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California Wants to Put License Plates on E-Bikes and Slow Them Down. Cyclists Are Not Happy About It
(guessingheadlights.com)
this post was submitted on 03 May 2026
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I'm a cyclist and I'm against this. If they're effectively electric motorcycles then just license them as motorcycles, end of story. People are getting brain fog over the fact that they're cheap and popular with kids. We don't speed cap any other vehicles, we just license them appropriately. Let's just continue doing that. It's wacky to me that this isn't obvious to most people.
Seriously, if they don't require pedals to move it's a motorcycle or moped. I use an e-bike to commute but it doesn't work without the pedals. It's still a bike. If you want to tax me for it then give me my own damn lane
If your bike has a motor and pedals how is it not a moped?
Mopeds have pedals but mostly function by a throttle. I never knew a single person that used the pedals unless they were out of gas. My bike (class 2, mid-engine) does not work without pedals and makes commuting feasible in areas with a lot of hills. I always pedal past the 28mph max and it's 0 engine assist in those moments. You going to regulate that then you need to regulate all the spandex guys on the weekends too.
They're not the same as motorcycles though. They're comparable to motorcycles, but they are not quite the same. There's no reason to have a binary system. There is a class of bikes which are more than recreational e-bikes but less than full-on motorcycles. There needs to be a class of regulation in between bicycles and slow e-bikes (which should require no registration at all) and motorcycles (which require a special driving licence to operate).
The fact that we don't "speed cap" any other vehicles isn't a good argument for not limiting the speed of e-bikes. All arguments for why ordinary personal vehicles shouldn't have speed governors limiting them to, say, 160 km/h, basically boil down to "It makes me feel bad" or "I think it's fun to drive fast".
They already have limits to 28mph/45kmh for ebicycles. If they go above that then they should require a license. Illinois's Senate agreed on a bill that now needs considering in the house for ebikes that exceed that, requires registration, and additionally puts age limits on them. That seems reasonable.
Changing the existing laws to be more restrictive beyond that is unnecessary. We don't need more fragmentation of rules between state(in US) and probably countries where applicable.
45 km/h is still freakishly fast for all but professional cyclists. I do not agree that more restrictions are unnecessary. A simple, paperwork-minimal registration scheme would allow proper accountability for reckless bicycle-riding (which is uncommon but still happens) and would deter theft, especially since e-bikes cost hundreds to thousands of dollars, pounds, or euros. The problem with fast e-bikes (especially those which can accelerate without pedalling) is that they let anyone's grandmother reach the speeds of professionals without actually being an experienced cyclist. Ideally, there should be three levels:
In the United States, we have a tool to deal with fragmentation in state laws: uniform acts.
An adult in half decent physical shape can hit 45 km/h on level ground for a short time on a 9 year old midrange racing bike. Source: I own a 9 year old midrange racing bike.
A professional can sustain that speed.
FYI 45 kph on a non-motorized bicycle is not really "freakishly fast", that's a normal downhill speed on your average middle age guy's weekend workout. And I think this concern is already addressed by signed speed limits.
That's also not a speed you hit on a pedestrian walkway between intersections with crossings where you have to look out for cars or pedestrians stepping in front of you.
I think the most I've ever clocked on a bicycle was 56 km/h (as I didn't usually ride with a speedometer and me being in good enough shape to do that without having to go downhill was before I had a phone with a decent enough battery to run Strava or something for every little ride), but that was out of town, on a straight road. On a pedestrian walkway that requires me to stop or slow down every hundred or two hundred meters, it would take effort to even consistently hit 25 km/h. But with a motor assisting you, you can hit higher speeds much quicker.
Why are you biking on a pedestrian walkway? That seems like it's own seperate problem.
Uh most people don't cycle in car lanes unless going very fast.
Where do you live? I'm in the US where almost all vehicles, including cyclists, ride in the street and only car drivers refer to them as "car lanes".
Estonia. Bicycles are allowed on either the light traffic road, or the car lanes. You're not supposed to go very fast around pedestrians if you opt for the former, but a lot of people (teenagers mostly) do anyway. That's why I'm saying an e-bike that can do 45 km/h should be considered a moped, and be restricted to being used on the road where cars go. In fact that's how it is here. An e-bike that's considered a light traffic vehicle is only allowed to assist until 25 km/h. This is also what California seems to be doing, with higher speeds requiring a license plate and the class 1 vehicles getting restricted.
Here in the states we don't have a "light traffic road" as you describe. That's just not a thing in our infrastructure. This situation would be easier to resolve if we did.
Fair enough. Yeah if all e-bikes are going to be sharing the road with cars anyway, I can see why it wouldn't make sense to limit unlicensed ones to 25 in your case. But at the same time, it makes sense that if a vehicle is capable of speeding, it should have a license plate on it and require the user to be 18. No?
Yes, if it can go over the speed limit I agree. However I cannot.
Yes and a driver's test, like any other licensed vehicle. What I would oppose are speed capping the vehicles themselves or outright banning them, as I think both of those "solutions" are more in service to the automotive industry than anything else. And throws the baby out with the bath water, so to speak.
Well, nobody's outright banning them luckily, and only the ones that don't require a test are being capped AFAIK. If your ebike is registered as a motorcycle, it requires a driver's test and doesn't need to have the speed capped at all.
The spirit of my complaint is that we should just appropriately license them. If practically that means a new class of license then yes, that's how you license them.
It's basically old people trying to take away kid's mobility.