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this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2025
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Bicycles
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Makes me wonder where you draw the line between a powerful e-bike and a low power motorcycle.
Personally, if it's capable of slow highway speeds (45 and up), has more than 30 miles of range, and full safety lighting, then it's a low power motorcycle. Anything less is a bike.
Legally speaking though, it's actually pretty diverse by area. For instance, California requires pedal assist integration, eg if it can accelerate with no pedal movement it's a motorcycle, and then the bikes have 3 levels of classification (why though? Not sure), with max output regulated to 1600W (afaik since I don't live there). In other places they're more lax with regulation, just depends.
Yeah in Canada we have e-bike classes, the kind that require pedal pressure to engage motor are allowed in same places as bicycles ( like walking trails etc). When they have a throttle the class changes, because more can go wrong
That's usually legally defined somewhere depending on your location. Wher I am it's defined based on rated power output of the motor.
Probably at the MoPed
It ain't a motorcycle if the engine isn't bigger than 50 cc, taps head.
Ok I think I understand. You need something more than an easy level Mario Kart.
Kind of, in some states it's regulated like that, but in others it's not addressed at all. I had a joke in my reply, where it's true in my state that you need a motorcycle license for anything larger that 50 cc, but cc aka cubic centimeters of air displacement is a measure of Internal Combustion Engine size and has no correlation with electric vehicles. My state needs to update the regs and deal with e bikes going 25-30 mph down bike paths.
Torque should also be part of it. Plenty of 250W e bikes that make 80+ Nm.
That's similar torque to a 750 - 800cc motorbike.
An e-bike might only weight 25 kg where a low powered motorcycle is at more than 100 kg.
More power by weight is faster and can be more dangerous