It's not just about speed though. Additional power, particularly with hub motors, can help a lot with steep hills or pulling more weight on a cargo bike etc. E-bikes are improving peoples ability to get out there and be independent as well as get some exercise where they may not have been able to in the past due to a number of different factors.
By increasing the power available can help to make the world more accessible to more people. You can still limit the top speed that is achievable on these bikes whilst also making them more usable in more situations.
Higher power motor doesn't necessarily automatically mean top speed is the sole goal.
can help a lot with steep hills or pulling more weight on a cargo bike etc.
Agreed. I live in a fairly flat area, but there's still a few hills and one of them, I'm only going a few miles per hour even with pedaling at 750W assist (class 2 ebike in the US). Given this is just proposing 250W->500W change, its not going far enough imo.
Agreed. I live in a city with hills up to a 26% grade, where most are around 18% if they are big steep hills. I have a 750w hub motor, and I have to work pretty hard to ride up the steeper stuff even with the motor helping. I absolutely love conventional bikes for stuff like downhill mountain biking, but if you are just trying to get to a friend's place or go swimming at the lake, taking an ebike is much more practical than finding a parking spot.
I think we need licensing for anything above 1kW or above 20mph. Similar to 49cc scooters (but maybe slower limits because of the difference in use of e-bikes.
The only downside I can see is unofficial mods removing the limit, which already happens of course but the issue becomes worse with a more powerful motor.
I ride an EUC that can put down north of 15KW, and after getting used to it over the past year I could honestly use more power for riding ATV trails. I've pulled 16KW just hopping tree roots at low speed. But then again, it can do 50mph up a 25% grade fairly easily.
I'm more scared of hitting an out of control bike with my car that can handle those speeds. Pedestrians are getting to ballsy imo. I don't want to accidentally kill someone because they were dumb.
I wish I could read the comments here.
Bikes here are capped at 25km/h. I think 30km/h would be nice, cause that's also the speedlimit in many cities here.
Exactly like minimum-wage, it needs to be calibrated to the local context, not to any ruler-brained arbitrary-rule.
in a region where it costs $10,000 per year to live, min-wage must provide that.
in a region where it costs $200,000 per year to live, min-wage must provide that.
the allowed power for a small 11yo child must be in-proportion to their muscle power, that their nervous-system can work-with, AND it must be in-proportion to their nervous-system's having grown-in sufficiently ( now I remember that some jurisdictions have a minimum-age for ATV's of 16yo, to drastically-reduce deaths .. )
The allowed power for an NFL eighthback ( or whatever the hell they have in sports ), cannot be legislated to be identical to that for a smaller/weaker person.
IOW, you need to have proportional e-assist motors, up to a certain limit, then stop, because now you're in motorcycle-territory, too much.
Arbitrary, context-free legislation ( like that gaslighting of claiming that "poverty" means being below $2US/day, no matter what cost-of-living one is subject to ), is dishonest.
I don't care either way, but I would like them banned on bike paths. I think once you have a motor, especially one that can travel at high speeds you belong in the street with cars, and not on the sides but fully like a motorbike. I've had way too many dudes clip me or others.
Just because someone is fit enough to properly themselves over 20 mph without a motor doesn't make it any safer when they crash.
Pedestrian area. Mobility scooters and pedestrians. No bikes. 5 mph
Bridal/cycle path. Weight limit on vehicles to avoid damage to paths. 15 mph limit.
Faster than 15 mph, on the road. Get a licence.
Slower than 10 mph, not allowed on the road. No cyclists or mobility scooters crawling up hills at walking pace blocking traffic.
This obviously requires roads to not be the only infrastructure built to get anywhere conveniently. But we really do need to separate commuting traffic into 2 parts and then have pedestrian areas at destinations.
In France it's legally a bike only if the electric assistance stops once you reach 25 km/h. Anything where the motor can go higher than that (or even something where the motor can push when you're not pedaling) is considered to be a light scooter and therefore need a license plate and can't go on bicycle paths.
I thinks it's pretty fair. The only issue is that some sellers advertise those little scooters as electric bikes so some people use them without being aware they're illegal.
I'm all for ya having fun and your right to hurt yourself.
I am a former racer, commuter, and professional Buyer for a chain of bike shops. I'm also disabled from the crash involving the 6th and 7th cars that have hit me in the last 170k+ miles of riding. I only barely survived what I simplify as a "broken neck and back." Cars making U-turns are what will get you if you ride long enough, especially commuting. It will look like just another person turning in front of you, you'll compensate like usual, and before your brain can even register what is really happening, what was your normal escape route will close and you're going to crash really hard. It is the only kind of crash that your intuition is useless against.
I digress, because I care too much. My point is that I still ride on a dedicated road bike trail. I encounter children on their Power Wheels™ /s doing wheelies all the time. I even have many playing chicken. Any small head injury is likely to kill me. I'm actually not all that concerned about dying. I've been present for two crashes where someone died. These things haunt you for life. I'd rather not die while stressed over the impact my struggle has on you for that 30-45 minutes if I am conscious. It will change your life nearly as much as mine.
Never do anything on a bike that requires anyone else to "trust you." Every time you have a close call in a car or on a bike due to another person's error, and you're mumbling to yourself "fucking idiot," that other person is saying to themselves or others "trust me, you're fine." Every time you tell yourself "trust me" you're everyone else's "fucking idiot."
No one is aware of all the things that can go wrong. However, I've been riding for a lot of miles. I know more than most what can go wrong. The most likely cause of my death on a bike right now is a naive child doing a wheelie. All it takes is a snapped chain, a fractured freehub pawl or outer bearing race, a tire blowout, a snapped spoke that causes a cascade of 3 or more spokes to break, or simple over confidence and a lack of balance. I have seen all of these things happen at least once.
The only time I appear completely fine to the casual observer is when I'm on a bike. I'm fast; likely faster than you typically ride at with lithium legs, and have a top speed in the mid thirties on flat ground without a tailwind, - if I care to try. What you can't see is the 10 years of spending most days laying down from not being able to hold posture, my constant back pain on par with a bad bee sting that never goes away or fades to background, or how I can't turn my head left anywhere near far enough to see over my shoulder.
The only way to help the issue of youthful irresponsibility on e-bikes is to develop a culture of shaming and shunning any fellow riders that endanger others on bike trails. That is a tough ask from youths that are notorious for a lack of well established and outspoken character capable of aligning positive traits through peer pressure. I type all this in the hopes that you are the exception to this stereotype.
Before they do that, they should make sure that ebikes and scooters no longer are a fire- and explosion hazard. Like that ebike that blew up in a London subway station.
Actually, the regulation for electric cars are way more stringent than anything regarding bikes or scooters. Some bikes and scooters are basically mobile death traps.
I personally don't need more, but I don't think I can say that no one does. My bike is already fast enough that I wear leathers when I'm gonna be taking it up to max speed, it'll do about 60km/h. It's technically not legal in my area, I didn't know that when I bought it, and no one seems to care about actually enforcing that, though I would imagine enforcement would like center around the selling more-so than the riding.
I think there isn't much reason why a motorbike is ok to be on the highway, but an e-bike capable of the same speed shouldn't be. But I do think e-bikes capable of that speed should need a motorbike class license to be driven on the road. And the same dress code should be expected. Dress for the slide, not the ride. I do also suspect the venn diagram of e-bike riders likely intersects more heavily with the safety conscious than does one for motorcyclists. So it should likely be less of a problem than the one that is already considered acceptable.