alt.hn

2/19/2026 at 1:12:14 PM

New California bill to require license plates for electric bikes

 https://electrek.co/2026/02/19/new-california-bill-to-require-license-plates-for-electric-bikes/

by RaSoJo

2/19/2026 at 2:34:59 PM

On the one hand, micro mobility is a great way to reduce emissions, traffic, and parking congestion. It'd really suck to see it become more difficult to get around with electric bikes and scooters.

On the other hand, so many people I know are riding personal electric vehicles capable of going 25+ MPH that don't even know the basics of handling a two wheeled vehicle. They've never even heard of the phrase "counter steering". Fort9 did an experiment and found the the typical city electric bicycle and motorcycle commutes have about the same average and peak speeds.

Id really like it if cheap, accessible courses like the ones conducted by the Motorcycle Safety Foundation were required to operate an EV over a certain power threshold, maybe 300W. Though this additional barrier to entry probably would reduce the adoption of PEVs, unfortunately.

by Manuel_D

2/19/2026 at 2:46:33 PM

Making different rules depending on the class of e-bikes make sense vs just pretending all e-bikes are "bikes" and allowed everywhere bikes are, even though at some point they are more akin to motorcycles.

In Europe this is mostly working well, although depending on the country there are still a lot of illegal (heavy, fast, throttle-equipped, unlicensed, beyond even class 3) bikes on the roads, bike lanes and bike paths.

One benefit is that when you go to buy an e-mountain bike in Europe, the ones for sale are all class 1, and everyone understands only class 1 are legal and allowed on most mountain bike trails. In America nobody cares about class and many just buy the fastest, crappiest model that comes with a "class 1" sticker as well as a setting to bypass all the class 1 limitations. As a result, there are more and more blanket bans on all e-bikes on mountain bike trails in America.

by johnwalkr

2/19/2026 at 2:57:18 PM

>In Europe this is mostly working well, although depending on the country there are still a lot of illegal (heavy, fast, throttle-equipped, unlicensed, beyond even class 3) bikes on the roads, bike lanes and bike paths.

There were a lot of these in Oxford (UK) until a year or two ago when they all got replaced with scooters[1]. I suspect the police started clamping down on the illegal e-bikes which are easy to spot.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scooter_(motorcycle)

by tonyedgecombe

2/19/2026 at 2:13:53 PM

Seeing this while the 75 year old who killed a whole family of 4 with her car gets away without jail time...

Some pretty wild misplaced priorities.

by avisser

2/19/2026 at 2:44:49 PM

Cars also require a license.

by chung8123

2/19/2026 at 7:00:41 PM

Well yeah. Cars kill 40x the people.

by avisser

2/19/2026 at 2:38:19 PM

Old people are a major voting block that actually show up, nobody will touch their driver licenses.

by delfinom