The chinese do produce decent mc tires. Just check J&p's catalog or web site.

 

it's sheer volume, most are cut from forged blanks, and a wheel manufacturer told me once about five years ago, if you took ALL the forged blanks made in a year for our bikes, it's less than 1% of the volume of car wheels. Lots of car wheels are made from castings, and though I dont know this for sure, it would make sense to me, that many are not built to the specs as bike wheels, you break a wheel on a car, you might wreck and a small per centage might be really bad wrecks, you break a wheel on a bike, even at 30 mph and it's going to be DAMN bad. I would bet product liablility insurance costs is a factor as well.

 

Somebody better inform Harley-Davidson of this important news.
http://www.harley-davidson.com/brows...bmLocale=en_US

 

That's what I was thinking.......bike wheels are forged and CNC cut one at a time, and car wheels are cast aluminum and made in larger quantities.

 

Not necessarily - there are plenty of guys running around in my Corvette club with forged wheels. Almost any chromed aftermarket mc wheel you see with a list price < $1K is cast, not forged. In fact, here is a popular example from the H-D P&C catalog that is cast.

 

My roadwinders are chrome plated forged & machined aircraft grade aluminum. Very well constructed compared to most automotive wheels. Most OEM auto wheels are stamped/welded or cast. Many have the chrome outer piece glued on which most people don't realize.

 

Better than a theory - I have an answer.

There is an initial cost to a product - R&D, design, tooling, etc.
(we;ll use $10,000)
There are the associated costs to market and sell the product.
(We'll use $8,000)

These first two costs don't change significantly based on number of units manufactured or sold.

There are manufacturing costs.
(Use $200)
The goal is to make a profit.
(say, we need to make $100 per wheel to stay in business)

The price of one wheel would need to be $18,300, if you would only sell one.
However, if you sell 100,000 wheels, the price per wheel would be $300.18.

The further you spread that $18,000, the less impact it has on price.

The market for motorcycles and motorcycle parts is small. Models change frequently and rarely do parts fit a number of different models, for a number of years. There isn't much room to spread out those initial setup fees. A motorcycle wheel manufacturer might sell 1,000 wheels. By comparison, an automotive wheel manufacture might make and sell the same wheel for years, or even decades, and sell tens of thousands per year.

 

probably because car wheels are sold in tens or even hundreds of thousands, the volume brings the cost down.
Bike wheels do have balance weights by the way.

 

Because the wheels have to look good on both sides!!!

 

Yep, your right, they're on the spokes. I meant that as a question. Apologies.