I ride my ebike to work every day. I love it, it's a lot more convenient than my old manual bike was (more durable, less sweating in hilly SF). I really try hard to be conscientious and not do anything on it that a very strong normal cyclist wouldn't/couldn't do. I almost never have any occasion to top 20mph on it, except maybe when going down a steep hill.
I don't want to advocate for more regulations on biking but ... people are assholes. I see so many people ripping on those moped-style ebikes. Going 30mph+ in a crowded bike lane, riding the wrong way against traffic, riding on sidewalks, texting, etc. Yes people _could_ do all of those things on regular bikes but in my experience they mostly didn't.
I would be in favor of a law limiting pedal assist to 20mph and below. You can go faster than that, but the motor won't help you. 30mph is where most bikes top out right now and in a city that's faster than most car traffic. Way too fast for anything that follows bicycle laws (use of the bike lane, rolling stops allowed at stop signs, etc).
FYI, there are actual laws setting limits on bikes. Generally most places in the USA will allow a Class 1 or Class 2 e-bike to be ridden anywhere a bike can be ridden legally and some allow Class 3 with more restrictions. Class 1 is pedal assist maximum 20 mph assisted and class 2 throttle assist up to 20 mph with pedal assist allowed and if you pedal harder yourself it’s okay. Class 3 is pedal assist up to 28 mph, but this is not accepted as a bike in many places or has more restrictions. Anything else would likely be a motorcycle or moped and subject to licensing/insurance/lights & mirrors/etc requirements and would not be allowed in most park/trails/bike paths/etc or only usable on private property like a go kart.
However, in practice, no one is enforcing these laws and it’s difficult, because there is no easy way for the police to determine what class a bike is and no authority providing you with a license plate to verify the class that would limit your access if you didn’t have it. The government has basically accepted that most ebikes conform to the ebike laws most of the time. However, I believe many rental e-bikes like Lime/Bird/etc do conform to the law and are Class 1 or Class 2 bikes.
Agreed. To be fair though, I think the purpose of the laws was to make it clear that e-bikes could be operated legally anywhere you can legally operate a bicycle, and that you could own and operate them in public without fear of police intervention or seizure like a go kart or other unregulated powered vehicle is subject to.
Enforcement needs to be on the sales side, as enforcement at the consumer level is obviously impossible to scale. Also, class 2 (and 3) should not be allowed in bike lanes. If you have a throttle, you're not a bike; you're a motorcycle or moped. I see a clear difference in awareness and safety between pedal and throttle usage.
I ride a (regular human-powered) bike everyday through a paved mixed-use trail. While I'm able to hit 25+ MPH under ideal conditions, I average closer to 13 MPH just due to the physical realities of manually pedalling a bike. The problem with e-bikes is that they make those fast speeds routine, and attainable in places where you wouldn't otherwise expect them (e.g., going up a hill). They break the expectations for speed and reaction times in places designed for pedestrians and human-powered bikes.
I'm all for people having easier access to the joys of getting around without a car. But sometimes I wonder if that accessibility makes it easy to bring car-like speeding mentality in places where it wasn't before.
I sometimes sit in sidewalk seating at a restaurant in Cambridge near a small theater I have a subscription to. The (protected) bike lane in front is a pretty horrifying combination of conventional bikes, ebikes, things that I assume are high powered ebikes but look almost like motor scooters, escooters, pedestrians caught in the crosshairs, etc. And a ton of the vehicles just blowing through the lights at the next intersection because they're more or less bikes and that's pretty common behavior.
I don’t think that a sweeping speed limit ban is helpful. FWIW, I don’t own an e-bike and have only borrowed them from other people a few times.
In the more rural, even suburban areas, it might be totally safe, even safer to go 25-30mph instead of 20, if you’re on a road with 35mph car traffic.
I agree with you for major cities, I’ve had to deal with the antisocial people who rip through crowds.. but a sweeping ban like that will limit usefulness outside of cities.
I’ve hit 30+mph on a regular bike with a strong wind at my back, and it felt fast. But not dangerous by any means - I was out on a rural country road. It’d be nice to get that “wind” from electricity, regardless of the weather, to greatly reduce the commute time between towns, without needing to drive a (more dangerous) car.
I think higher speeds should be allowed, but they should be liscensed like any other motocycle (perhaps they're their own class with their own rules, but they should be registered with a license).
I can hit that speed on a regular bike with a good wind, which is perfectly legal. Adding an extra licensing step could slow the adoption of people switching from cars to e-bikes for commutes (a very positive step in my opinion).
A coworker of mine has a medium-speed e-bike, maybe goes 25-30mph in the (mostly empty) bike lane of a 45mph road for a lot of the journey. Tries to take 35mph side roads for the rest. It’s a very suburban/stroad-y area.
His commute is about 4-5 miles, so he gets to work in ~10 minutes. This is a great solution for all - less cars, more efficient vehicle, less stressful for him not needing to drive.
Any impediment to that reduces the likelihood of other people catching on to what he does.
Maybe those medium-speed e-bikes should have a license in the same way as a fishing license. It’s trivial to obtain, but if you violate certain rules, the license acts as a means to revoke your privileges. I’d be perfectly ok with that.
Does that bike lane go next to parked cars? You can imagine that even conscientious drivers could fail to see a bike approaching that fast and open their door into its path.
I admit I rode my bike up to 35-45 MPH sometimes in my youth, just with pedaling and gravity. But, I was wise enough to realize I belong in a normal traffic lane at that point, not flying along the edge near pedestrians, parked cars, etc. And I wasn't exceeding the posted speed limit for that road.
I had a less wise friend, with a very aerodynamic road bike, who hit ~60 MPH (in a 25 MPH zone) and T-boned a car because they did not consider unsafe it was with the limited sight lines. I felt sorry for the driver who, by all accounts, didn't do anything wrong.
Bringing these points back to ones made in the previous comments:
- Is there a meaningful difference of some people being able to actively hit 30 mph vs everyone being able to passively go 30 mph the whole way
- Should vehicles capable of those speeds just be licensed in some way based on that rather than whether or not they have an ICE and 4 wheels
- Is there a way to separate the classifications so devices which are more truly "e-bike" in typical speed do not need to follow the same regulations as something more "electronic motorcycle".
Your friend going to work and back bike lanes and streets at 30 mph sounds a lot closer to the "electronic motorcycle" side of things, so doesn't necessarily say one thing or the other about more truly "e-bike" types of devices or why they should be considered the same.
I don’t even like regular bikes at speed (10+ mph) on mixed use paths, because kids, pets, and inattentive pedestrians (or cyclists) are a horrific combination, but now I get to watch assholes with headphones on ripping down sidewalks at 20-30 miles an hour while flipping through their phones. It’s fucking idiotic.
IMO better to enforce the rules (no idea how) since there will be always rule breakers and I'd legit want a fast bike when driving among the cars on main road (i.e. where there are no bike lanes).
I personally like the EU rule (168/2013) on e-bikes for this:
> pedal cycles with pedal assistance which are equipped with an auxiliary electric motor having a maximum continuous rated power of less than or equal to 250 W, where the output of the motor is cut off when the cyclist stops pedalling and is otherwise progressively reduced and finally cut off before the vehicle speed reaches 25 km/h [15.5 mph]
If all you have to do is push a button/lever and it goes then it's basically another form of motorcycle. However, you may be allowed to operate low-powered motorcycles with 'just' a car license:
> B: In some countries, holders of a B driver licence are also entitled (sometimes with special conditions) to ride motorcycles <= 125 cubic centimetres (7.6 cu in) and power <= 11 kilowatts (15 hp) and ratio power/weight <= 0.1 kilowatts per kilogram (0.061 hp/lb)
I ride an EU rule ebike. It's good on the whole but I think they could go to 500W or 750W and still keep the 15.5mph. It's quick on the flat but on any sort of hill it struggles and drops to more like 5 mph, or needs pedaling.
I'm happy to quibble about numbers as long as the general principles of (a) needing to peddle to be considered a "bicycle", and (b) being power-limited if you don't want to be considered a 'real' motorcycle, are in there somewhere.
The other part that's missing in the US is infrastructure.
