New California bill to require license plates for electric bikes(electrek.co)
electrek.co
New California bill to require license plates for electric bikes
https://electrek.co/2026/02/19/new-california-bill-to-require-license-plates-for-electric-bikes/
8 comments
Making different rules depending on the class of e-bikes make sense vs just pretending all e-bikes are "bikes" and allowed everywhere bikes are, even though at some point they are more akin to motorcycles.
In Europe this is mostly working well, although depending on the country there are still a lot of illegal (heavy, fast, throttle-equipped, unlicensed, beyond even class 3) bikes on the roads, bike lanes and bike paths.
One benefit is that when you go to buy an e-mountain bike in Europe, the ones for sale are all class 1, and everyone understands only class 1 are legal and allowed on most mountain bike trails. In America nobody cares about class and many just buy the fastest, crappiest model that comes with a "class 1" sticker as well as a setting to bypass all the class 1 limitations. As a result, there are more and more blanket bans on all e-bikes on mountain bike trails in America.
In Europe this is mostly working well, although depending on the country there are still a lot of illegal (heavy, fast, throttle-equipped, unlicensed, beyond even class 3) bikes on the roads, bike lanes and bike paths.
One benefit is that when you go to buy an e-mountain bike in Europe, the ones for sale are all class 1, and everyone understands only class 1 are legal and allowed on most mountain bike trails. In America nobody cares about class and many just buy the fastest, crappiest model that comes with a "class 1" sticker as well as a setting to bypass all the class 1 limitations. As a result, there are more and more blanket bans on all e-bikes on mountain bike trails in America.
>In Europe this is mostly working well, although depending on the country there are still a lot of illegal (heavy, fast, throttle-equipped, unlicensed, beyond even class 3) bikes on the roads, bike lanes and bike paths.
There were a lot of these in Oxford (UK) until a year or two ago when they all got replaced with scooters[1]. I suspect the police started clamping down on the illegal e-bikes which are easy to spot.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scooter_(motorcycle)
There were a lot of these in Oxford (UK) until a year or two ago when they all got replaced with scooters[1]. I suspect the police started clamping down on the illegal e-bikes which are easy to spot.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scooter_(motorcycle)
Seeing this while the 75 year old who killed a whole family of 4 with her car gets away without jail time...
Some pretty wild misplaced priorities.
Some pretty wild misplaced priorities.
Welcome to the insane administrative state. I run a couple of medium sized businesses and 80% of my time is spent trying to comply with endless government red tape.
On the other hand, so many people I know are riding personal electric vehicles capable of going 25+ MPH that don't even know the basics of handling a two wheeled vehicle. They've never even heard of the phrase "counter steering". Fort9 did an experiment and found the the typical city electric bicycle and motorcycle commutes have about the same average and peak speeds.
Id really like it if cheap, accessible courses like the ones conducted by the Motorcycle Safety Foundation were required to operate an EV over a certain power threshold, maybe 300W. Though this additional barrier to entry probably would reduce the adoption of PEVs, unfortunately.