Or put it another way, if my 'electric motorcycle' is slower to accelerate and has a slower top speed than you could possibly manage on a bicycle, it's really not a 'motorcycle' in any way, no matter how many pedals it does or doesn't have.
The only difference is the experienced, lycra-clad cyclists with expensive bikes just get up to speed faster, maybe with less of a tailwind or downward grade. However, unlike their speedy novice kin, they (should, in theory) have better bike handling skills.
Overall, I think a strategy of banning with people the highest cycling skills from bike paths seems like a bad idea. Sure, you got weekend warrior dentists with fancy expensive bikes but their mediocre fitness level doesn't allow them to really extract significant benefit from their high-end cycling equipment. Their fancy aerodynamic carbon fiber bikes are probably only getting them a few mph over a classic steel frame. For more serious enthusiasts and professionals, those seconds matter... for everyone else it's just a flex.
At threshold power, I'm guessing more like 22-23mph.
And, not to toot my own horn, but that's a pretty damn fit experienced cyclist.
My point here is that it's not the bike that makes you go 40mph - it's the "engine" (the human) and the environment. Expensive human-powered bikes aren't going to magically turn someone who tops out at 20mph into someone doing twice that.
Having to work for high speeds, even if just rolling down a long hill on a “bare” machine, regardless of material or price, will create a much deeper mental involvement of what you got yourself into.
Thus, unassisted cyclists are (my guess and own experience) much more aware of their surroundings, what lies ahead and thus alert.
Things obviously can go wrong either way…
A novice rider will have a very hard time hitting 65km/h without going downhill or a strong back wind, even on a light bike. It's a challenge even for trained cyclists. So you won't see this on a city's streets but rather on open road.
But stopping fast and safe at those speeds is even harder than reaching them because you can't take your time to do it. A bike that can make it easy to reach them shouldn't share a lane with much slower and unpredictable participants, like regular lanes on sidewalks.
But I used to bike from Alameda into SF for nearly a decade. I even biked occasionally from Alameda to Menlo Park...
That being said, while I really want an E-bike, I am also cautious: I have fallen a lot, and I used to get my bikes up to 44 was the fastest I ever went, down the long bike path along Lexington Reserviour which we used to bike up every morning...
Going ~40 on ANY terrain on a mike is dangerous/scary as heck.
I've had bikes just literally vanish from beneath me and I went sailing through the air.
Never would I want to do that on something that weighs more than me....
PLUS - how do you carry Jacques bike up/down stairs to transition between trains/levels/whatever...
That wonderful hack looks heavy as heck, but lovely.
I live in a bike (and very e-bike heavy) US city and the rules don’t really get followed too much.
And I don’t blame anyone, because while there are inconsiderate people, speed comfortability is really relative. Some of my friends find just being on a bike scary versus my friends who skate through traffic just fine. I can’t invite them to the same things.
Surely even skilled cyclists should be permitted to use bike paths as long as they don’t tear by everyone at 40 mph. And I’m genuinely a bit unclear as to why no-pedaling-needed bikes shouldn’t be able to mingle with bikes as long as they follow the rules.
As a parallel example, from what I can tell, injuries on electric rental scooters haven't really dropped too much, they just stopped being news.
Ann Arbor recently changed it's laws to reflect that - and I think the cyclists who are aware they shouldn't be on sidewalks, and the e-cyclists who stick only to the sidewalks know who they are.
There are informal norms. Cyclists who cycle on sidewalks should be relatively new and should make sure to behave explicitly with all of the rules of the road (ie. don't run a red from the sidewalk as a cyclist, very dangerous. if you must, dismount and walk across or wait for the pedestrian light). Cyclists on the street are generally more experienced and do not have to explicitly follow all rules IMO.
For example, Kentucky law requires bicyclists over the age of 11 to use the streets. (Prohibits sidewalk usage.)
Washington state law allows sidewalk usage, but also requires wider sidewalks than the Kentucky minimum, and includes a lot of very specific wording about pedestrian right of way on sidewalks (sidewalks are theirs first) and mandate being very careful in overtaking pedestrians and other cyclists.
"Idaho stops", ie. treating stop signs as yields is both enshrined in law in a few different areas and should be law in many others.
Idaho stops are perfectly acceptable in my view.
Ann Arbor changed the law to make this legal: http://www.annarbor.com/news/bicyclists-dilemma-ride-on-the-....
And recently for E-Bikes as well: https://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/2021/09/ann-arbor-movin....
And yes, I know that California law states that bicycles have to be on the road, but that doesn't reflect reality. And, in fact, at least in Redwood City, I never once (In 5 years of walking every day, and seeing dozens of cyclists every day) saw a police officer cite a cyclist for riding on the sidewalk - though, that isn't the case in Southern California, where I read an NYT article that people of color are routinely stopped/searched for doing so - in much the same way people are cited in some cities for "Jay Walking" - which is a universally accepted behavior in other cities.