It's taken a generation for acoustic bike lanes to be standard infrastructure in the US, and they've mostly been an exhaust valve. I spent the 2010s bike commuting in SF, and even at rush hour you'd have at-most a dozen bikes waiting at a stoplight. In part because we still need to do so much to make urban cycling as safe as it is enjoyable, even in inner cities, cars outnumber bikes.
Over the last few years, motorbikes have become desirable at a scale the US is unfamiliar with and unequipped to service. They're a cool toy for kids, a useful tool for commuters, and the lowest barrier to entry for deliveries. In the same way it's not safe to mix someone in the foam hat we call a bicycle helmet with multiton metal vehicle traffic, it's not safe for motorbike riders either. They have too much speed and inertia to mix comfortably with bicycle riders, but not enough protection to mix with cars and trucks. Worse, car drivers seem to have forgotten how to drive. Red light running is no longer rare, and more drivers seem to be watching the phone in their laps than the traffic ahead.
Filtering and lane splitting doesn't solve the big-car-vs-tiny-motorbike problem, but it at least helps. Unfortunately it's mostly a California thing. A few states are experimenting with reduced flavors of it, but safety (in the form of filtering/splitting) is still at odds with the law in most states.
There's a principle in Dutch traffic engineering that each grade of mass/vulnerability needs its own right of way: Pedestrians have crosswalks. Bicycles have cycletracks. Cars have roads. Trains have rails. Each one is vulnerable to all the bigger ones and a threat to all the smaller ones, so they each have a solution. Our cities need to bring that approach to motorbikes.
Unfortunately, this goes against the grain of race/class/tradition. The people in power tend to move through the world in cars, so accommodating other modes is an unfamiliar nuisance to them. (See also: the decades it took for bike lanes to become standard.) NYPD has been actively harassing cyclists this year because the nepobaby chief of police's heiress mom is afraid of them.
Delivery riders tend to be immigrants. They're willing to work hard jobs for low wages, and there's a black market of Uber Eats profiles that they can rent without work permits [1]. They can be intimidating - looking foreign and not speaking English. They learned to ride in places with less regimented road cultures than the US (places where motorbikes are expected to filter to the front of traffic). Being sandwiched between cars is both dangerous and slow - both counter to the instincts of someone who gets rewarded for completing a delivery quickly. Of course they break the law - filtering, riding on sidewalks, riding the wrong way…
What cities need to do is give well behaved motorbikes a practical avenue. Maybe there's a motorbike lane next to the bike lane. Maybe filtering is legalized. There's plenty of room to find a solution here. Give them a safe and reasonable option, then ticket the people who continue to break the law.
Instead, we're likely to be stuck with obsolete laws for a while. Immigrants speeding through traffic and riding on the sidewalk are not a sympathetic constituency. But until the law catches up to the technology and the culture, this is going to be a mess.
Now adjust things so the driver weighs more than the car and we'll be close to motorcycle territory. And even here it's like 6 versus 8 seconds for 0 to 60.
It does something, but it's not so important when you make the weight difference smaller and then strap on a rider that weighs more than the vehicle.
I'm asking why there's some kind of significant safety issue and why it's around .1kW/kg vehicle weight in particular, not whether it does anything whatsoever.
I mean, you can, but it's not apples to oranges. I would feel like a car with 200hp would be a sporty fun car to drive, but I will go down fighting if you tried to force me to ride a 200hp motorcycle.
Then again, that's in the 1000+cc category so it would be a big sporty bike, but still, that's a capital S Scary amount of power for the average non-thrillseeker like myself.
When I wanted to purchase a Super 73 bike before, they advertised and claimed it was compliant with Class 1 and Class 2 eBike rules, because you could set it in a mode, where it would operate in this class, when bike laws in most states are pretty clear that for an ebike to qualify and still be subject to bicycle laws not motorcycle laws, the device must not go beyond a maximum speed. You cannot just set a toggle and have a setting of Class 1/Class 2/Unlimited and still be able to operate it on the sidewalk or in parks or in bike lanes or not have a license etc.
Going 30 on anything that resembles a bike in geometry and construction is not a leisurely activity one engages in casually. 40 is pushing it, 50 you know is unsafe. 70 is a publicity stunt in a controlled environment. Yes, I know road bikes (with or without electricity) hit high speeds in certain situations, but those situations are away from traffic or potential traffic, a big downhill in the middle of nowhere or a race course or something like that.
This is a self solving problem. It doesn't need a law. Nobody is going lightening fast on anything that resembles a bike except in the few situations where a) they can b) doing so is less sketchy than not (e.g. going faster than the bike "likes" is can be less sketchy than going too slow for traffic).
The fact that there is a huge pent up demand for "totally not a moped" type stuff really goes to show you the degree to which not laughing these people out of town has already perverted the personal transportation market.
Edit: The above are Philly speeds. Add 5-10mph for Miami or somewhere else wide, smooth and flat with great visibility. But the cars are going faster there too and the pedestrians are fewer and/or more removes so I don't think it actually matters.
The link you added to the HPCBike actually looks far more like an bike than many of the much slower class 2 e-bikes that are sold. Appearance isn't that helpful when it comes to enforcement or crafting regulations.
It is, however, a great example of the kind of device being discussed in the article. Sold as a "class 2 e-bike" but with a software toggle to let it hit 70mph at will. However, I would argue that in many jurisdictions (such as Connecticut) it still doesn't legally qualify as an e-bike even with the software limiter because it has a >750w motor.
That's not an e-bike. That's an e-moto. It is sold and marketed as an e-moto and has no pedals. Depending on the jusrisdiction. these can often only be legally ridden on private property since they aren't street legal motorcycles. Some jurisdiction may allow them to be used in public OHV areas.
> By law, an electric bicycle is a bicycle that (1) has operable foot pedals and an electric motor of less
than 750 watts and (2) qualifies as a class 1, class 2, or class 3 bicycle
Thanks, I also edited the answer. That also gives context to the sentence in the article:
> Connecticut already uses the common three-class system that codifies legal e-bikes as up to 20 mph (32 km/h) and 750W (one horsepower) for Class 1 and 2, or up to 28 mph (45 km/h) for Class 3 e-bikes.
So these device are already not street-legal and not allowed to be sold as e-bikes, right? Even at 30mph they aren't classified as e-bikes. Were they previously in an undefined zone and are now classified as motor-driven cycle/motorcycle?
Then I don't understand the claim that this will change anything since "an electric motor of less than 750 watts" cannot provide anywhere near even 50MPH on a bike-sized device.
You are correct that the mention of the new law doesn't really make sense in the context of the article.
The currently state of affairs is that "e-bikes" with more than 750W didn't have a legal classification. They couldn't be treated as motorized bicycles or motorcycles under state law so were it seems they were probably legally limited to private property in Connecticut.
This law seems to expand access as to where these kinds of devices can be legally used, so it doesn't make immediate sense in the context of the article. My best guess for actual relevancy is that it also effectively expands the penalties for using them illegally (i.e. in bike paths or without the appropriate license or insurance) since they now qualify legally as a motor vehicle.
Not a lawyer, just an enthusiast who tries to understand the changing regulatory landscape for my hobby.
I have a class 3 ebike, so 20mph throttle-only, 28mph if you pretend to pedal for whatever reason. The requirement to pedal is more dangerous than the speed. It's fast, but on a long, straight, paved path, it's not that scary, and I wanted to go faster. If I could just throttle it up to 35mph, I wouldn't even need bike lanes around town. 45mph, and I could easily get to the next town over. It's a lighter, slower, cheaper motorcycle that doesn't need a license, registration, insurance, or gasoline. I really do think we should add a few more classes for higher speeds, and I don't think we need more barriers to entry either. I'm not sure what about this is worth laughing at?
There's a reason why we require license, registration, and insurance to operate mopeds but not bicycles. You're far more dangerous to pedestrians, other cyclists, and yourself at these kinds of speeds.
>There's a reason why we require license, registration, and insurance to operate mopeds but not bicycles
Pedestrian dander is a stupid red herring. When cyclists ride in the road they are at most equal danger to pedestrians as the cars in the road.
That reason mopeds are neutered by regulation is that the Karens of yesteryear didn't like the noises they made. A few dumb people riding them on the sidewalk was just the pretext.
> When cyclists ride in the road they are at most equal danger to pedestrians as the cars in the road.
When e-cyclists ride in the road and obey the same traffic laws as cars in regard to traffic lights, stop signs, pedestrian crossings, and direction of traffic. But in practice a majority of them don't.
