True, but those are different products than proper motorcycles although they are creeping up in terms of power/speed. The regulatory structure (US focus here) has a huge gap for such “ebikes”. In the good old days, you could ride a 49.9 cc scooter without a motorcycle license on the road (not paths), but after that there was a pretty big power jump to proper motorcycles. Up to 50cc gets you a top speed around 25 mph and very slow acceleration. Now we have “ebikes” that are significantly faster, in particular acceleration but also top speed, that are effectively completely unregulated. And unlike gas scooters, they use bike/pedestrian infrastructure and not just streets/roads. It’s frankly a mess. We need to allocate road space from cars to bikes/“ebikes” and encourage these vehicles (and licensing/training/safety) but I fear many areas just don’t want to deal with it.
True, but those are different products than proper motorcycles although they are creeping up in terms of power/speed. The regulatory structure (US focus here) has a huge gap for such “ebikes”. In the good old days, you could ride a 49.9 cc scooter without a motorcycle license on the road (not paths), but after that there was a pretty big power jump to proper motorcycles. Up to 50cc gets you a top speed around 25 mph and very slow acceleration. Now we have “ebikes” that are significantly faster, in particular acceleration but also top speed, that are effectively completely unregulated. And unlike gas scooters, they use bike/pedestrian infrastructure and not just streets/roads. It’s frankly a mess. We need to allocate road space from cars to bikes/“ebikes” and encourage these vehicles (and licensing/training/safety) but I fear many areas just don’t want to deal with it.