But, one thing I think you and I can agree on, that cyclists on the sidewalk have to show the utmost in courtesy to pedestrians, and not go racing along at high (> 8mph or so) speeds - essentially occupy the same speed as your typical jogger might. Also, another topic we might agree on - Bicycle Lanes just make things safer for everyone, cyclist and pedestrian alike.
"Free pass" for electric motorbikes? What is that person on about? Why have meaningless distinctions between pedaling or not, when the overriding goal should be "promote bike use over vehicle use"?
What societal good, what good to the citizen, is it to place burdens on e-bikes that are not pedal assist?
Although it can be applied with a bit much snark sometimes. :)
Are there not speed limits for bike lanes? Most cars have a top speed well above the freeway speed limit too.
KE = 0.5 * v * v * mThis is why I often ride my 40 km/h max electric moped on bike paths. Cars don't give me enough following distance so I'm not risking my life there. I also slow down drastically when passing pedal bikers.
I have been a very very fast cyclist in the past, and when I'm down on my aero bars and doing 40-50kph under my own power, I'm very aware that I'm (a) working hard (b) going fast. This makes me not want to crash, if only because I'd lose all that hard-earned speed.
But I've seen the same effect in cars too. If I drive a very quiet and "smooth" vehicle on a very smooth road, its way too easy to go substantially beyond the speed limit, because I just don't have the perception of "an engine working hard to propel things forward". Switch a noisy, vibrating vehicle on a rougher road, and I'm much more aware of what is going on and will definitely keep my speed under control.
I haven't driven a Tesla or similar, so I have no idea how their near-silent engine affects this sort of thing. On paper, it seems likely to be bad :)
Small car: 1500kg
Bike: 10kg
Escooter: 3kg (?)
A typical ride has me providing 40 to 60% of the Joules and the remainder comes out of the battery. If there is a very heavy wind up (not rare here) that might drop to 30/70 and if I have a tailwind it is the reverse. The bike has a nice stats display where it tracks all this stuff. Maximum assist is 350W (10A current out of a nominally 36V battery), at the wheel considerably less than that, this is only used when starting up from a complete stop. The rest of the time you're at a small fraction of that.
Note that this varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. In the US e-bikes with throttles are legally classified as Class 2 electric bicycles and are generally legal for use in bicycle infrastructure as long as they don't exceed 20 MPH.
FYI, the US classes are as follows: (1) 20 MPH (32 km/h) max, pedal-assist; (2) 20 MPH max, throttle; (3) 28 MPH (45 km/h) max, pedal-assist.
Americans are generally clueless about e-bike laws. This includes police and e-bike owners. American e-bikes are marketed as having throttles, being to bypass traffic at high speeds using the bike lanes and bike paths, and not needing licensing/registration. As an analog cyclist, my experience is that e-bikers jump the lines at red lights, sometimes shoving you out of the way. With the bulk of my cargo bike, they sometimes instead jump around me on the sidewalk instead, which is kind of funny-terrifying to watch with their heavy bikes. On bike paths, e-bikes stand out for their high speed in crowds and you wonder if the "assist" from the motor is a binary on/off.
If all bikes were given more room and more consideration from drivers, this may not even be a real problem as each type would be able to spread out. But the infrastructure is pretty poor and police enforcement against drivers is even worse. So all the "alt transportation" people need to cram together in whatever meager space was won at the last road reconstruction meeting. E-bikes look great for converting drivers to bikes so no one wants to talk about banning them. But they also end up keeping their car driver mentality of me-first and objectifying everything else on the road around them.
Agreed, poor infrastructure serves as an amplifier of irritation between classes of vehicles that should not even be sharing the same pathways except to occasionally cross. The USA is very much car centric, I'm not even sure if I would ride a bike there. Where I live we have pretty good infra but even here e-bikes and s-pedelecs have upset the order a bit. But I'm sure it will work out in the long term.
There, fixed that for you.
But they also end up keeping their car driver mentality of me-first and objectifying everything else on the road around them.
This is a great point, and I've observed the same behavior among analog cyclists as well (I've been a regular bike commuter for over 20 years in a city without much cycling infrastructure). Many cycling advocates don't realize that simply getting people on bikes isn't the end goal. It really needs to be about changing the way people move through space among their fellow citizens.
[0] https://www1.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/ebikes-more-engl...
Who's going to confiscate this bike????
Most european cops if they catch you: some countries may treat s-pedelecs as bikes, but in most it's a moped, you need a driving license, insurance, a license plate, and all the legal equipment of a moped (e.g. lights, rear view mirror), and commonly type approval (which is going to be very, very expensive). Also can't use cycle paths.
Over the last few years many (but probably not all) member countries have passed laws to treat devices not exceeding 25km/h to bikes, but that's only for hard-limited devices, not "I swear I don't go faster than 25", the latter? mopeds.
The amount of bureaucracy in Europe for completely mundane things is completely unbelievable.