Teenagers are gonna find a way to get dead at any/every speed. While something like 40-50 would be a wild speed to try to do on the potholed and crowded streets of NYC there are many rural roads as well as roads in more sprawled urban areas where being able to zip down the shoulder at such speeds where conditions permit is a worthwhile capability for the sake of both reducing travel times and speed differentials with automotive traffic.
That said, bicycle steering/suspension geometry is not made for that so it really is not the kind of capability a rider with any sense of self preservation will find themselves employing just anywhere.
The road through my neighborhood has a speed limit of 40 mph. I drive around that speed and there are often kids on ebikes (on the sidewalk!) pacing me or even going faster.
The way I'm interpreting what you said, it feels like you're dismissing the state's role in protecting the health of citizens. Especially children, who are known to be deficient in their judgement and decision making.
It's not reasonable to say "every parent should learn about the dangers of different types of electric vehicle through the injury of a child in their peer group"
It's amazing how legislation is updated so quickly for tech updates used by citizens, but multiple decades later for tech updates used by corporations.
Take a look at the Super73 mentioned in the piece: It has pedals directly connected to a chain. That's the difference between a motorcycle and an e-bike, not speed.
Edit: I am not saying these things aren't crazy fast and dangerous, but if you go into an electric motorcycle store and they try to sell you an e-bike with a pedal assist, it's obvious they are not the same thing. The form-factor is just different.
That may be the official technical definition but in practice speed is the real reason for dividing between bicycle and motorcycle and moped. It's also the primary reason we require licenses for some and not for others.
Super73's own webpage advertises it as a "high performance electric motorbike".
I don't know what the strict legal definition is and I'll take your word for it that "pedals directly connected to a chain" is the one. However, for all intents and purposes in every-day conversation, "electric motorcycle" seems accurate to me.
These things are between 27 and 37kg, depending on the model. You can cycle them, but it's obviously not really intended to any normal use. The chain is a useful backup (or perhaps a legal loophole, or maybe a bit of both). I think that legal definition is perhaps outdated and should be updated.
Whenever you rely on some strict legal definition of a "thing," you're going to have enterprising people make that "thing" not be a "thing" by walking right up to the legal line but just barely not crossing it. This discussion reminds me of the clever ways gun manufacturers get around California's "fixed mag" gun laws to make California-legal AR-15s: When you separate the upper and lower receiver, what you have is technically no longer a gun. Therefore, the mag can be removable from that thing that is definitely not-a-gun. So all the gun manufacturer has to do is provide a mechanism that quickly allows you to separate the upper and lower receivers, reload the mag, and then quickly re-connect the receivers. Skilled shooters can do this in under a second.
This is not true, and may fool a casual glance but legally is not classified as a bicycle. The difference is if it has a throttle or is pedal assist. No one is hitting 30 mph on these things without a throttle
Pedal assist can almost certainly be tuned to get you to 30 mph if the motor can do it. I've used a few e-bikes, and the nice ones have pedal assist that has good feel, but the less expensive ones have pedal assist that's a janky throttle with more steps.
I understand the motivation for requiring pedal assist rather than a throttle, but the motor speed cutout is the important bit. If I can put it in easy gear and pedal to operate the throttle while the chain is freewheeling the whole time, the pedals are just a throttle I operate with my feet; I'm not actually providing any of the energy for locomotion.
The typical premium/brand-name e-bike in Germany AFAIK uses torque sensing u to electronically transform the apparent weight of the loaded vehicle (more acceleration for the same felt/pedaled force), which seems to benefit nuanced control.
> That's the difference between a motorcycle and an e-bike, not speed.
Not legally.
I would argue that the presence of pedals matters much less than the power and weight of the device when it comes to how it should be regulated. Power and weight are what create the risks that the laws exist to regulate.
If you have an ~80 pound device with hardware that can do >40mph on flat ground, it should not regulated like a bicycle.
Edit: To make my point clearer, I think the focus on top speed in a bit of a red herring. High speeds can be achieved on anything with enough hill/drafting/etc. The rate at which the object can gain kinetic energy is what matters. Devices that gain kinetic energy quickly are much more dangerous to operate. Thus the combination of Power x Weight is what the regulations should focus on. There is such a plethora and proliferation of different device types, any other type of distinction can't keep up and will either leave safety gaps or unnecessarily curtail critical innovation in personal transport technology.
If I put a speed limiter on a Harley so that it doesn't exceed 30 mph is it a bike? I'm sure teenagers would love this loophole to drive a motorcycle without a license more than the 70mph bike.
Clearly speed isn't the only thing that matters to this classification and we've made a mess conflating "can ride on public roads" and "can operate a motor vehicle" and deciding what exactly we have a problem with for under 16s.
> I'm sure teenagers would love this loophole to drive a motorcycle without a license
In France, you can drive without a license once you're 14 (you need the BSR but it's basically impossible to not get it). If I remember correctly the motor has to be a 50cm3 or equivalent and go under 45 (or 50?) km per hour.
So effectively, if you put the right motor in a Harley, you can. The bikes discussed here have large motors but only a speed limiter which is very different.
> If I put a speed limiter on a Harley so that it doesn't exceed 30 mph is it a bike?
in the article they call it out that yes currently the max speed of the bike is what's defined under the law and they're tightening that down to also include motor power (so it's harder for people to buy an artificially speed limited bike and remove the limiter while avoiding the regulations that go with that).
Good question. I think this makes sense. The distinction between bike and motorcycle should be based on capability. So if you reduce the speed of a motorcycle you could argue that it’s a bike now.
Bicycles go downhill real damn fast. The top speed of a bicycle is largely limited by how foolish the person atop it is and the local geography.
Bicycles can be geared to go across the salt flats real damn fast. The top speed of a bicycle is largely limited by how foolish the person atop it is and the local geography.
Bicycles, even without crazy geography or gearing, can be ridden real damn fast by professionals. The top speed of a bicycle is largely limited by how well-trained the person atop it is. Says Wikipedia:
> The 2025 edition was the fastest Tour de France in history. Tadej Pogačar rode 3,298.6 km in 76h 00m 32s, thus realising an overall speed of 43.4 km/h or 27.0 mph.
Anything on wheels is going to go downhill real fast. Terminal velocity under gravity is not what we use for classifying vehicles because it doesn't serve as a useful bucket because it's not a feature of the average mechanism of propulsion. And that's the part we care about. The presence of top athletes doesn't change the average users experience of the vehicle.
Typical bicycle geometry is just tire limited in it's high speed cornering performance; a 4-wheel car with a center of mass relative to size anywhere near as high would just fall over before really hitting tire limits.
Coasting down switch-backs at whatever speed the car traffic on the road feels like, and not giving any car incentive to overtake by matching the speeds.
So, if I put a pro rider on a bicycle you're cool with me having them scream around crowded areas?
Traffic regulations are fundamentally about tail events. Most of the time, vehicular traffic is boring.
The right metric is kinetic energy. But, it'd be unpopular for speed limits to depend upon vehicle mass. Or, in the case of bicycles vehicle and rider mass since the rider mass isn't negligible.
Reckless endangerment covers the case of pro-riders being idiots. Classification of the vehicle should rely on the vehicle's properties instead of the operators capabilities.
However, that shark is jumped as soon as the classification criteria involve operator-dependent properties like maximum speed of a bicycle. It has no operator-agnostic answer.
I personally don't see a difference between large
motor with capped speed and a small motor legally speaking. The thing you want is a speed limit and you got it. Clearly bike riders prefer a capped large motor because you get better acceleration and responsiveness. If you modify it to go outside of its class then that's your problem if you get caught.
> I personally don't see a difference between large motor with capped speed and a small motor legally speaking.
Try getting hit by them, you'll feel a pretty big difference. My Zero in a custom riding mode that limits its speed will do way more damage than any e-bike at the same speed.
I have a JackRabbit OG e-bike [0] (really technically an electric scooter, since it doesn't have pedals). I recently put an aftermarket controller on it to allow for speeds past 20mph, and to allow for higher current to the 350W motor (accepting the risk of increased wear and burn out). It's a ton of fun to ride, can get up to 30-35mph or so though I never take it that high (dangerous). I mostly just use the increased torque for hills.
