Yes. I thought the article was going to be about layup when it said costs would plummet. Particularly I was thinking of carbon fibre bikes. Looks like this will have no effect on their cost.
To make a bike you need a special mold/jig for each part for each bike size. These cost money to make so to scale out the process is expensive (I.e. to have a lot of workers producing bikes concurrently). With metal tubing you can just make a lot if it and then cut, bend and weld it. Every worker doesn't need an expensive jig. And like you said, just laying up the fibre on a jig is time consuming and manual.
Anyway, they can make extremely light aluminium bikes now with really good ride characteristics and they won't break if you drop them the wrong way!
To make a bike you need a special mold/jig for each part for each bike size. These cost money to make so to scale out the process is expensive (I.e. to have a lot of workers producing bikes concurrently). With metal tubing you can just make a lot if it and then cut, bend and weld it. Every worker doesn't need an expensive jig. And like you said, just laying up the fibre on a jig is time consuming and manual.
Anyway, they can make extremely light aluminium bikes now with really good ride characteristics and they won't break if you drop them the wrong way!