Getting a Driver's license in France, for example, is an uphill battle against a very hostile administration. I can completely see why some tried to dodge some of these absurd regulations by innovating in the e-bike space.
Having a tiny bike barely able to break the 25mph limit be considered a moped just because it has a throttle as well as pedal assist is completely ridiculous.
Yeah, what is the world coming to when a moped is considered a moped? Insanity. Cats and dogs living together.
And really speed is what matters here. Who cares if it's pedal-assist or throttle so long as you aren't going markedly faster than normal people without any motor at all? There's no safety concern.
Silly comparison, but we wouldn't let a car drive on the sidewalk even if it had a special module that limited it to 5km/h.
We do in the UK - it's perfectly normal for cars (including police cars) to mount and drive along the pavement, before being left there
And it’s not like it doesn’t happen in the US either. Most residential streets don’t have sidewalks in the first place so technically parking in front of a house without a curb or lane is the exact equivalent. Just because it isn’t explicitly marked as a sidewalk doesn’t mean it isn’t treated as one when it’s the only option.
Big-tire "e-bikes" with disk brakes are really light motorcycles. Forget the pedals and admit it.
Those things are amazing. Here are a few photos I took of a dude in Amsterdam riding a bakfiets carrying an outdoor urinal.
Cars also have huge blind spots and if a bike rider gets in an accident, it’s usually very painful for them too, so their incentives to avoid accidents are quite high.
Probably a lot more reasons as well.
"Who cares if it's pedal-assist or throttle so long as you aren't going markedly faster than normal people without any motor at all?"
And my point is that there are a lot of devices out there that are legally an ebike, and therefore have access to bike infrastructure provided the observe a 20MPH speed limit, but that are in reality much heavier and less maneuverable than what most people consider a "bicycle".
Obviously this has been lost on the downvoters, but just as some examples, if I were out with my kids cycling on a multi-use path, I would not be thrilled to have "bikes" like these passing me at 20MPH:
- bakfietsen (cargo bikes)
- delivery bikes
- e-scooters (25 kph)
- e-scooters (45 kph)
- regular scooters
- mopeds
And all of those you can encounter on a bike path. I cycle daily with my kids on the way to school in traffic and I spent a lot of time over the years educating them to be safe. This is pretty hard work because kids really have the attention span of mosquitos and tend to be very easily distracted.
The scooters are the biggest danger, followed by cars, cars, cars and cars. E-bikes and other bike like devices have never over the course of many 1000's of rides to school and back been a problem. This is NL, so that may well be different where you live, here bikes are pretty well respected in traffic as long as you don't mix it up with the cars.
I've built several e-bikes, for fun, and like the author of this article, I've got a long range one, but only with about half of his battery capacity, which is enough for me.
A touring bike frame with 700c wheels and a more stretched out position would likely allow you to travel at the same speed for lower total power output - and make your battery go further (or not require such a large battery).
Here is a picture of one:
http://dutchbikes.nl/artwork2/kv4/passing.jpg
and a video:
I really need to understand what's the difference with a throttle and a pedal assist whose curve is basically so that it gives all power at a ridiculously low pedaling rate...
Edit to say nice job on the project, this is awesome. Here in Texas, I would love to see a lot of people using these in the bike lane.
Eh, it depends if you see pedal assistance being the defining difference between a bike and a motorbike.
From a safety perspective, speed may be a better differentiator.
As a kid my first response to pretty much anything with a dial was to turn it up all the way and see what happened. That's a behavior I saw quite a bit during the brief plague of VC-funded scooters: novices at 100% motor output rocketing down sidewalks, etc. That's much less likely to happen it they have to pedal hard to get the top speed.
Do you actually ride bikes on roads? This is there because if you're going slow on an actual road you're more likely to get killed because of a car hitting you.
I'm honestly exhausted at this FUD when it's actively fucking with my life as a bike rider on a main road. Even Netherlands allows fully motorized vehicles that are small on their bike paths.
Stop thinking of this as a "free pass" and more of "what's actually the safest for bikers and pedestrians.
Anyone who's comparing ebike speeds to rider speeds: most people new to riding bikes cannot sustain riding at 30kph (18.5mph) for probably more than 5 minutes, less if there's any gradual elevation. As such, bikes are "safe" because there's an inherent speed limiter. You pedal really fast, go fast, then you get tired and chill out.
By having a throttle-only mode, the rider never tires and will just want to go fast all. the. time.
> Stop thinking of this as a "free pass" and more of "what's actually the safest for bikers and pedestrians.
What's safest for bikers and pedestrians on multi-use paths (MUP) would be if ebikes actually followed the Class 1 rules and were limited to 32kph/20mph on these paths. (imo, 20mph is already pretty darn fast.) If folks want to go faster, then do it on the street. If you want to rip the throttle wide open, don't do it where a child is learning how to ride their bike or where people are just enjoying a leisurely stroll.
Agreed, but this is also leading to problems: people on racing bikes, especially in groups that occupy the whole width of the bike path.