What's interesting to me though is when I lived in a city, there was zero enforcement of e-bike laws, classifications, etc. I never saw a cop glance my way. Of course, the only riders of e-bikes were adults, and people generally followed traffic laws.
Now that I live in the suburbs, the only other riders of e-bikes are teens and it's a huge issue! I have to be careful exceeding my speed class, it's noticable how much power my apparently modest bike has. Cops have already stopped me once to ask more about the bike, and accepted my explanation that while it's powerful, it has a software governer to keep it within limits. The cop seemed to give me an easier time because of my age (in my 30s), and the fact that I'm an adult with a regular driver's license. I got the sense if they had caught a teen with the bike, they would have been ticketed and the bike impounded.
When I was discussing the issue with someone in a nearby city that is putting in additional protected bike lanes, she said that they asked about enforcement of high-speed ebike speeds in a meeting and the city official basically shrugged and said nope.
I really wish that we could get better laws for registering and licensing on these "Illegal" electric bicycles similar to the moped licenses in most states. Aftermarket plating and laser E-VIMs etc... They are such a great alternative to driving a car.
I have an e-scooter that goes 60 mph / 100 kph. (Kaabo Wolf King GT Pro)
I also have one that goes about 45-50 mph / 72-80 kph. (Kaabo Wolf Warrior 11)
The limiting factors really are a. cost and b. common sense.
a. They're not cheap, being ~$2-4k and sometime take special shipping (freight) to arrive. And if you need repairs or service, the few major Kaabo dealers I've dealt with in the US are absolute amateur hour, fly-by-night trash. You're better off buying parts from AliExpress and repairing them yourself.
b. These aren't items to give kids or any under about age 17-20, depending on self-control, responsibility, protective gear, and suitable areas for use. Having a nanny state impose costs, limits, and regulations impinges on personal freedom... as the US has done effectively forbidden better foreign EVs (that won't participate in US homologation because there's no money in it). Any mode of transportation without a VIN, number plate, driver's license, and insurance already isn't allowed on highways essentially everywhere.
> It’s not clear that such speeds are actually capable on stock parts from nearly any electric bicycle, and legal electric bikes are not capable of exceeding either 20 or 28 mph, depending on their classification,
It's like the author did zero research.
While you can't easily modify most bikes to hit 70mph, there is an entire market segment of "class 2" "ebikes" than can be trivially modified to reach speeds that significantly exceed what the law allows (and arguably what is safe on those hardware components.) Often this can be done in the software without any hardware modification. If it can't, there are usually simple modifications that can be made to achieve the same thing.
"Connecticut already uses the common three-class system that codifies legal e-bikes as up to 20 mph (32 km/h) and 750W (one horsepower) for Class 1 and 2, or up to 28 mph (45 km/h) for Class 3 e-bikes.
But now the state is updating its e-bike laws, adding that any e-bike with over 750W of power will be considered a “motor-driven cycle” and require a driver’s license. Over 3,500W? That will be considered a motorcycle and require a motorcycle endorsement to legally ride, as well as registration and insurance like a motorcycle. "
I bought a 2000 watt dual motor ebike for ~$700 online.
It's internally governed to have a max speed of 35 mph, and while that is technically illegal and I could technically defeat that governor and go faster, actually going 35 on a bicycle, even on normal roads, is pretty stressful.
That's a lot of force to be putting on some thin steel tubes.
I feel like laws to require licensing and to limit where you can ride ebikes above a certain weight class will save a lot of stupid people like myself from gross injury or death.
That being said, I hope they don't take them away, because they are a lot of fun in the right context. Being able to bike 25 miles and still have the oomph to power up the hills near my house is fantastic, and occasionally, in safe conditions, being able to move 35mph is fun and helpful.
Unless a cop actually sees you doing a ridiculous speed they aren't going to check for P/W ratio or motor output
Electric scooters are illegal in the UK, but police don't have time or inclination to stop their widespread usage on public roads, and you're safe to ride past them unless you're doing something stupid.
So many things like this have people getting away with it that the laws are just ignored eventually.
When one has an incident ... Well, the hand wringers are out in droves telling everyone they told us so.
Underfunded and under resourced police can't cope with the workload, for a change.
>Unless a cop actually sees you doing a ridiculous speed they aren't going to check for P/W ratio or motor output
Which in practice means that anyone who doesn't pass a vibe check can be stopped for a fishing expedition and the officer can say in the report "well, they appeared to be going faster, oops".
> Underfunded and under resourced police can't cope with the workload, for a change.
In the US, the issue is mostly cops in cars. I'm pretty fortunate that my city has cops on bikes in common biking areas. That has reduced a huge amount of bad behavior of people on ebikes.
Technically they're not illegal, but they are classified as motor vehicles and require a driving license, tax, and insurance. However, no one actually offers insurance, and I guess you'll also run in to problems registering them for tax, so they are effectively illegal.
This is just silly and because of a 1980s legal definition of "motor vehicle": "a mechanically propelled vehicle intended or adapted for use on roads". Non-enforcement seems like a good thing in lieu of parliament amending this unintended and silly classification. This is exactly what happened here in Ireland and some other countries.
Paying cops to run a checkpoint and dyno test bikes?!! That seems like a huge waste of government resources unless the goal is to save money on other enforcement areas by instilling a message of "don't you dare goose step an inch out of line, we're watching". I suspect it's more about pandering to police supporting demographics and looking busy than it is about enforcing anything.
Might be tamed by asset (vehicle here) forfeiture provision in some of the stricter European countries for when you do worse than just minor speeding: get caught e.g. street racing and now the state auctions off your vehicle, without you seeing a cent.
I ride my ebike to work every day. I love it, it's a lot more convenient than my old manual bike was (more durable, less sweating in hilly SF). I really try hard to be conscientious and not do anything on it that a very strong normal cyclist wouldn't/couldn't do. I almost never have any occasion to top 20mph on it, except maybe when going down a steep hill.
I don't want to advocate for more regulations on biking but ... people are assholes. I see so many people ripping on those moped-style ebikes. Going 30mph+ in a crowded bike lane, riding the wrong way against traffic, riding on sidewalks, texting, etc. Yes people _could_ do all of those things on regular bikes but in my experience they mostly didn't.
I would be in favor of a law limiting pedal assist to 20mph and below. You can go faster than that, but the motor won't help you. 30mph is where most bikes top out right now and in a city that's faster than most car traffic. Way too fast for anything that follows bicycle laws (use of the bike lane, rolling stops allowed at stop signs, etc).
FYI, there are actual laws setting limits on bikes. Generally most places in the USA will allow a Class 1 or Class 2 e-bike to be ridden anywhere a bike can be ridden legally and some allow Class 3 with more restrictions. Class 1 is pedal assist maximum 20 mph assisted and class 2 throttle assist up to 20 mph with pedal assist allowed and if you pedal harder yourself it’s okay. Class 3 is pedal assist up to 28 mph, but this is not accepted as a bike in many places or has more restrictions. Anything else would likely be a motorcycle or moped and subject to licensing/insurance/lights & mirrors/etc requirements and would not be allowed in most park/trails/bike paths/etc or only usable on private property like a go kart.
However, in practice, no one is enforcing these laws and it’s difficult, because there is no easy way for the police to determine what class a bike is and no authority providing you with a license plate to verify the class that would limit your access if you didn’t have it. The government has basically accepted that most ebikes conform to the ebike laws most of the time. However, I believe many rental e-bikes like Lime/Bird/etc do conform to the law and are Class 1 or Class 2 bikes.
The USA solution to problems that are already addressed by unenforced laws is to just write even more laws that will inevitably be unenforced.
Agreed. To be fair though, I think the purpose of the laws was to make it clear that e-bikes could be operated legally anywhere you can legally operate a bicycle, and that you could own and operate them in public without fear of police intervention or seizure like a go kart or other unregulated powered vehicle is subject to.
Enforcement needs to be on the sales side, as enforcement at the consumer level is obviously impossible to scale. Also, class 2 (and 3) should not be allowed in bike lanes. If you have a throttle, you're not a bike; you're a motorcycle or moped. I see a clear difference in awareness and safety between pedal and throttle usage.
