Kit Bashir12h ago

A rant about electric bicycles:

* For e-bikes to be viable car replacements they need cargo-carrying and hill-climb capacity. The practicality test for an e-bike is to carry four bags of grocieries, or a child.

* The 250W and 20km/h limit for unlicensed bicycles is *far* too low. Human cyclists comfortably exceed this in both power and speed leading to e-bikes holding up traffic. When. I ride the bikeways, human-powered traffic cruises at around 35 km/h.

* The "you must pedal or the motor stops" requirement is some Calvinist bullshit.

* The perl-clutching "but the children" scare in the news about "unlicensed motorbikes" HAS to be some kind of car-industry astroturfing. From what I can see on the bikeways, commuter e-bikes and scooters are HOT items and anyone with a head can see a dent in vehicle sales coming. Users LOVE this emerging mobility sector.

* I work in an industrial area with zero public transport service. I observe large numbers of workers riding scooters in the direction of the nearest train station.

* If governments *really* want to stick to the 250w 25km/h bullshit for "bicycles" then we need URGENT legislation to create a vehicle class for say 1000W 45km/h vehicles. The Australia post electric delivery tricycles are a worked example of the practicality of this class; I don't hear *anyone* having a meltdown about "dangerous monster tricycles on our footpaths".

#MicroMobility #ebikes #solarpunk

ETA: absurd panic-fueled legislation from the fossil-fuel captured Literal Nazi Party: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03-24/queensland-ebike-escooter-ban-children-licence-reforms/106487910

E-bike and e-scooter riders to require a licence in Qld under proposed laws

A raft of new rules around the use of e-mobility devices will be ushered in after the Queensland government accepted the recommendations from a parliamentary inquiry.

Show threadJesse

@Unixbigot I think the 25km/h assist limit is important. The issue is that what ever the maximum speed available is then that is what the average speed will be. On a push bike it's possible to get up to 30km/h on the flat but you'll get very sweaty and waste a lot of physical effort if you need to slow down all the time
This means that average cycling speed is more like 15-20km/h which is a good speed for safe interactions with pedestrians and other bicycle riders of all ages without the need for traffic management.

E-bicycles are great, but having a lot of people riding 45km/h e-motorbikes on shared paths and places where children ride to school isn't great.

I want a bicycle city not a motorbike city.

6:57amWeb
Show threadJesse5h ago
@Unixbigot big bicycles cities are having huge problems with overpowered e-bikes. Amsterdam is crushing thousands of illegaly e-bikes every month. It's not just the car lobby complaining, it's people that don't want increased danger in hard won bicycle infrastructure scaring people away from riding again.
Show threadDavid Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*)4h ago

@jessta @Unixbigot

Same with small cities. In Cambridge, a lot of food delivery companies provide subsidised e-bikes to riders. These things are heavy and big and are easy to mod to remove the speed restrictions. They’re also incentivising people to take the quickest possible path, which often involves going on the pavement. It’s illegal to ride a bike of any kind on the pavement here, but no one really minds if it’s a normal-weight bicycle cycled at a normal city-cycling speed by someone paying attention to their surroundings. When it’s a high-speed thing that looks like a motorbike and weights as much as a small motorbike, it’s not fun to have to share the pavement with them.

Show threadYlönën5h ago
@jessta @Unixbigot As far as I know the 25 km/h limit is of European origin and sort of based on research. I can easily exceed that with my road bike on muscle power but if I want to ride a "normal" bike I'd say that on flat on my own the average speed is less than the 25 km/h, closer to 17-20 km/h. The only problem with that 25 km/h assist limit is that it often seems to make people ride against that upper limit, approaching crossings too fast and cutting corners so to speak.
Show threadYlönën5h ago
@jessta @Unixbigot Most of the time it's not really a big problem. The 45 km/h limited ones need to be insured as mopeds and that also limits where you are allowed to drive them. I have so far seen only a couple of them on non-permitted lanes. Greetings from within the EU, Finland.
Show thread"Musty Bits" McGee5h ago
@jessta @Unixbigot im with you on 25, maybe 30 max. my take is that to cycle unassisted at that speed you usually have to have yknow, cycled a bit - which means you learn the handling and safety. people without that blasting around is worrying for me, i dont want to get collected by someone (and with a substantially heavier bike!)
Show thread"Musty Bits" McGee5h ago
@jessta @Unixbigot PS: in Asia the petrol mopeds just go wherever the fuck including cycle paths and it's ...not great.
Show threadMarner4h ago

@jessta @Unixbigot agree completely - our street legal, 250w 36V cargo bike can do a full shop of groceries with a kid no problem. It gets up to 25km/h in about the same time I do riding a regular bike. Nobody I've ever let ride it thinks it's underpowered even on hills.

Most of the time if you're in Australia you're riding on infrastructure shared with pedestrians. 25km/h is plenty. Arguing for faster ebikes will end up getting them all banned.

If you want to go faster then get a 50cc scooter or motorbike, register, insure and ride on the road where they belong

Show threadKit Bashir4h ago
@Marner @jessta it’s impolite to ask what you weigh but i bet it’s a fair bit less than me.
Show threadKit Bashir4h ago
@Marner @jessta Nice bike!
Show threadFranchesca3h ago
@jessta @Unixbigot agreed. 25 is plenty fast for city cycling. Faster causes risks for other cyclists. A few years back someone going 35km/h on an overclocked van moof hit me side on and bent my back wheel (he cycled off after shouting at me, left me lying on the road). Apparently I was stationary for too long, but he came through 2 places where he had to give way to other traffic before hitting me (I was stopped to let pedestrians cross a zebra)