In general the problem is much simpler: people should treat the roads like a commons and adapt to the slowest present user. That's the safest way, and if that means you'll be a little later at your destination then maybe you should have left a little earlier. And on a racing bike you are no better than any other cyclist, ditto for e-bikes and s-pedelecs. It's a shared resource and a bit of common sense and respect for each other goes a long way.
Oh gosh, I wish this was the case, but the past two years of anti-masking / anti-vaccinations have clearly illustrated that there is no common good in Modern America.
Is this really true? When I was in France using the Uber bikes to get around I could get up to top speed using almost no effort on the pedals and never found myself getting tired. They really require almost no effort to get up to top speed.
Maybe it sounds like the solution is that a throttle should only take you up to a lower speed though if this is the problem? Like pushing a button can take you to 15 but waggling your feet can take you to 25?
To clarify, my original post was about non-electric bicycles, but my experience with pedal-assist ebikes [Jump (RIP) and Citibike/Baywheels] was that they were noticeably heavy and after a few blocks of pedaling really hard, I'd tire out and slow down. Perhaps you're gifted with a very high vo2max?
In most other places that don't have dedicated bike lanes drive on the side of the road, same places scooters normally drive.
What both riders and pedestrians need is better car free infrastructure so we can stop it with the biking means going fast business. An ebike capped at something like the top speed of a human is a very different beast than a normal bike even if their top speeds are the same because the ebike is much more likely to actually be at those speeds at any point in time.
Or perhaps momentum, which is far higher in motorised vehicles.
Note: I commuted by electric bicycle before I switched to working remote, and I have to say that riding a vehicle that tops out at ~30mph when you're slamming the throttle _and_ pedaling as hard as you can on a road with cars and trucks going 45mph (or faster) is a harrowing experience. The few miles where I rode on bicycle paths, though, I capped my speed at 15-20mph (around what a decent cyclist would do) and slowed to 5-10mph when I was approaching foot traffic or other cyclists - and nobody ever batted an eye (except a few people who wanted to know where they could get one, heh).
Why? Seems like a pointless distinction in regards to any sort of rules. Surely where they're allowed to operate, for example, should be based on things like speed and weight, rather than "whether or not the operator is moving their legs in a circular motion."
Which seems besides the point. The reason you can't ride a motorcycle in the bike lane isn't because you haven't worked hard enough to deserve it, it's because of the top speeds and mass of the vehicles presenting a danger to others in the lane. It's the same reason cars present such a danger to cyclists - the scale of kinetic energy going around is just too high.
I think fast e-bikes are a technologically interesting thing, but from a regulatory point of view I'm much more mixed. ~30 kph seems eminently reasonable for bike infrastructure, and I'm excited about the ability for that to displace car trips - both from a sustainability perspective and a road capacity perspective. Much faster than that though?
A lot of people, adults in particular, appear to have an aversion to riding bicycles due to their inability to place both feet on the ground while seated (and I'm speaking here about the standard bicycle geometry, not recumbents, etc.).
It's too bad too because you would love to get more people out of large steel cars and into efficient e-bikes/scooters.
I wish we could lighten up a bit with regard to requiring pedals/pedalling and try saving the planet a little.
Now I’m annoyed that in the UK we use “moped” for Vespa style scooters which have no pedals.
(I was already mildly annoyed that we use “scooter” for Vespa style vehicles which you sit on and are entirely motorised, when it really describes the variant skateboard with handlebars you stand on using one foot and ‘scoot’ along using the other foot for propulsion).
A bicycle which you can use without using the pedals is, to me, not the definition of a bicycle.
> Surely where they're allowed to operate, for example, should be based on things like speed and weight, rather than "whether or not the operator is moving their legs in a circular motion."
speed / weight and acceleration. But I'm still not sure about that. Bicycle lanes were made, at first, for people cycling. In European cities it's part of an overall move to be "greener": what's green about a vehicle with can be used without doing any exercise at all? You basically took the ICE engine of a motorbike and put instead an electric motor.
KTM (motorbike company) is already in to e-bike game. These companies are going to come and game the system as much as they can if limits aren't set: they'll otherwise build ultra light full-carbon e-bike with crazy fast acceleration and the selling point is going to be "It's a motorbike you can use in a bicycle lane".
I do honestly think saying: "if you don't need to pedal at all, it's not a bicycle and hence cannot use the bicycle lanes" (like they're apparently doing in the Netherlands) ain't a bad rule.
The "green" movement is about the environment, not exercise.
> You basically took the ICE engine of a motorbike and put instead an electric motor.
That's the "green" part. ICE is not "green". Electric is.
My point is what difference does it make? Like I said, if you want to cap weight or speed, or maybe acceleration, within given areas, fine. But who cares whether or not you classify it as a "bicycle." If a person wants to exercise on their way to work or get there in a suit without having to shower, I don't care.
(Or if it doesn't matter from a safety perspective, what's the practical need to legislate against it?)