I ride a (regular human-powered) bike everyday through a paved mixed-use trail. While I'm able to hit 25+ MPH under ideal conditions, I average closer to 13 MPH just due to the physical realities of manually pedalling a bike. The problem with e-bikes is that they make those fast speeds routine, and attainable in places where you wouldn't otherwise expect them (e.g., going up a hill). They break the expectations for speed and reaction times in places designed for pedestrians and human-powered bikes.
I'm all for people having easier access to the joys of getting around without a car. But sometimes I wonder if that accessibility makes it easy to bring car-like speeding mentality in places where it wasn't before.
I sometimes sit in sidewalk seating at a restaurant in Cambridge near a small theater I have a subscription to. The (protected) bike lane in front is a pretty horrifying combination of conventional bikes, ebikes, things that I assume are high powered ebikes but look almost like motor scooters, escooters, pedestrians caught in the crosshairs, etc. And a ton of the vehicles just blowing through the lights at the next intersection because they're more or less bikes and that's pretty common behavior.
I don’t think that a sweeping speed limit ban is helpful. FWIW, I don’t own an e-bike and have only borrowed them from other people a few times.
In the more rural, even suburban areas, it might be totally safe, even safer to go 25-30mph instead of 20, if you’re on a road with 35mph car traffic.
I agree with you for major cities, I’ve had to deal with the antisocial people who rip through crowds.. but a sweeping ban like that will limit usefulness outside of cities.
I’ve hit 30+mph on a regular bike with a strong wind at my back, and it felt fast. But not dangerous by any means - I was out on a rural country road. It’d be nice to get that “wind” from electricity, regardless of the weather, to greatly reduce the commute time between towns, without needing to drive a (more dangerous) car.
I think higher speeds should be allowed, but they should be liscensed like any other motocycle (perhaps they're their own class with their own rules, but they should be registered with a license).
I can hit that speed on a regular bike with a good wind, which is perfectly legal. Adding an extra licensing step could slow the adoption of people switching from cars to e-bikes for commutes (a very positive step in my opinion).
A coworker of mine has a medium-speed e-bike, maybe goes 25-30mph in the (mostly empty) bike lane of a 45mph road for a lot of the journey. Tries to take 35mph side roads for the rest. It’s a very suburban/stroad-y area.
His commute is about 4-5 miles, so he gets to work in ~10 minutes. This is a great solution for all - less cars, more efficient vehicle, less stressful for him not needing to drive.
Any impediment to that reduces the likelihood of other people catching on to what he does.
Maybe those medium-speed e-bikes should have a license in the same way as a fishing license. It’s trivial to obtain, but if you violate certain rules, the license acts as a means to revoke your privileges. I’d be perfectly ok with that.
Does that bike lane go next to parked cars? You can imagine that even conscientious drivers could fail to see a bike approaching that fast and open their door into its path.
I admit I rode my bike up to 35-45 MPH sometimes in my youth, just with pedaling and gravity. But, I was wise enough to realize I belong in a normal traffic lane at that point, not flying along the edge near pedestrians, parked cars, etc. And I wasn't exceeding the posted speed limit for that road.
I had a less wise friend, with a very aerodynamic road bike, who hit ~60 MPH (in a 25 MPH zone) and T-boned a car because they did not consider unsafe it was with the limited sight lines. I felt sorry for the driver who, by all accounts, didn't do anything wrong.
Bringing these points back to ones made in the previous comments:
- Is there a meaningful difference of some people being able to actively hit 30 mph vs everyone being able to passively go 30 mph the whole way
- Should vehicles capable of those speeds just be licensed in some way based on that rather than whether or not they have an ICE and 4 wheels
- Is there a way to separate the classifications so devices which are more truly "e-bike" in typical speed do not need to follow the same regulations as something more "electronic motorcycle".
Your friend going to work and back bike lanes and streets at 30 mph sounds a lot closer to the "electronic motorcycle" side of things, so doesn't necessarily say one thing or the other about more truly "e-bike" types of devices or why they should be considered the same.
You could classify very fast e-bikes as scooters / moppets. That why you can still drive them, but maybe you can't share the bike lane any more.
I don’t even like regular bikes at speed (10+ mph) on mixed use paths, because kids, pets, and inattentive pedestrians (or cyclists) are a horrific combination, but now I get to watch assholes with headphones on ripping down sidewalks at 20-30 miles an hour while flipping through their phones. It’s fucking idiotic.
IMO better to enforce the rules (no idea how) since there will be always rule breakers and I'd legit want a fast bike when driving among the cars on main road (i.e. where there are no bike lanes).
I personally like the EU rule (168/2013) on e-bikes for this:
> pedal cycles with pedal assistance which are equipped with an auxiliary electric motor having a maximum continuous rated power of less than or equal to 250 W, where the output of the motor is cut off when the cyclist stops pedalling and is otherwise progressively reduced and finally cut off before the vehicle speed reaches 25 km/h [15.5 mph]
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_bicycle_laws#European...
If all you have to do is push a button/lever and it goes then it's basically another form of motorcycle. However, you may be allowed to operate low-powered motorcycles with 'just' a car license:
> B: In some countries, holders of a B driver licence are also entitled (sometimes with special conditions) to ride motorcycles <= 125 cubic centimetres (7.6 cu in) and power <= 11 kilowatts (15 hp) and ratio power/weight <= 0.1 kilowatts per kilogram (0.061 hp/lb)
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_driving_licence
So e-bikes/scooters don't necessarily need special licensing.
Those are good rules, but are loosely enforced. Usual Uber eats bike courier has one of that overpowered ebikea and are the worse users of bike lanes.
I ride an EU rule ebike. It's good on the whole but I think they could go to 500W or 750W and still keep the 15.5mph. It's quick on the flat but on any sort of hill it struggles and drops to more like 5 mph, or needs pedaling.
> rated power of less than or equal to 250 W
these power ratings are usually incorrect and depending on construction of e-bike might not be enough for good acceleration uphill
I'm happy to quibble about numbers as long as the general principles of (a) needing to peddle to be considered a "bicycle", and (b) being power-limited if you don't want to be considered a 'real' motorcycle, are in there somewhere.
The other part that's missing in the US is infrastructure.
It's taken a generation for acoustic bike lanes to be standard infrastructure in the US, and they've mostly been an exhaust valve. I spent the 2010s bike commuting in SF, and even at rush hour you'd have at-most a dozen bikes waiting at a stoplight. In part because we still need to do so much to make urban cycling as safe as it is enjoyable, even in inner cities, cars outnumber bikes.
Over the last few years, motorbikes have become desirable at a scale the US is unfamiliar with and unequipped to service. They're a cool toy for kids, a useful tool for commuters, and the lowest barrier to entry for deliveries. In the same way it's not safe to mix someone in the foam hat we call a bicycle helmet with multiton metal vehicle traffic, it's not safe for motorbike riders either. They have too much speed and inertia to mix comfortably with bicycle riders, but not enough protection to mix with cars and trucks. Worse, car drivers seem to have forgotten how to drive. Red light running is no longer rare, and more drivers seem to be watching the phone in their laps than the traffic ahead.
Filtering and lane splitting doesn't solve the big-car-vs-tiny-motorbike problem, but it at least helps. Unfortunately it's mostly a California thing. A few states are experimenting with reduced flavors of it, but safety (in the form of filtering/splitting) is still at odds with the law in most states.
There's a principle in Dutch traffic engineering that each grade of mass/vulnerability needs its own right of way: Pedestrians have crosswalks. Bicycles have cycletracks. Cars have roads. Trains have rails. Each one is vulnerable to all the bigger ones and a threat to all the smaller ones, so they each have a solution. Our cities need to bring that approach to motorbikes.
Unfortunately, this goes against the grain of race/class/tradition. The people in power tend to move through the world in cars, so accommodating other modes is an unfamiliar nuisance to them. (See also: the decades it took for bike lanes to become standard.) NYPD has been actively harassing cyclists this year because the nepobaby chief of police's heiress mom is afraid of them.
Delivery riders tend to be immigrants. They're willing to work hard jobs for low wages, and there's a black market of Uber Eats profiles that they can rent without work permits [1]. They can be intimidating - looking foreign and not speaking English. They learned to ride in places with less regimented road cultures than the US (places where motorbikes are expected to filter to the front of traffic). Being sandwiched between cars is both dangerous and slow - both counter to the instincts of someone who gets rewarded for completing a delivery quickly. Of course they break the law - filtering, riding on sidewalks, riding the wrong way…
What cities need to do is give well behaved motorbikes a practical avenue. Maybe there's a motorbike lane next to the bike lane. Maybe filtering is legalized. There's plenty of room to find a solution here. Give them a safe and reasonable option, then ticket the people who continue to break the law.
