In brief, UK reporting on “ebike” collisions and battery fires confuses lawful, UK/EU-compliant electric bicycles with illegal, unregistered, uninsured electric motorcycles. As a result, public perception is deeply skewed compared to the actual risks posed by bona-fide electric bicycles.
A similar phenomenon can be seen in California, but there is drafted legislation to mandate accurate advertising of “e-motos” versus ebikes, with fines accruing to vendors that fail to correctly represent what they’re selling.
IMO, it’s hard for me to blame consumers whom, given high gasoline/petrol prices, need some form of transportation that gets them where they need to go and minimizes external harms (eg automobile risk of injury). Evan correctly identifies vendors and importers that flout the law and push the legal risk into riders. At the same time, e-motos are legit for off-road use and here in California, they’re great fun in that regard. At bottom, fair advertising isn’t controversial; it’s no different than wanting to know the ingredients in food products.
On a separate note, Evan also flagged a case of police misidentification and confiscation of a lawful e-bike. Which I find particularly surprising, given that UK police tend to be more uniformly instructed than their American counterparts. No doubt that Californian police have also confused ebikes with electric motorcycles on occasion, but the result in the UK seems is to go immediately to confiscation and destruction without any meaningful system of review. Which seems problematic, at best
Some of this confusion seems to be created or exacerbated by the industry itself, particularly in North America. The standard European ebike is limited to 250W and 25kph. But the standard North American Class 1 or 2 ebikes are limited to 20mph, with up to 750W in the US or 500W in Canada. Some Class 3 ebikes in North America are just slightly faster Class 2 bikes, but there are an awful lot of grey-area bikes that look and feel more like e-motos, and it seems like that segment of the market is popular.
I think e-motos are part of the transportation future–I own one–but I do think it would be reasonable to exclude them from sidewalks, walking paths, greenways, etc. I’m not against better regulation of this space, so long as it continues to leave actual ebikes to be treated like other bikes.
It’s more than just the speed and power. The form factor of fat bike mopeds has created a vicious cycle of bikes being heavier, therefore needing more power, and being more powerful allowing them to be heavier, to the point where they essentially require throttles to operate.
My rule is that if you can’t carry it up a flight if stairs or start from a stop on a hill with only the pedals, then it shouldn’t qualify, regardless of power or speed. Really, just banning throttles would solves 90% of the issue.
I like your rule about starting on a hill or carrying up the stairs. That’s a real bike.
Having said that, I do like a throttle on an ebike for getting off the line with a heavy load of groceries. 😄
It’s really only an issue with cadence sensors. I’ve never had an issue starting with a load on a torque sensing bike because the assist is immediate. If we banned throttles, I think we’d just see a lot of the worst offender, shitty cadence sensing bikes become non viable and a lot more torque sensing options. It would eliminate the cheapest segment initially, but I think that’s ok. Eventually the better tech would get cheaper.
The other big problem is that so many people use the throttle as a crutch because they don’t have the basic skills to be in the right gear based on the situation. This is again just very basic safe operator fundamentals.
At least here in California, the presence of operable pedals is being rapidly adopted – in terms of consumer advice and police warnings – as a quick-and-easy distinguishing factor between an ebike and an e-moto. And it does track with the law, since there are no legal ebikes without pedals. As a way of cutting down on e-motos being sold and ridden as if ebikes, it’s a workable definition.
The drawback is that it leads to under-enforcement if that’s the only factor considered. That said, I’m less enthusiastic about focusing on enforcement when there’s genuine confusion in the marketplace about the thing that parents are buying for their children. I hazard to guess that a fair number of them would regret their purchase if informed that they actually bought a motorcycle capable of freeway speeds.
think it would be reasonable to exclude them from sidewalks, walking paths, greenways
This aspect of enforcement, I can agree with. And indeed, California strikes some sort of balance with class 1/2 being allowed but subject to the general 15 MPH limit on trails and multiuse paths, and class 3 being prohibited on most off-street surfaces.
This works fairly well for me, since I use my class 3 ebike for traversing long routes between suburbs, so operating in on-street bike lanes is simultaneously faster and more efficient for me than using the sidewalk. I’m a big fan of giving different users the space they need. And the USA is sorely in need of allocating more space for people than for cars.
The drawback is that it leads to under-enforcement if that’s the only factor considered.
Yeah … let me just slap some pedals on my Harley and tear up the bike paths.
I’ve seen a lot of people think that motorcycle = ebike. They see kids doing wheelies on emotos and clutch their pearls and attack ebikes instead.
Part of the problem there is that these emotos are often sold and marketed as ‘ebikes’.
Well, because the lack of proper categorization and enforcement, those emotos ARE legally ebikes in a lot of places.
Nowhere in the USA though, US federal law states an ebike must have 750W of power or less, and lots of states use the 3 class system as well on top of that.
No one is afraid of ebikes.
