The San Francisco Bicycle Coalition weighed in with a pointed response, arguing that the state should be making it easier, not harder, to own and use e-bikes. Their senior organizer echoed the sentiment shared by many riders: the real confusion and danger comes from people not being able to tell the difference between a legal e-bike and an electric moped, not from the bikes themselves.
Brett Thurber, co-owner of a San Francisco e-bike shop, raised a practical industry concern about AB 1557. Restricting California’s speed limits below what manufacturers currently build for the U.S. market could push companies to skip California customers entirely, shrinking the supply available to local shops and consumers.
I always hear this, but do they really?
The way you are describing it makes it seem like it happens on a very different scale to e-bike sales in general. Any source on how many people tune their bikes?
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Hold on, it does not say why those bikes were seized. It does not say anything on if they had no limiter, a thottle or if they were manufactured to go faster. But that is what I’m asking about, is the manufacturer/importer breaking the law or is it the consumer? Well, the consumer is either way for using it, but they could be just unaware. You know what I mean, it is different if you deliberately mess with the electronics to go faster.
The VVN spokesperson saying “the limiter can easily be removed” doesn’t convince me either, is that a huge problem or an edge case?
Is there any credible source on around half of fat-bikes have their limiters removed?
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I concede, they know when the bike is seized. But what I meant is that they could be unaware when they buy it, or at least claim that.
And if my translation is accurate, this other source also doesn’t answer if they alter the bike by getting someone to tune it, or if they were illegal to drive the moment they got their hands on the bike. It claims more than half were modified, but the cited report just says that they were faster than allowed. Bad headline!
Again, you said people buy a lawful vehicle and just know a guy that removes limiters. That is something I have trouble believing. I say, it’s far more likely that Amazon will sell a bike that naturally goes faster, like the 20mph ones that are legal right now in California, to anyone, and regions with stricter rules for e-bikes have people who don’t know or don’t care.
This distinction is important to me, because it shifts the blame from big manufacturers and warehouse corporations who knowingly sell illegal bikes to thousands, to some backyard garage that helped like 6 friends get more power. If the goal is to make our streets safer, going after the thousands will do way more. If truly half of people know someone to remove or remove their limiters themselves, it would be a different story, but all these sources say is that half of used fat bikes are illegal.
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Who removed the limiter matters to me, you can think differently, but I’m not budging on this. Your link does claim that it is big business, but admits there are no figures for how many bikes are modified with these kits. Because no one is giving any numbers, I’m the one saying it could be 1 friend installing kits and removing limiters from 6 people in the whole Netherlands.
All I want is the numbers, because until then “people just pay a guy who knows a guy to remove the limiter” just rubs me the wrong way if it might as well be “companies illegally sell limitless bikes anyway”.
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Oh, but I did find a (German) source for my question right now: “According to estimates by police and experts, five to ten percent of e-bikes in Germany are tuned.”
I am cautious of trusting a police union on this without any source, but it is at least something.
So now you can specify: “Less than 10% of e-bike riders remove or know a guy to remove the limiter”, since of course this was an estimate on tuning in general.
But you never showed anything that said it is true, you are the one believing without checking for the facts. I am the one saying: I don’t know if people actually go out of their way to tune their e-bikes. If you are sick of searching for sources, all you need to say is “I don’t know, I just feel like a lot of people get their limiter removed, I don’t have any sources on that.”
You cannot ask me to prove a negative, everyone knows that.
In the context of mandating a limiter being built in by law, it is important to distinguish between people who get the limiter removed, and people who buy bikes which never had a limiter, because group 1 spends effort or money to make their bike illegal, and the group 2 doesn’t spend to make their bike legal.
I agree, in the context of “people drive illegally fast”, this does not matter.