In the end the governments decided to limit the power for e-bikes, limit their speed and tie it in with pedalling. S-pedelecs have all those restrictions but they're a bit higher, so you can have more power, go a bit faster but you still have to work to get to some speed. On 'takeoff' my bike can briefly do 350 Watt bursts but that quickly falls off to 150 and at the maximum speed (45 kph) it's like driving into a wall if you want to go above, the motor cuts out completely and there is considerable drag.
If both are the same safety, why make one illegal? It seems like a law which restricts liberty for no reason (other than legislative convenience, or because 'the government decided to tie it in with pedalling because they decided to').
It seems like the argument is 'bikes with pedals which can be powered with a button can never be classified as bikes because existing laws say that they are not classified as bikes'.
S-pedelecs, and e-bikes are a new development and so fall between the cracks. Riding them on the bike paths may endanger other cyclists, riding them on the main roads endangers the users of the s-pedelecs and e-bikes. There isn't really a 'third class' and legislators all over are struggling with this classification problem.
Tieing in s-pedelecs with pedalling rather than with throttle based systems is a legal hack, but in practice the hack works quite well. The only situation where it doesn't is when you ride an s-pedelec in city traffic where you are forced to ride between the cars, who get irritated because you are measurably slower than they are. Plenty of towns are re-considering this now and are making explicit allowance for s-pedelecs to use the bike paths. But there are already so many 45kph scooters that break the law that the difference is likely negligible.
If we classify stuff together and then ask what legislation we want to enact it’s clearly backwards.
This is why in UK law at least classifications are generally tied into specific bits of legislation (ie definitions).
As long as they'r not causing problems for other cyclists, they're still a big win in terms of transportation: way less carbon usage and occupies less space.
They cause problems. Maybe not every e-motorcycle rider, but most of them take full advantage of the power to out-accelerate other bikers and double the top speed of everyone around them.
Bike paths were design with typical cyclist speeds in mind. It's not uncommon to see a young kid flying down our local bike paths at 40mph or more on a modded e-bike, forcing all of the pedestrian and other cyclists to get out of the way as fast as possible. Worse, two e-bikers flying toward each other at 40mph in opposite directions is the same as one of them crashing at 80mph. Those speeds aren't really appropriate for bike paths, yet here we are.
I frequently run into young e-bikers or e-motorcycle riders on my local trails who are flying at unexpectedly high speeds. They're also tearing up the trails at a rate much faster than normal bikes because the rider has less control over wheelspin and is more prone to throttle out of corners than someone with a direct connection to the drivetrain.
I was a fan of e-bikes when they first came out, but the current incarnation of e-bikers and e-motorcyclists is quite bad in the real world. Again, not every e-biker, but many of the most prolific e-bike riders on my local trails are the same ones running modified e-bikes with too much power and manual throttles.
I'm not sure if people are using these terms colloquially or if they are codified in law or generally accepted, so I may be making some false assumptions here: as an ICE motorcycle rider, using the term 'e-motorcycle' to refer to what is effectively a no-pedal bicycle dramatically overstates the capabilities and gives a false impression of what such a vehicle/device is.
While some no-pedal electric bikes probably can move at a decent clip, I have to imagine that they're much closer to pedal bike than motorcycle performance.
People put pedal kits on them to try and hide the fact it's basically a super light motorbike but in my experience it's not really suitable for riding on bike paths or trails.
Devices like in the OP are much more of a grey area as it's basically impossible to tell their power output / weight on an individual basis...
The full throttle mode of a eBike is limited to 20mph (specifically in the US). I have one, and even when in full assist mode have been passed by dayglo spandex wearing bikers like I was sitting still.
- only if one of them weighs infinitely more than the other.
Okay, but if they cause problems then that's already...a problem.
And if a frog had wings, it wouldn't bump its ass when it hops. "Other cyclists"? They're not cyclists, they're motorcycle riders, for starters. Now any jackass can zoom down the bike path at 25-30mph, but yeah, as long as that doesn't cause problems...
Class 1 and 2 are currently allowed on all paved paths that bicycles are allowed on.
Class 3 does not require a license, may use the lanes on roads for bicycles, but not walk/bike paths. You also must be 16 or older to operate one.
Enforcement is currently nonexistent where I live. I regularly see people with ostensibly class 2 e-bikes going 50kph, having modified the motor controller.
Internal combustion engines contribute substantially to pollution and human-caused climate change. Motor vehicle accidents maim and kill lots of people every year yet fans of that form of transportation hand wave it off as irrelevant.
We don't have to speed blindly into the future on our current vector. We can change course. It will take work and creative solutions.
Not to say such concerns shouldn't be brought up but they shouldn't be brought up in a manner that sounds entirely dismissive of a new solution with a lot of promise. Ideally, it gets brought up in a more constructive fashion overall that is more conducive to meaningful engagement and less prone to simply making people mad or defensive.
I own and frequently ride e-bike, and am an advocate. That being said, operating one should be done responsibly.
Perhaps your comment could inspire some useful discourse if it were worded less negatively?
