4. The bike fleet

4.1 Capital and life

• Hire-grade e-bike capex: $3,500 — ESTIMATED, bracketed by Beyond Byron E-Bikes'
  published adult e-bike replacement value of $4,000 (VERIFIED,
  master hire agreement)
  and generic hire-grade stock below it.
• Life: 5 years at ~66 hire-days/yr, 30% residual — ESTIMATED. The draft's 3-year
  life was conservative. A bike out 66 days a year accumulates ~330 hire-days over
  five years, which is well within a commercial frame; the binding constraint is
  calendar ageing of battery and rubber, not hire-days. Depreciation therefore falls
  to ~$8/hire-day, not $13.
• Battery sinking fund: $250/bike/yr — ESTIMATED. Batteries degrade on the calendar
  as well as on cycles, and this business stores its fleet through a cold winter.

⚠️ Fleet must be spec'd to the SA EPAC standard: 250 W continuous, assist cutting out
at 25 km/h, no throttle-only — VERIFIED
(sa.gov.au).
Higher-powered or throttle-only imports are illegal on SA roads and uninsurable. A
national mandatory standard referencing EN 15194 is in development ($6.6m to the ACCC,
announced 6 Aug 2026 — VERIFIED) and no jurisdiction is proposing to raise power limits.
Buy EN 15194-certified stock now regardless of state.

4.2 Maintenance — this is where the draft is most wrong

$1,200/bike/year cash maintenance, excluding your own labour — ESTIMATED, and it is
the largest single fleet line and the least certain. At 66 hire-days that is
~$18/hire-day GST-incl, $15.45 ex-GST — against the draft's $8.

Calibration, all VERIFIED from published Australian hire operators:

• Labour rates: Bandit Bikes charges "parts + $85/hr including travel".
• Parts price schedule (KBL Bikes):
  brake lever $90 · wheel warp/dent $280–350 · e-bike screen $350 ·
  fork/shock $650 · frame $2,500+ · cleaning $25/bike.

One bent wheel consumes three years of the draft's $8/rider allowance. E-bikes
destroy drivetrains and brake pads far faster than analogue bikes because of mass and
motor torque, and novice riders on hire equipment are the worst case.

There is a legal reason not to trim this line: ACL consumer guarantees of acceptable
quality and safe supply cannot be contracted out of at all — s 139A only ever reaches
death and personal injury from the services guarantee. Your maintenance and pre-hire
inspection regime is a legal control, not an operating luxury.

4.3 Theft and damage — the market prices this, and it prices it high

$3.00/hire-day unrecovered — ESTIMATED (range $1.30–6.00), calibrated against what
operators charge to lay the risk off:

Operators who can see their own loss data charge $10–25/bike/day. At a healthy 3–5×
retained-risk loading that implies an expected loss of $2–6/hire-day.

Two findings that cut for the business.

(a) The damage waiver is a revenue line, not a cost line. At $10–25/day against
~$3 of expected loss, Beyond Byron is running a profitable insurance book alongside
the hire. The draft treats damage purely as a cost. Model waiver attach rate and
margin as income. At a $12/day waiver, 50% attach and 1,188 riders, that is
$7,128 of revenue against ~$1,800 of extra retained loss — comparable to the
entire cellar-door referral line in the Two structural alternatives chapter, and
far easier to collect.

(b) Australian hire agreements transfer essentially all asset risk to the hirer.
The default is uncapped full-replacement liability — "howsoever caused and… whether
or not attributable to any negligence failure or omission of the Hirer"
(Packs & Pedals, VERIFIED).
Bonds run $300–$500/bike (VERIFIED across eBike Supply Co, Packs & Pedals, KBL).

4.4 Corrected variable cost per rider

Bike depreciation and the battery fund move to fixed cost because they accrue on the
calendar whether a bike goes out or not — which is exactly why utilisation, not
per-rider cost, is the thing that kills fleet ownership (see the The numbers,
sensitivity and scenarios chapter).