E_Bikes - legality

[martynwilson]

I noted the letter on the Opinion page regarding unregulated e-bikes which are essentially electric motor bikes and your response in the August/September 24 issue. It mentioned an “e-bike” available from Amazon with two 1000 watt motors, no need to peddle and a peddle unassisted top speed (on the flat presumably) of 25mph - essentially a motor bike.

The whole issue of e-bikes and their legality and the potential impact on cyclists including those riding on legitimate e-bikes does need significant investigation and regulation.

It came home to me recently when I wanted to book a room with Premier Inn who, to their credit, allow cyclists to keep bikes in their room. They are loath to allow electric scooters due to the risk of fire from those fitted with unregulated and badly manufactured batteries which have been known to catch fire. This also applies to the cheap batteries and cycle conversion kits which, according to news reports, have also caused fires.

This is certainly not in the interest of innocent cyclists like myself who ride completely safe, properly manufactured e-bikes.

The whole issue of dangerous "e-bikes" of every sort will certainly be used as yet another “stick” to beat” cyclists and further diminish the drive to encourage more people to cycle and to provide better facilities.

[Jdsk]

Welcome

When you say "your response"... this isn't an official route of communication with Cycling UK.

And there's quite a lot of discussion of this topic in the forum archives...

Jonathan

[Bonzo Banana]

I noted the letter on the Opinion page regarding unregulated e-bikes which are essentially electric motor bikes and your response in the August/September 24 issue. It mentioned an “e-bike” available from Amazon with two 1000 watt motors, no need to peddle and a peddle unassisted top speed (on the flat presumably) of 25mph - essentially a motor bike.

The whole issue of e-bikes and their legality and the potential impact on cyclists including those riding on legitimate e-bikes does need significant investigation and regulation.

It came home to me recently when I wanted to book a room with Premier Inn who, to their credit, allow cyclists to keep bikes in their room. They are loath to allow electric scooters due to the risk of fire from those fitted with unregulated and badly manufactured batteries which have been known to catch fire. This also applies to the cheap batteries and cycle conversion kits which, according to news reports, have also caused fires.

This is certainly not in the interest of innocent cyclists like myself who ride completely safe, properly manufactured e-bikes.

The whole issue of dangerous "e-bikes" of every sort will certainly be used as yet another “stick” to beat” cyclists and further diminish the drive to encourage more people to cycle and to provide better facilities.

So called properly manufactured e-bikes have had recalls like Specialized for failing battery packs and there is an issue with expensive pre-made ebikes which are obsessed with their bikes being lightweight where they fit low capacity battery packs and discharge them at extreme levels so the bike can provide good torque but remain light. There are so many variables to what makes a safe ebike. However gig economy riders are often doing around 10 miles in distance an hour, doing maybe 10hrs cycling a day, sometimes over 6 days, it could be 500-600 miles a week or over 20,000 miles a year. This is extreme commercial use for battery packs that were likely never designed for such extreme use. 500 charges of 20 miles range is 10,000 miles which is only 6 months maybe to a gig economy rider. Of course they use much bigger capacity battery packs so they can last 4-5 hours of their shift and often have to charge their battery between the lunch shift and the evening shift so maybe need a fast charger which is also a slightly higher safety risk if charging at 3 or 4A instead of 2A. I just feel part of the safety risk of gig economy couriers is the extreme use they give their ebikes. Cells age as they are used and get closer to the failure point the more times you discharge them. Cells heat up as they are charged and discharged and those hot/cold cycles do have a ageing effect. A battery pack is much safer on its 80th charge than its 900th charge.

[Barrowman]

I agree it needs a proper review of what's happening. With e bikes and scooters.
I am old enough to remember Mopeds which initially were things with a tiny petrol motors and pedals.
Aimed at 16 year olds as a stopgap to motorcycle I suspect.
Wasn't hard for a reasonably fit cyclist to outpace them.
But development happened, within the legal Moped definition , and ended up with machines that could get close to the legal speed limit ( and beyond?)'
So the definition had to be changed to include max top speed.
One of the issues is distributors selling machines that aren't "Road legal "' For use in Private Land' .

[al_yrpal]

I note that both Halfords and Currys are selling non road legal escooters quite openly.

Al

[colyer]

IMHO we need legislation to make it illegal to sell a motor vehicle (electric or otherwise) that is not registered with the DVLA.

If it's only legal for off-road use then it can be registered as SORN. It still needs to be registered.

[Jdsk]

There's a statement in the King's Speech that might just relate to this:
"There is an urgent need to legislate to respond to emerging threats to consumer safety, for example to address issues such as incidents from ingesting button batteries, and e-bike fires where there was a 78 per cent increase in e-bike fires in 2023 compared to 2022 in London according to the London Fire Brigade."
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.u ... _notes.pdf

But otherwise nothing new on micromobiity, AFAICT.

Jonathan

[rareposter]

I note that both Halfords and Currys are selling non road legal escooters quite openly.

The e-scooters are legal if used on private land so Halfords, Currys etc are perfectly within their rights to sell them.
It's up to the owners to abide by the law.

The fact is that Government have decided to pretend the issue of privately owned e-scooters doesn't exist while constantly kicking the can down the road in terms of "trials", the police rarely have the resources to actually do much about the illegal use of them and, in terms of road danger, they're a long way down the pecking order anyway.