Instead, we're likely to be stuck with obsolete laws for a while. Immigrants speeding through traffic and riding on the sidewalk are not a sympathetic constituency. But until the law catches up to the technology and the culture, this is going to be a mess.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8V9ypoULc0I
What's the point of the weight ratio? If a 20kg motorcycle can do 4kW why is that a concern?
The latest generation of RAV4 has power of 176 kW (236 hp; 239 PS):
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toyota_RAV4#Sixth_generation_(...
A fairly recent iteration of BMW S1000RR motorcycle has 152 kW (204 hp; 207 PS):
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMW_S1000RR#2019_(K_67)
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_fastest_production_mot...
One can set lap records, the other cannot. Power-to-weight can determine performance a lot (it's why high-end sports cars often use carbon fibre).
I don't think you can compare a car and a motorcycle that easily. Especially at high speeds where air resistance is so important.
The current-gen Miata is 135 kW (181 hp; 184 PS):
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mazda_MX-5_(ND)
It's about ~third of the weight of the RAV4. Which one do you think accelerates from zero faster (not even reaching "high speeds")?
Now adjust things so the driver weighs more than the car and we'll be close to motorcycle territory. And even here it's like 6 versus 8 seconds for 0 to 60.
So the Miata gets there faster even with a >20% power disadvantage. I think that shows why power-weight is important.
It does something, but it's not so important when you make the weight difference smaller and then strap on a rider that weighs more than the vehicle.
I'm asking why there's some kind of significant safety issue and why it's around .1kW/kg vehicle weight in particular, not whether it does anything whatsoever.
I mean, you can, but it's not apples to oranges. I would feel like a car with 200hp would be a sporty fun car to drive, but I will go down fighting if you tried to force me to ride a 200hp motorcycle.
Then again, that's in the 1000+cc category so it would be a big sporty bike, but still, that's a capital S Scary amount of power for the average non-thrillseeker like myself.
> If a 20kg motorcycle can do 4kW why is that a concern?
Because it would go too fast.
The alternative that follows the rule is a 40kg motorcycle that can do 4kW. Is there really going to be a significant speed difference?
The 20kg bike would accelerate roughly twice as quickly as the 40kg bike. Accelerating super quickly is not safe.
On the other hand, getting hit by a 20kg bike would hurt a lot less than a 40kg bike at the same speed.
A motorcycle accelerating at full speed without a rider is very dangerous no matter how many horsepower. I don't think that should be the test method.
Also twice the power doesn't give you twice the acceleration as you pick up speed. Each mph takes more energy than the last.
When I wanted to purchase a Super 73 bike before, they advertised and claimed it was compliant with Class 1 and Class 2 eBike rules, because you could set it in a mode, where it would operate in this class, when bike laws in most states are pretty clear that for an ebike to qualify and still be subject to bicycle laws not motorcycle laws, the device must not go beyond a maximum speed. You cannot just set a toggle and have a setting of Class 1/Class 2/Unlimited and still be able to operate it on the sidewalk or in parks or in bike lanes or not have a license etc.
Glad someone is finally calling them out on it.
Going 30 on anything that resembles a bike in geometry and construction is not a leisurely activity one engages in casually. 40 is pushing it, 50 you know is unsafe. 70 is a publicity stunt in a controlled environment. Yes, I know road bikes (with or without electricity) hit high speeds in certain situations, but those situations are away from traffic or potential traffic, a big downhill in the middle of nowhere or a race course or something like that.
This is a self solving problem. It doesn't need a law. Nobody is going lightening fast on anything that resembles a bike except in the few situations where a) they can b) doing so is less sketchy than not (e.g. going faster than the bike "likes" is can be less sketchy than going too slow for traffic).
The fact that there is a huge pent up demand for "totally not a moped" type stuff really goes to show you the degree to which not laughing these people out of town has already perverted the personal transportation market.
Edit: The above are Philly speeds. Add 5-10mph for Miami or somewhere else wide, smooth and flat with great visibility. But the cars are going faster there too and the pedestrians are fewer and/or more removes so I don't think it actually matters.
Let's face it, an e-bike that goes to 70 rarely looks like a bike. For instance:
- https://hpcbikes.com/products/revolution-xx
- https://www.eridepros.com/pro-sr (no bicycle pedals)
I was able to find some 60MPH e-bikes that looks somewhat like a very bulky bike but even then, it's still closer to a motorcycle with pedals.
It's a motorcycle that in theory can be pedaled manually.
The link you added to the HPCBike actually looks far more like an bike than many of the much slower class 2 e-bikes that are sold. Appearance isn't that helpful when it comes to enforcement or crafting regulations.
It is, however, a great example of the kind of device being discussed in the article. Sold as a "class 2 e-bike" but with a software toggle to let it hit 70mph at will. However, I would argue that in many jurisdictions (such as Connecticut) it still doesn't legally qualify as an e-bike even with the software limiter because it has a >750w motor.
That's not an e-bike. That's an e-moto. It is sold and marketed as an e-moto and has no pedals. Depending on the jusrisdiction. these can often only be legally ridden on private property since they aren't street legal motorcycles. Some jurisdiction may allow them to be used in public OHV areas.
I realized that and edited my comment with a link for one with pedals, bicycle saddle and 10kW power.
You've misunderstood that law.
> By law, an electric bicycle is a bicycle that (1) has operable foot pedals and an electric motor of less than 750 watts and (2) qualifies as a class 1, class 2, or class 3 bicycle
https://www.cga.ct.gov/2024/rpt/pdf/2024-R-0154.pdf
Thanks, I also edited the answer. That also gives context to the sentence in the article:
> Connecticut already uses the common three-class system that codifies legal e-bikes as up to 20 mph (32 km/h) and 750W (one horsepower) for Class 1 and 2, or up to 28 mph (45 km/h) for Class 3 e-bikes.
So these device are already not street-legal and not allowed to be sold as e-bikes, right? Even at 30mph they aren't classified as e-bikes. Were they previously in an undefined zone and are now classified as motor-driven cycle/motorcycle?
Then I don't understand the claim that this will change anything since "an electric motor of less than 750 watts" cannot provide anywhere near even 50MPH on a bike-sized device.
You are correct that the mention of the new law doesn't really make sense in the context of the article.
The currently state of affairs is that "e-bikes" with more than 750W didn't have a legal classification. They couldn't be treated as motorized bicycles or motorcycles under state law so were it seems they were probably legally limited to private property in Connecticut.
This law seems to expand access as to where these kinds of devices can be legally used, so it doesn't make immediate sense in the context of the article. My best guess for actual relevancy is that it also effectively expands the penalties for using them illegally (i.e. in bike paths or without the appropriate license or insurance) since they now qualify legally as a motor vehicle.
Not a lawyer, just an enthusiast who tries to understand the changing regulatory landscape for my hobby.
I have a class 3 ebike, so 20mph throttle-only, 28mph if you pretend to pedal for whatever reason. The requirement to pedal is more dangerous than the speed. It's fast, but on a long, straight, paved path, it's not that scary, and I wanted to go faster. If I could just throttle it up to 35mph, I wouldn't even need bike lanes around town. 45mph, and I could easily get to the next town over. It's a lighter, slower, cheaper motorcycle that doesn't need a license, registration, insurance, or gasoline. I really do think we should add a few more classes for higher speeds, and I don't think we need more barriers to entry either. I'm not sure what about this is worth laughing at?
> If I could just throttle it up to 35mph, I wouldn't even need bike lanes around town. 45mph, and I could easily get to the next town over.
The "higher class" of which you speak has existed for a long time, albeit usually fulfilled by gas powered vehicles until recently: https://www.vespa.com/us_EN/models/primavera/primavera-50-4s...
There's a reason why we require license, registration, and insurance to operate mopeds but not bicycles. You're far more dangerous to pedestrians, other cyclists, and yourself at these kinds of speeds.
>There's a reason why we require license, registration, and insurance to operate mopeds but not bicycles
Pedestrian dander is a stupid red herring. When cyclists ride in the road they are at most equal danger to pedestrians as the cars in the road.
