to understand if there is already some coverage. It's 50 CHF for 600 CHF of insurance. I guess they are willing to take the risk.

Why do you think that e-bikes mean less exercise? It is actually the opposite. Believe or not, in many cases your heartrate is actually higher on an e-bike than on a normal bike!



Not only do you still have to pedal on an e-bike (you are just going faster - to a limit -, or going further), the chances that average Joe or Jane will actually use their bike will greatly increase. Switzerland is a hilly country, I bet many people wouldn´t even consider taking their bike if there was as much as a small bump on their commute, but on an e-bike this is no longer a problem.



An then there are those s-pedelecs which assist up to 45kmh, I believe they even have a chance to replace some people's commutes by car or public transport. I know even I'm looking at one of those with desire, my commute is 25km with 200-300m elevation, one and a half hours on a normal bike, each way. On an s-pedelec this could be a 45 minute ride instead. And I consider myself to be a hardcore cyclist...

I agree with you that e-bikes will get more people to cycle - and there is definitely proof of this - especially with older people.

I haven't looked for any data to show that people have changed from non-ebikes to ebikes but I suspect there is some.

I disagree with your heart-rate statement though.

Here's the result of one study comparing the two:

Surprisingly though (at least I found it surprising) is that the study found that whilst ebikes provided a good workout in the same intensity zone as a normal bike, the ebikers didn't feel like they were working out.

This is excellent news if we want to reduce unnecessary car usage.

That's why I use the term sports bike. Surely I could use my bike to commute to work but when you need to have some backpack and want to arrive at work with any energy left for work, the choice is clear, if it's more than 3 km or uphill, only e-bike. I was actually doing ~15km commute on a classic bike but only once, max twice a week, always making sure I have enough time to chill out a bit after a shower before jumping to work.


Still, I'm not sure what % of people commute to work on any bike. Switzerland has awesome public transport network. Cycling to work is simply inconvenient.

Unless it is.

And cycling is "free", public transport is not.

One can combine public transport with cycling. I live in a small village with no train station, it is in the next village, 5 km away. It is very convenient to not wait for the bus, but hop on a bike (scooter, roller skates, whatever) and leave it at the train station.


This is also helped by the fact that there is _of course_ a separated bike path between the two villages, so you don't have to ride on the road. This is one of the (not so) small things why I love this country!