A few months ago, a family came into Pasadena Cyclery in Pasadena, California, for a repair on what they thought was their teenager’s e-bike. “I can’t fix that here,’ Daniel Purnell, a store manager and technician, remembers telling them. “That’s a motorcycle.” The mother got upset. She didn’t realize that what she thought was an e-bike could go much faster, perhaps up to 55 miles per hour.
“There’s definitely an education problem,” Purnell says. In California, bike advocates are pushing a new bill designed to clear up that confusion around what counts as an electric bicycle—and what doesn’t.
It’s a tricky balance. On one hand, backers want to allow riders access to new, faster, and more affordable non-car transportation options, ones that don’t require licenses and are emission-free. On the other hand, people, and especially kids, seem to be getting hurt. E-bike-related injuries jumped more than 1,020 percent nationwide between 2020 and 2024, according to hospital data, though it’s not clear if the stats-keepers can routinely distinguish between e-bikes and their faster, “e-moto” cousins. (Moped and powered-assisted cycle injuries jumped 67 percent in that same period.)
“We’re overdue to have better e-bike regulation,” says California state senator Catherine Blakespear, a Democrat who sponsored the bill and represents parts of North County in San Diego. “This has been an ongoing and growing issue for years.”
Senate Bill 1167 would make it illegal for retailers to label higher-powered, electric-powered vehicles as e-bikes. It would clarify that e-bikes have fully operative pedals and electric motors that don’t exceed 750 watts, enough to hit top speeds between 20 and 28 mph.
“We’re not against these devices,” says Kendra Ramsey, the executive director of the California Bicycle Coalition, which represents riders and is promoting the legislation. “People think they’re e-bikes and they’re not really e-bikes.”
Bill backers say they hope the fix, if it passes, makes a difference, especially for teenagers, who love the freedom that electric motors give them but can get into trouble if something goes wrong at higher speeds. Kids 17 and younger accounted for 20 percent of US e-bike injuries from 2020 to 2024, about in line with the share of the total population. But headlines—and the laws that follow them—have focused on teen injuries and even deaths.
There are no national laws governing e-bike riding. But bike backers spent years moving between states to pass laws that put e-bikes into three classes: Class 1, which have pedal-assist that only works when they’re actually pedaled, and goes up to 20 mph; Class 2, which have throttles that work without pedaling but still only reach 20 mph; and Class 3, which use pedal-assist to move up to 28 mph. Plenty of states and cities restrict the most powerful Class 3 bikes to people older than 16. (In a complicated twist, some e-bikes have different “modes,” allowing riders to toggle between Class 2 and Class 3.)
Last year, researchers visited 19 San Francisco Bay Area middle and high schools and found that 88 percent of the electric two-wheeled devices parked there were so high-powered and high-speed that they didn’t comply with the three-class system at all.
E-bikes have clearly struck a chord with state policymakers: At least 10 bills introduced this year deal with e-bikes, according to Ramsey.
Some bike advocates believe injuries have less to do with e-bikes than “e-motos,” a category that’s less likely to appear in retail stores or the sort of social media ads attracting teens to the tech. These have more powerful motors and can travel in excess of 30 mph. Vehicles, like the Surron Ultra Bee, which can hit top speeds of 55 mph, or Tuttio ICT, which can hit 50, are often marketed by retailers as “electric bikes.” Because so many sales happen online, it can be hard for people, and especially parents, to know what they’re getting into.
Technically, e-motos could be subject to federal motor vehicle standards, and in many states, are required to be registered and insured before they hit the roads. But in some cases, “manufacturers have chosen not to pursue the clearly-defined path to sell a motorcycle,” says Matt Moore, general and policy counsel at PeopleForBikes, a nonprofit coalition of bicycle suppliers and supporters. “We want to have a clear line.” The group is promoting legislation similar to SB 1167 in several other states.
Some retailers are shying away from the category altogether, at least until the questions of where they belong on the road and who belongs on them are more clearly resolved. Last month, the nonprofit National Bicycle Dealers Association put out an advisory to its members, warning them that e-motos “present both unnecessary business risks for bicycle retailers and unnecessary safety concerns to consumers and the general public.”
Purnell, the Pasadena Cyclery bicycle store manager, thinks clarity and caution are needed. But he says he’s happy to see people, and especially teenagers, on e-bikes. “It’s good that they’re riding instead of what else they could be doing—playing video games at home,” he says. “Do they take away mobility for the unlicensed driver in the name of restricting teens from causing mischief? That’s what I don’t know.”
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