That reason mopeds are neutered by regulation is that the Karens of yesteryear didn't like the noises they made. A few dumb people riding them on the sidewalk was just the pretext.
> When cyclists ride in the road they are at most equal danger to pedestrians as the cars in the road.
When e-cyclists ride in the road and obey the same traffic laws as cars in regard to traffic lights, stop signs, pedestrian crossings, and direction of traffic. But in practice a majority of them don't.
They may be more concerned about risks to pedestrians and people on slower bicycles rather than risks to the speeders themselves.
I think your argument works in a callous way if we ignore any speeds between 30 and 70 and we also ignore teenagers.
But in reality there's a lot of untrained teens going different levels of too fast and that is something we should be trying to prevent.
Teenagers are gonna find a way to get dead at any/every speed. While something like 40-50 would be a wild speed to try to do on the potholed and crowded streets of NYC there are many rural roads as well as roads in more sprawled urban areas where being able to zip down the shoulder at such speeds where conditions permit is a worthwhile capability for the sake of both reducing travel times and speed differentials with automotive traffic.
That said, bicycle steering/suspension geometry is not made for that so it really is not the kind of capability a rider with any sense of self preservation will find themselves employing just anywhere.
The road through my neighborhood has a speed limit of 40 mph. I drive around that speed and there are often kids on ebikes (on the sidewalk!) pacing me or even going faster.
The way I'm interpreting what you said, it feels like you're dismissing the state's role in protecting the health of citizens. Especially children, who are known to be deficient in their judgement and decision making.
It's not reasonable to say "every parent should learn about the dangers of different types of electric vehicle through the injury of a child in their peer group"
It's amazing how legislation is updated so quickly for tech updates used by citizens, but multiple decades later for tech updates used by corporations.
That's not an e-bike. That's an electric motorcycle.
Take a look at the Super73 mentioned in the piece: It has pedals directly connected to a chain. That's the difference between a motorcycle and an e-bike, not speed.
Edit: I am not saying these things aren't crazy fast and dangerous, but if you go into an electric motorcycle store and they try to sell you an e-bike with a pedal assist, it's obvious they are not the same thing. The form-factor is just different.
That may be the official technical definition but in practice speed is the real reason for dividing between bicycle and motorcycle and moped. It's also the primary reason we require licenses for some and not for others.
Super73's own webpage advertises it as a "high performance electric motorbike".
I don't know what the strict legal definition is and I'll take your word for it that "pedals directly connected to a chain" is the one. However, for all intents and purposes in every-day conversation, "electric motorcycle" seems accurate to me.
These things are between 27 and 37kg, depending on the model. You can cycle them, but it's obviously not really intended to any normal use. The chain is a useful backup (or perhaps a legal loophole, or maybe a bit of both). I think that legal definition is perhaps outdated and should be updated.
Whenever you rely on some strict legal definition of a "thing," you're going to have enterprising people make that "thing" not be a "thing" by walking right up to the legal line but just barely not crossing it. This discussion reminds me of the clever ways gun manufacturers get around California's "fixed mag" gun laws to make California-legal AR-15s: When you separate the upper and lower receiver, what you have is technically no longer a gun. Therefore, the mag can be removable from that thing that is definitely not-a-gun. So all the gun manufacturer has to do is provide a mechanism that quickly allows you to separate the upper and lower receivers, reload the mag, and then quickly re-connect the receivers. Skilled shooters can do this in under a second.
This is not true, and may fool a casual glance but legally is not classified as a bicycle. The difference is if it has a throttle or is pedal assist. No one is hitting 30 mph on these things without a throttle
Pedal assist can almost certainly be tuned to get you to 30 mph if the motor can do it. I've used a few e-bikes, and the nice ones have pedal assist that has good feel, but the less expensive ones have pedal assist that's a janky throttle with more steps.
I understand the motivation for requiring pedal assist rather than a throttle, but the motor speed cutout is the important bit. If I can put it in easy gear and pedal to operate the throttle while the chain is freewheeling the whole time, the pedals are just a throttle I operate with my feet; I'm not actually providing any of the energy for locomotion.
The typical premium/brand-name e-bike in Germany AFAIK uses torque sensing u to electronically transform the apparent weight of the loaded vehicle (more acceleration for the same felt/pedaled force), which seems to benefit nuanced control.
I have an (unmodified) Super73. There is a mode selection between pedal assist and throttle. You can hit 28mph with only pedal assist.
> That's the difference between a motorcycle and an e-bike, not speed.
Not legally.
I would argue that the presence of pedals matters much less than the power and weight of the device when it comes to how it should be regulated. Power and weight are what create the risks that the laws exist to regulate.
If you have an ~80 pound device with hardware that can do >40mph on flat ground, it should not regulated like a bicycle.
Edit: To make my point clearer, I think the focus on top speed in a bit of a red herring. High speeds can be achieved on anything with enough hill/drafting/etc. The rate at which the object can gain kinetic energy is what matters. Devices that gain kinetic energy quickly are much more dangerous to operate. Thus the combination of Power x Weight is what the regulations should focus on. There is such a plethora and proliferation of different device types, any other type of distinction can't keep up and will either leave safety gaps or unnecessarily curtail critical innovation in personal transport technology.
But in every state except Connecticut, it is regulated like a bicycle.
If I put a speed limiter on a Harley so that it doesn't exceed 30 mph is it a bike? I'm sure teenagers would love this loophole to drive a motorcycle without a license more than the 70mph bike.
Clearly speed isn't the only thing that matters to this classification and we've made a mess conflating "can ride on public roads" and "can operate a motor vehicle" and deciding what exactly we have a problem with for under 16s.
> I'm sure teenagers would love this loophole to drive a motorcycle without a license
In France, you can drive without a license once you're 14 (you need the BSR but it's basically impossible to not get it). If I remember correctly the motor has to be a 50cm3 or equivalent and go under 45 (or 50?) km per hour.
So effectively, if you put the right motor in a Harley, you can. The bikes discussed here have large motors but only a speed limiter which is very different.
> If I put a speed limiter on a Harley so that it doesn't exceed 30 mph is it a bike?
in the article they call it out that yes currently the max speed of the bike is what's defined under the law and they're tightening that down to also include motor power (so it's harder for people to buy an artificially speed limited bike and remove the limiter while avoiding the regulations that go with that).
> If I put a speed limiter on a Harley so that it doesn't exceed 30 mph is it a bike?
Most jurisdictions use engine size, so you’d need a 49cc engine in your Harley. I doubt it would even get up to 30mph with a 49cc engine, have fun!
and - unless your jurisidiction has a scooter license category - you still need a regular drivers license.
Good question. I think this makes sense. The distinction between bike and motorcycle should be based on capability. So if you reduce the speed of a motorcycle you could argue that it’s a bike now.
Capability is a poor metric.
Bicycles go downhill real damn fast. The top speed of a bicycle is largely limited by how foolish the person atop it is and the local geography.
Bicycles can be geared to go across the salt flats real damn fast. The top speed of a bicycle is largely limited by how foolish the person atop it is and the local geography.
Bicycles, even without crazy geography or gearing, can be ridden real damn fast by professionals. The top speed of a bicycle is largely limited by how well-trained the person atop it is. Says Wikipedia:
> The 2025 edition was the fastest Tour de France in history. Tadej Pogačar rode 3,298.6 km in 76h 00m 32s, thus realising an overall speed of 43.4 km/h or 27.0 mph.
Anything on wheels is going to go downhill real fast. Terminal velocity under gravity is not what we use for classifying vehicles because it doesn't serve as a useful bucket because it's not a feature of the average mechanism of propulsion. And that's the part we care about. The presence of top athletes doesn't change the average users experience of the vehicle.
Typical bicycle geometry is just tire limited in it's high speed cornering performance; a 4-wheel car with a center of mass relative to size anywhere near as high would just fall over before really hitting tire limits.
Coasting down switch-backs at whatever speed the car traffic on the road feels like, and not giving any car incentive to overtake by matching the speeds.
So, if I put a pro rider on a bicycle you're cool with me having them scream around crowded areas?
Traffic regulations are fundamentally about tail events. Most of the time, vehicular traffic is boring.
The right metric is kinetic energy. But, it'd be unpopular for speed limits to depend upon vehicle mass. Or, in the case of bicycles vehicle and rider mass since the rider mass isn't negligible.
