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.
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.