The other factor dividing the two realms in practice is control: in a bicycle the speed is directly a function of leg activity: does the "legs independent" motor-bicycle offer the basically same degree of control?
Maintaining 25mph requires in excess of 300 watts. Some 90% of the population won't be able to produce that for a mere minute.
Do you ride bikes or mostly just e-bike?
A free pass for what ?
You dont need a motor to reach 40kph on a bike, plenty of people can do it with only their legs. What we can do is limit the speed on bike lanes, but that means we could allow any vehicule on it. There is no reason a motorbike couldn't go on a bike lane if it goes slower than 20kh as most people on bike reach that speed.
It is not because you are on a bike that you have to go on a bike lane.
No, we can't because of momentum. We could never allow a car or a heavy motorcycle to drive on pedestrian/bike lines even if they are at low speeds.
That sounds very American. Don’t we have Vespa scooters and mopeds in the USA as well? There are plenty of bike formats between bicycle and motorbikes.
In China most e-bikes aren’t pedal assists and no one would ever claim they were car road worthy vehicles, they got bike lanes or the side of the road, and are not allowed on the ring road. American bike lanes seems to be recreational, whereas in other countries that are oriented much more at daily life and more heavily used.
Mopeds with engines under 50cc and that have pedals are often treated differently than motorcycles but some states still require licensing and registration similar to a motorcycle.
An an American, I agree with your assessment. to me, Vespas and Mopeds are motorbikes. they burn gas.
Pedal assist ebikes are a new category to me, and I don't think any of the current rules make much sense for that.
I’m sure most American heads would explode if they ever saw how moped, scooter, small motorbike traffic mixed with cars in Southeast Asia.
This is a huge change from my first trip in 1999, when you had huge rivers of bike traffic, and gas powered non-car vehicles required special circumstances (a lot of the gas powered rickshaw drivers were ex military or handicapped). Because most Beijingers were never allowed to move to gas, they embraced electric pretty quickly.
15mph and has a throttle = electric motorbike (and also illegal)...
But make that 15mph illegal electric motorbike 10mph faster and add extra hardware so users have to waggle their feet around in a circle to trigger the motors... SUDDENLY LEGAL!
I highly doubt there are any safety benefits from pedalling - it seems like an arbitrary limit.
Of course it is, all limits are arbitrary, even if informed. Lawmakers probably picked limits which would be reasonably achievable by average healthy humans over long distances.
I should have really said purposeless!
Usually limits have a purpose - for instance limiting the speed of cars by law is because of accident reduction.
Unless the argument is that pedalling makes it safer, it seems to be a limit for no particular reason.
The point of pedelec regulations (in europe anyway) is to be a baseline: anything which satisfies the pedelec specs must be treated as a bicycle by all member states, so if you have a pedelec you know that it will be usable as a bike throughput the union. Member states can go beyond if they want to.
There is no significant difference between "pedal assist" and a hand-operated throttle. It would be really nice if the politicians would recognize this and remove the meaningless class 1 / class 2 distinction based purely on the location of the throttle. (Though to be fair there are many more sensible places which already treat them the same.)
The penalties for having such a hack detected on your bike - assuming you would get away with it - is confiscation. I would strongly advise against such tricks.
You can see how much work just changing out the battery was. There are plenty of parties selling limiter removers or speed boxes but they're all illegal and you are uninsured when using such a device. My bike is perfectly legal to ride.
This does not match reality at all. E-bikes are some of the most modify-able and hackable devices out there. Most of the parts are interchangeable, and a decent portion of these bikes are assembled piece by piece. I can change the acceleration profile of mine at will, via bluetooth. Amperage limits, battery codes, everything. I have used many devices and parts and kits, and have never even once seen DRM present.
Hint: you won't be able to, the key is embedded in an NXP processor that has it's fuses blown (both sides, controller and battery) and any kind of hacking you want to do will have to be at the sensor level and even there I would advise you to use an older version of the firmware because the newer ones are very good at detecting such hacks.
Every s-pedelec that I'm aware of is legal to buy and drive on the roads here is locked down. The Bosch system is the one that I now have extensive experience with and the handshake between the controller, the motor and then battery is of a complexity level that I have not managed to crack it despite a serious effort in that direction. Time will tell if I will eventually manage to run my own firmware but right now I'm not hopeful that that will ever happen (I'd love to update the range computation algorithm).
Regular e-bikes (the 25 kph version) are hacked with abandon but even then you are no longer legal (here, in NL and many other european countries). The Bosch system (which has substantial market share in that domain) can be hacked but only at the sensor level, and it's clever enough that it tries to detect such trickery and if it does it will brick itself. The factory diagnostic software contains a field for 'cheat detected' and it's pretty sensitive (to the point that sometimes bikes that have not been modified get flagged).
If you get a supermarket Bafang or other bike, especially older models then you are likely going to be able to hack it, but there too you won't find any s-pedelecs.
