What's an E-Bike? California Wants You to Know

A fewer months ago, a household came into Pasadena Cyclery successful Pasadena, California, for a repair connected what they thought was their teenager’s e-bike. “I can’t hole that here,’ Daniel Purnell, a store manager and technician, remembers telling them. “That’s a motorcycle.” The parent got upset. She didn’t recognize that what she thought was an e-bike could spell overmuch faster, possibly up to 55 miles per hour.

“There’s decidedly an acquisition problem,” Purnell says. In California, motorcycle advocates are pushing a caller measure designed to wide up that disorder astir what counts arsenic an electrical bicycle—and what doesn’t.

It’s a tricky balance. On 1 hand, backers privation to let riders entree to new, faster, and much affordable non-car proscription options, ones that don’t necessitate licenses and are emission-free. On the different hand, people, and particularly kids, look to beryllium getting hurt. E-bike-related injuries jumped much than 1,020 percent nationwide betwixt 2020 and 2024, according to infirmary data, though it’s not wide if the stats-keepers tin routinely separate betwixt e-bikes and their faster, “e-moto” cousins. (Moped and powered-assisted rhythm injuries jumped 67 percent successful that aforesaid period.)

“We’re overdue to person amended e-bike regulation,” says California authorities legislator Catherine Blakespear, a Democrat who sponsored the measure and represents parts of North County successful San Diego. “This has been an ongoing and increasing contented for years.”

Senate Bill 1167 would marque it amerciable for retailers to statement higher-powered, electric-powered vehicles arsenic e-bikes. It would clarify that e-bikes person afloat operative pedals and electrical motors that don’t transcend 750 watts, capable to deed apical speeds betwixt 20 and 28 mph.

“We’re not against these devices,” says Kendra Ramsey, the enforcement manager of the California Bicycle Coalition, which represents riders and is promoting the legislation. “People deliberation they’re e-bikes and they're not truly e-bikes.”

Bill backers accidental they anticipation the fix, if it passes, makes a difference, particularly for teenagers, who emotion the state that electrical motors springiness them but tin get into occupation if thing goes incorrect astatine higher speeds. Kids 17 and younger accounted for 20 percent of US e-bike injuries from 2020 to 2024, astir successful enactment with the stock of the full population. But headlines—and the laws that travel them—have focused connected teen injuries and adjacent deaths.

There are nary nationalist laws governing e-bike riding. But motorcycle backers spent years moving betwixt states to walk laws that enactment e-bikes into 3 classes: Class 1, which person pedal-assist that lone works erstwhile they’re really pedaled, and goes up to 20 mph; Class 2, which person throttles that enactment without pedaling but inactive lone scope 20 mph; and Class 3, which usage pedal-assist to determination up to 28 mph. Plenty of states and cities restrict the astir almighty Class 3 bikes to radical older than 16. (In a analyzable twist, immoderate e-bikes person antithetic “modes,” allowing riders to toggle betwixt Class 2 and Class 3.)

Last year, researchers visited 19 San Francisco Bay Area mediate and precocious schools and recovered that 88 percent of the electrical two-wheeled devices parked determination were truthful high-powered and high-speed that they didn’t comply with the three-class strategy astatine all.

E-bikes person intelligibly struck a chord with authorities policymakers: At slightest 10 bills introduced this twelvemonth woody with e-bikes, according to Ramsey.

Some motorcycle advocates judge injuries person little to bash with e-bikes than “e-motos,” a class that’s little apt to look successful retail stores oregon the benignant of societal media ads attracting teens to the tech. These person much almighty motors and tin question successful excess of 30 mph. Vehicles, similar the Surron Ultra Bee, which tin deed apical speeds of 55 mph, oregon Tuttio ICT, which tin deed 50, are often marketed by retailers arsenic "electric bikes.” Because truthful galore income hap online, it tin beryllium hard for people, and particularly parents, to cognize what they’re getting into.