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There's a whole class of electric vehicles being held back by regulation. We can slap electro motors on wheels and bicycles are not the only vehicles you can build with that tech. Many EU countries are e.g. banning throttles on eBikes, but why are we forcing all those delivery drivers to pedal the whole day? Just give them a gas throttle. For many eBikes uses it really doesn't make sense to include the whole bicycle complexity of gears, chains, shifting and so on. Just give them a motor and a throttle.
Killing the eBike with additional rules, insurance, mandatory inspections and so on would be absolutely idiotic and a good business model for insurances, car companies and so on, so I'm really afraid that this could happen
Do you know that there is a reason for the regulations on light motorcycles, mopeds, mofas, Vespas, scooters and however you name them? It's the number of fatal traffic accidents. And yes, there are probably over two dozens of these motorized vehicle classes which originally started with the idea of an "bicycle with a bit of motor" such as mopeds and mofas.
We want to reduce traffic and oil consumption and can't figure why people buy larger vehicles in North America?
Yeah, the issue isn't the light motorcycles/mopeds/etc....
So dude is right, a whole class of vehicle is being being held back by regulation, and the premise/reason is ridiculous for a society that would like to see less cars on the road.
Bud, the point isn't simply removing cars, it's about having something better, which includes safer.
If your motor-vehicle endangers people, such as by vroooooming in a bike line where people are pedaling at average speeds, you're the threat, you're the car.
I love that viewpoint of American tech bros that "regulation baaad!". Are you aware that the living standard in the EU is in many measures much better than in the US? To start with, everyone has health insurance here while US has some Third-World reality...
A thing which has a motor and where the human delivers less than 30% of the power at max speed is a light motorcycle. The reason for that is with more power you need a heavier battery and a much heavier frame with better brakes. You need a solid helmet which again makes it impractical to pedal at power because it becomes hot. At 40 km/h, it becomes to chill in the winter and at 45 km/h or so, you really need protective clothing because otherwise in a fall, the asfalt will strip your skin off. At that point it is very clearly becoming a motorcycle. You have lost thr technical sweet spot of a bicycle at that point. There have been many attempts to blur that line (guess what the name "Mofa" comes from or "Moped" or why these things have pedals which nobody uses).
And we have motor-powered bikes since a long time - over 75 years -, and regulations have evolved out of need. Traditinally, the motor was a combustion engine - but that's the only difference and it is totally irrelevant for traffic safety.
That's not totally correct. Here in Germany we have so called "Mofas" which translates to "motorized bicycle". Those are different from eBikes and heavily regulated. There are age limits, drivers licence, insurance requirements, regulations where you are allowed to drive and so on. And yes, they are also restricted to 25km/h. Why are there this heavy regulations which are not in place for our pedelecs? The reason is plain racism in combination with "old people hate young people". Those Mofas were popular with young migrant workers back in the 50s and 60s. And therefore they were regulated as fuck. You will see stuff like this with modern eScooters where the whole class will be restricted because they are popular with younger people.
What I wanted to say was exactly this: There is a rule in place that basically created artificial differences between the same thing. A 25km/h vehicle with a motor and pedals is heavily restricted, another one is totally free. Which makes no sense.
I don't believe that. I was going to secondary school in Germany in the late seventies / early eighties and they were very popular with white middle class teenagers and apprentices younger than 18 years old. And they were regulated because of tons of serious accidents. Migrant workers would not earn very well and they would use a bike. Young students or workers would much more likely light motorcycles - in the seventies, the motorcycle industry worked very hard to both make them more affordable, and to work around regulations for motor bikes which had much higher safety requirements.
In addition, in 1965 mofas where exempted from requiring a drivers licence. Before, as of 1960, a mofa was considedered a moped and did require a proper class 5 (today: class AM) drivers license.