The few brands that sell them are all pretty good at locking down their stuff. Build a bike from parts and it's a different story, but then you won't get a license plate, type approval or insurance and your bike won't be legal to drive on the roads.
"These bikes" as in pedelecs in general. Not just ones with Bosch parts, and not just the ones that are available legally as regular "pedelecs" rather than "s-pedelecs" in NL or the EU. In most cases you wouldn't even need to hack them; this is how they work from the store.
I've never seen a thumb throttle burn down someones house. Alibaba batteries though? https://endless-sphere.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=87975
Note how the theme of safety has been paramount during this build, during the use and even in case of a crash or other accident, this wasn't a 'oh let's build a pack' project done in 48 hours, you're looking at a couple of months of research and work.
As for Alibaba batteries: you get what you pay for, and I would never use a pack for a project like this with cells that I haven't tested myself, each and every one to a very high standard.
It just seems like bureacracy gone totally out of control. You take bicycles, possibly the pinnacle of appropriate technology, a set of tools can fit in a shoebox and nearly anyone can take apart and fix every last piece, and its super useful. Now incredibly there comes along additional components capable of augmenting and improving the bicycle. Add a multimeter and wirestrippers to your bike toolkit, attach a battery to your frame, replace a wheel or bottom bracket with a motor and any bike becomes an ebike, incredible. But then the law decides to ruin incredible by saying only select pre-approved models can be ridden. And making certain modifications is completely illegal, but dramatically internally modifying is allowed and even insurable.
I hope your pack is safe. Some aspects of the design seem inherently safe like using that many batteries in parallel for a 350 watt load, the peak usage will always be below the continuous rating of the cells. I'm no electrical safety professional but I have taken some workplace safety 101 online website multiple choice certification things and theres some issues i wonder about. Hopefully you've addressed and mitigated all of these concerns already, or plan to as you finalize the build, or get lucky, or are at least aware and prepared if a failure does occur. Here comes more internet stranger critique:I saw nothing about shock and vibration design, no drop tests, no mention of short circuit tests, no thermal measurements taken during a controlled charge/discharge, no mention of arc flash considerations during your assembly, first time use of a new tool that was uncontrollabe/inconsistent during assembly, possibly wasn't connected to a suitable electrical source, an ad-hoc decision to do 3x the number of welds w/no mention of ensuring that didn't overheat the cell.. And that's simple stuff any hobbyist is capable of, nothing compared to controlled third party testing that would be done to certify a commercial pack.
And how many man hours of development and testing do you think go into that commercial battery pack you can buy? Probably more than 2 months. And they're equipped with mutual nda's and proprietary data from manufacturers, vs youtube, online distributors, and some guts of a bosch bms. This was a first time pack build, manufacturers probably destructively tested more packs of each of their models than you have built, and at some point economies of scale and upfront investment give them access to superior manufacturing processes and materials. And because laws get applied equally to every person, consider this project built by another version of you, equally confident and less skilled or lucky, do they too get the official thumbs up to ride it in public?
In the USA if you wanted a 2 kwh pack you can buy them premade, although thats the largest they sell currently, and replace any ebikes battery with it, convert any bike into an ebike, or buy a third party assembled bike with it, or buy from a custom manufacturer that integrates the battery and motor into the frame itself. And needless to say you can put any motor or drive on it. But the idea of licensing, registering, and insuring a bicycle is an unheard of, and its especially word to have anyone inspect your bike or care what parts are on it. Entirely different worlds but it just feels like the European regulations introduce big limitations on the potential.
So, this is why this project took a couple of months instead of a few days. I don't just slap stuff together.
The pack is 9 layers, has two inner layers of foam to cushion shocks, is shrink wrapped twice, uses high density ABS spacers instead of glue the way other people build their packs (at the expense of some space), has the wiring very carefully routed so that shorts are not just unlikely but pretty much impossible. The 'inconsistent' welds problem was solved by the overkill method: where a manufacturer would use two welds I used six, trial welds on bad cells proved that I could not tear the cells from the welds without major damage to the cell structure, in other words: those welds are pretty solid. I also measured their internal resistance across all cell groups, and monitored each group during a pretty stressful charge/discharge cycle to see what would happen to the interconnects. On the electrical front there is thermal monitoring, voltage and current monitoring, short circuit protection, overcharge and undercharge protection.
That pack is safe, short of getting crushed.
Also, and in case you're not a aware of it, I built a one-off windmill, 5 meters in diameter, rated for 2.5 KW, had a couple of Canadian winter storms attempt to take it down but it survived everything, built an overhead crane, a computer controlled plasma cutter and owned a fair sized machine shop. I'm not your average DIY person, and spent probably more time on safety on this particular design than I did on anything else.
I would trust this pack over a manufactured one, including the ones that Bosch puts out. I didn't do a drop test but that's mostly because this is a one-off and a after a drop test I would simply discard the pack, there is no way to do that non-destructively with a battery this heavy. That said, I'm very sure that the pack inside the foam core would be fine (it's dimensioned for that) but the housing would crack for sure.