Reckless endangerment covers the case of pro-riders being idiots. Classification of the vehicle should rely on the vehicle's properties instead of the operators capabilities.
Agreed.
However, that shark is jumped as soon as the classification criteria involve operator-dependent properties like maximum speed of a bicycle. It has no operator-agnostic answer.
> Reckless endangerment
So maybe we can enforce that part a little better.
If I tried to drive a car on pedestrian path at even 10kmh I'd be chased by police helicopter and appear on national news.
How fast can a normal person riding a normal-style bike with modified gears go across the salt flats?
I feel like it's obvious that capability would be measured with a fixed level of user input on a fixed course/dynamo.
2018 had one pro rider do 183 MPH per https://www.bikeradar.com/news/cycling-land-speed-record-sma...
I'd wager most weekend spandex warriors could break 100 MPH peak.
When you're drafting a dragster so close you're partly inside it I'm going to go ahead and say that doesn't count for my question.
Certainly crazy circumstances. But, it's just a bicycle.
It's a bicycle that doesn't have to deal with air resistance, which sidesteps much of my question.
I am not 100% sure but I think Pogacar goes a little faster than the average cyclist.
I personally don't see a difference between large motor with capped speed and a small motor legally speaking. The thing you want is a speed limit and you got it. Clearly bike riders prefer a capped large motor because you get better acceleration and responsiveness. If you modify it to go outside of its class then that's your problem if you get caught.
> I personally don't see a difference between large motor with capped speed and a small motor legally speaking.
Try getting hit by them, you'll feel a pretty big difference. My Zero in a custom riding mode that limits its speed will do way more damage than any e-bike at the same speed.
I have a JackRabbit OG e-bike [0] (really technically an electric scooter, since it doesn't have pedals). I recently put an aftermarket controller on it to allow for speeds past 20mph, and to allow for higher current to the 350W motor (accepting the risk of increased wear and burn out). It's a ton of fun to ride, can get up to 30-35mph or so though I never take it that high (dangerous). I mostly just use the increased torque for hills.
What's interesting to me though is when I lived in a city, there was zero enforcement of e-bike laws, classifications, etc. I never saw a cop glance my way. Of course, the only riders of e-bikes were adults, and people generally followed traffic laws.
Now that I live in the suburbs, the only other riders of e-bikes are teens and it's a huge issue! I have to be careful exceeding my speed class, it's noticable how much power my apparently modest bike has. Cops have already stopped me once to ask more about the bike, and accepted my explanation that while it's powerful, it has a software governer to keep it within limits. The cop seemed to give me an easier time because of my age (in my 30s), and the fact that I'm an adult with a regular driver's license. I got the sense if they had caught a teen with the bike, they would have been ticketed and the bike impounded.
[0] https://jackrabbit.bike/
When I was discussing the issue with someone in a nearby city that is putting in additional protected bike lanes, she said that they asked about enforcement of high-speed ebike speeds in a meeting and the city official basically shrugged and said nope.
Can confirm. Teenagers on e-bikes is easily the number one complaint on suburban Nextdoor right now. It's like catnip for boomers.
I really wish that we could get better laws for registering and licensing on these "Illegal" electric bicycles similar to the moped licenses in most states. Aftermarket plating and laser E-VIMs etc... They are such a great alternative to driving a car.
I have an e-scooter that goes 60 mph / 100 kph. (Kaabo Wolf King GT Pro)
I also have one that goes about 45-50 mph / 72-80 kph. (Kaabo Wolf Warrior 11)
The limiting factors really are a. cost and b. common sense.
a. They're not cheap, being ~$2-4k and sometime take special shipping (freight) to arrive. And if you need repairs or service, the few major Kaabo dealers I've dealt with in the US are absolute amateur hour, fly-by-night trash. You're better off buying parts from AliExpress and repairing them yourself.
b. These aren't items to give kids or any under about age 17-20, depending on self-control, responsibility, protective gear, and suitable areas for use. Having a nanny state impose costs, limits, and regulations impinges on personal freedom... as the US has done effectively forbidden better foreign EVs (that won't participate in US homologation because there's no money in it). Any mode of transportation without a VIN, number plate, driver's license, and insurance already isn't allowed on highways essentially everywhere.
People are breaking the law so we must ... change the law instead of enforcing current one.
> It’s not clear that such speeds are actually capable on stock parts from nearly any electric bicycle, and legal electric bikes are not capable of exceeding either 20 or 28 mph, depending on their classification,
It's like the author did zero research.
While you can't easily modify most bikes to hit 70mph, there is an entire market segment of "class 2" "ebikes" than can be trivially modified to reach speeds that significantly exceed what the law allows (and arguably what is safe on those hardware components.) Often this can be done in the software without any hardware modification. If it can't, there are usually simple modifications that can be made to achieve the same thing.
"Connecticut already uses the common three-class system that codifies legal e-bikes as up to 20 mph (32 km/h) and 750W (one horsepower) for Class 1 and 2, or up to 28 mph (45 km/h) for Class 3 e-bikes.
But now the state is updating its e-bike laws, adding that any e-bike with over 750W of power will be considered a “motor-driven cycle” and require a driver’s license. Over 3,500W? That will be considered a motorcycle and require a motorcycle endorsement to legally ride, as well as registration and insurance like a motorcycle. "
I love PEVs and this basically makes sense to me.
I bought a 2000 watt dual motor ebike for ~$700 online.
It's internally governed to have a max speed of 35 mph, and while that is technically illegal and I could technically defeat that governor and go faster, actually going 35 on a bicycle, even on normal roads, is pretty stressful.
That's a lot of force to be putting on some thin steel tubes.
I feel like laws to require licensing and to limit where you can ride ebikes above a certain weight class will save a lot of stupid people like myself from gross injury or death.
That being said, I hope they don't take them away, because they are a lot of fun in the right context. Being able to bike 25 miles and still have the oomph to power up the hills near my house is fantastic, and occasionally, in safe conditions, being able to move 35mph is fun and helpful.
The vehicle of choice for uber drivers...eh... cyclists.
Unless a cop actually sees you doing a ridiculous speed they aren't going to check for P/W ratio or motor output
Electric scooters are illegal in the UK, but police don't have time or inclination to stop their widespread usage on public roads, and you're safe to ride past them unless you're doing something stupid.
So many things like this have people getting away with it that the laws are just ignored eventually.
When one has an incident ... Well, the hand wringers are out in droves telling everyone they told us so.
Underfunded and under resourced police can't cope with the workload, for a change.
>Unless a cop actually sees you doing a ridiculous speed they aren't going to check for P/W ratio or motor output
Which in practice means that anyone who doesn't pass a vibe check can be stopped for a fishing expedition and the officer can say in the report "well, they appeared to be going faster, oops".
> Underfunded and under resourced police can't cope with the workload, for a change.
In the US, the issue is mostly cops in cars. I'm pretty fortunate that my city has cops on bikes in common biking areas. That has reduced a huge amount of bad behavior of people on ebikes.
> Electric scooters are illegal in the UK
Technically they're not illegal, but they are classified as motor vehicles and require a driving license, tax, and insurance. However, no one actually offers insurance, and I guess you'll also run in to problems registering them for tax, so they are effectively illegal.
This is just silly and because of a 1980s legal definition of "motor vehicle": "a mechanically propelled vehicle intended or adapted for use on roads". Non-enforcement seems like a good thing in lieu of parliament amending this unintended and silly classification. This is exactly what happened here in Ireland and some other countries.
Why not?
We have a TON of ebikes i Norway and the cops regularly do checkpoints of suspected chippers in the main commute routes.
They have a little threadmill thing similar to what chiptuners use when tuning car engines that measure torque, watt and top speed.
Paying cops to run a checkpoint and dyno test bikes?!! That seems like a huge waste of government resources unless the goal is to save money on other enforcement areas by instilling a message of "don't you dare goose step an inch out of line, we're watching". I suspect it's more about pandering to police supporting demographics and looking busy than it is about enforcing anything.
What a weird outlook.
For me its more «I am happy that the police removes dangerous uninsurable vehicles from the road»
Might be tamed by asset (vehicle here) forfeiture provision in some of the stricter European countries for when you do worse than just minor speeding: get caught e.g. street racing and now the state auctions off your vehicle, without you seeing a cent.