this post was submitted on 29 Oct 2024
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[Dormant] Electric Vehicles

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

They became popular in quite a different way in UK:

  • Allow electric-assist bicycles up to 15mph
  • Turn a blind eye to everyone ignoring the power and speed limits
  • Voilà, everyone now has a 30mph unregistered motorbike on the bike path with no safety gear!
[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 weeks ago

True, but those are different products than proper motorcycles although they are creeping up in terms of power/speed. The regulatory structure (US focus here) has a huge gap for such "ebikes". In the good old days, you could ride a 49.9 cc scooter without a motorcycle license on the road (not paths), but after that there was a pretty big power jump to proper motorcycles. Up to 50cc gets you a top speed around 25 mph and very slow acceleration. Now we have "ebikes" that are significantly faster, in particular acceleration but also top speed, that are effectively completely unregulated. And unlike gas scooters, they use bike/pedestrian infrastructure and not just streets/roads. It's frankly a mess. We need to allocate road space from cars to bikes/"ebikes" and encourage these vehicles (and licensing/training/safety) but I fear many areas just don't want to deal with it.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

We already have this in California too. Electric bicycles can go 20 mph without pedaling, or up to 28 mph if the person is pedaling.