As for why the bike is still legal: type approval is mostly related to the drive train, the maximum power the motor can put out, the degree to which it amplifies the pedal input power and various cut-outs, the batteries are not subject to the type approval, you can buy and fit aftermarket batteries for many bikes.
That said, your concern is appreciated.
Plenty of people 'technically' break the law in small ways every day. If your bike looks like a normal bike, and you're not doing outlandish speeds, I'm not sure it matters whether or not your bike is 'technically legal'.
My 'legalistic outlook' is mostly informed by the local news.
But don't take my word for it, have a read:
https://www.google.com/search?channel=fs&q=opgevoerde+e-bike...
Alternatively if you software configure a motor controller so that it sends motor current from a throttle instead of a torque sensor in the pedals, you'll be busted?
In what jurisdiction?
Edit: just realized it’s your article and you’re in NL. Confiscation might be an issue there but it’s not universal by any stretch.
Most pedal-assist-only ebikes can run without you pedaling (and without a throttle either). You just need to pedal fast at first, and then take your feet off the pedals. (You can rest them at the center of the frame for example.)
Usually, if there is some friction in the system (but not too much) the pedals will keep on turning, making the bike think actual pedaling is going on. And then the system is self-sustaining (battery permitting, of course).
It's quite funny to do; not very practical, or elegant, but fun.
That would legalize my e-bike that I have used for 14000km in city saving a lot of carbon emissions and not sacrificing much as I can park it in bicycle stand.
Of course going faster than 20-25km/h in pedestrian traffic (where bicycles are allowed) is extremely dangerous. But from my experience going fast in car traffic 35-40 km/h (where bicycles are allowed) is safer than chugging along slowly as cars don't have a need for overtaking between traffic lights.
No one argues that people in electric wheel chairs are really driving ATV quads.
https://www.cronachemaceratesi.it/2017/04/18/il-museo-del-si...
We do absolutely need good laws and conventions here, for safety and fairness. But i don't think basing them on a classification is the way to write them.
There are bike lanes that are on normal streets and then there are bike paths that are often shared with pedestrians.
I think there is a solid case that bike lanes adjacent to streets are for commuters. The main argument is that the entire argument for installing bike lanes was to provide an alternative to driving.
The bike paths are a bit different. A lot of places in the US will have paths that ban anything with a 'motor'. In the past this just meant that motorcycles including small [sic] mopeds were banned as well. However, in recent years it isn't unusual for someone to use these paths wile riding a e-bike or e-scooter. IMO the main reason for banning motors was that those vehicles were loud and larger than a bike/scooter.
I think that since it's practical to use a e-bike/e-scooter at the normal non-assisted speeds the proper solution is to just have speed limits in places to protect pedestrians and other bikers.
A bike lane far from a city center could have the same speed limit as the road since the it's going to be mostly commuters using it. A bike lane closer to a university campus might have a speed of 15 or 20mph since those lanes will have a lot more traffic and a greater mixture of e-bikes and regular bikes.
A bike path that connects the bike lane to the bike parking area would be like 15mph. A shared sidewalk/path with pedestrians might have a max speed of <10mph.
I think the only group that might loose out is the pure-bicyclists that are used to using the bike lanes more like a gym so having to share the bike lanes with e-bikes could be an issue. But even then I think very few of them tend to ride during the peak commuter hours.
I think that is the best name, since mopeds also have pedals that nobody uses.
There should be no distinction, legally, between a normal bicycle and an electric bike of any kind (throttle or otherwise).
Personal Electric (micro) Mobility is the answer to many problems, let's not add any roadblocks to adoption. Other than keeping powers-that-be comfortable and sparing the feelings of cycling puritans, the distinction is useless, bordering on harmful to the environment.
The problem is that tourists and knaves are constantly riding them on paths that are marked pedestrian-only (sometimes due to unfamiliarity with the path system, though often intentionally). Even when they stick to the adjacent bike lanes the scooters accelerate and go so much faster than bikes they are constantly putting pedestrians and slower cyclists in danger. If they stuck to bike lanes on streets it wouldn’t be so bad, but I worry there will soon be a raft of Bernie Goetz style vigilante clotheslining of irresponsible riders.
On good e-bikes I've ridden, the pedaling is basically limited to telling the motor to go, no meaningful force involved. Sure, you can put "controls motor with button" and "controls motor with pedal" into different legal categories, but I doubt there is much of a benefit in doing so.
I see the two as totally different things: I've tried pedal-assist e-bike and they're great. But... Although I have nothing against motorbikes I'm not cool at all with basically motorbikes getting a free pass because they're disguised as bicycles.
BTW this reminds me of the old french "Solex / VéloSolex": basically a real engine put on top of the front wheel, and able to accelerate by itself without the need to pedal. But the thing still had pedals. I used to use one and still have one in a garage. But I didn't use it on the bicycle lanes...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A9loSoleX