The problem with calling everything an e-bike is that some of these things are very obviously motorcycles.
Electric bicycles have become the catch-all villain of modern urban mobility. Someone blasts down a bike path at motorcycle speeds on something with pegs, a throttle, and enough suspension travel to attack a motocross track, and somehow the conversation still ends up being about “e-bikes.”
Los Angeles, however, is starting to make a distinction that probably should’ve been obvious from the beginning: not everything with two wheels and a battery is a bicycle.
The Los Angeles City Council has directed several city agencies to develop recommendations for regulating e-bikes, e-motos, and electric mopeds. And this isn’t just another proposal about helmets or telling teenagers to slow down. Among the ideas being considered are bans on selling or reselling noncompliant machines, converting e-bikes into more powerful classes, and selling e-motos or electric mopeds that aren’t street legal out of the box or require an M1 motorcycle license.
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That last one is where things get tricky. There’s an entire category of lightweight electric machines that occupy the fuzzy space between bicycle and motorcycle. Think electric dirt bike rather than beach cruiser with a battery strapped to it. They’re fast, powerful, and enormously popular with younger riders, but machines that fall outside California’s e-bike definitions don’t magically become bicycles because that’s how somebody chooses to use them.
California’s actual e-bike classes are pretty straightforward. Class 1 bikes provide pedal assistance up to 20 miles per hour. Class 2 adds a throttle but is still capped at 20 miles per hour, while Class 3 pedal-assist bikes can reach 28 miles per hour. The trouble starts when increasingly powerful electric two-wheelers get lumped into the same conversation despite not fitting those definitions at all.
The city’s motion gets surprisingly direct about this. It says electric motos and mopeds are marketed to teenagers and their parents as fun, efficient transportation despite often lacking equipment needed for legal street use, including proper lighting, turn signals, and license plates. It also says these machines can require an M1 motorcycle license, something the motion argues isn’t adequately disclosed to buyers.
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The good thing is that LA isn’t blaming compliant e-bikes for everything. The motion states that nearly all reported crashes involve illegal devices rather than legal e-bikes, while citing an increase in collisions, emergency room visits, head injuries, and fractures involving electric mopeds and motorcycles, particularly among younger riders.
None of this means LA has banned electric dirt bikes like those from Sur-Ron, Talaria, and E Ride Pro. Well, not yet, anyway. The council has ordered city departments and other agencies to return with regulatory recommendations, so these ideas still have to survive the wonderfully exciting process of municipal policymaking.
But the direction is pretty obvious. The days when a powerful electric motorcycle could hide behind the wonderfully vague term “e-bike” may be numbered. And if your “bicycle” requires a motorcycle license, a license plate, turn signals, and an explanation to the cops about why it has footpegs instead of pedals, perhaps the bicycle disguise wasn’t particularly convincing to begin with.
Source: My News LA