How Illegal E-motos Are Threatening the Legitimate E-Bike Market

The 3-class framework was designed for bicycles with electric motors – not motorcycles with pedals. Under federal and state definitions, a legal e-bike cannot exceed 750 watts of motor power, and it cannot travel faster than 20 mph on motor power alone. Those are the lines that separate a bicycle from a motor vehicle.

This framework took years of industry advocacy to build, and it gave the modern e-bike market its legal legitimacy.

Unfortunately, a growing category of products is blowing past both.

Machines weighing well over 100 pounds, powered by 5,000-watt motors, and capable of hitting 40 or 50 mph, are being marketed and sold online as E-bikes. Manufacturers exploit a straightforward loophole: attach a pair of functionally useless pedals to a dirt bike frame, and the vehicle can technically be classified as a bicycle. “That’s not innovation,” Dr. Lovell said. “That’s regulatory laundering.”

For years, the industry referred to these products as “out-of-class E-bikes” – a term Lovell acknowledged never really landed with the public. Last year, PeopleForBikes began promoting the term “eMoto” as a cleaner, more intuitive label for these vehicles. The definition, she said, is simple: if a vehicle exceeds 20 mph on throttle alone, or is powered by a motor larger than 750 watts, it belongs in the moped or motorcycle category.

There are two main categories of bikes that tend to push speed limits beyond what is legal: e-moped style E-bikes, and electric dirt bikes like Surrons.

At Electric Bike Report, we believe the distinction between these two styles of bikes is important so legislatures can create effective legislation to properly govern both styles of bikes.

Moped-Style E-Bikes

Moped-style E-bikes are designed to look like cafe racers, a very popular style of motorcycle from the 1960’s:

When you look at a Super73, you see the resemblance:

Image source: https://super73.com/products/super73-r-brooklyn-se-legacy?from=r-series-bikes

These moped-style or cafe racer style E-bikes are incredibly popular with teenagers. The bikes look cool, and they are fun to ride. Some brands follow the Class 3 guidelines and limit the speeds of these bikes to 20 mph on throttle and 28 mph while pedaling (although to be honest, pedaling this style of bike is not fun).

However, many brands that sell this style of bike notoriously allow riders to unlock the bike via an app or code, allowing them to speed beyond the allowed limits of a class 2 or 3 e-bike. Some brands require the consumer to verify / sign a waiver stating that they will be riding these vehicles off-road and aren’t subject to state regulations. This waiver may protect the brand’s backside legally; however, these waivers don’t help keep unlocked E-motos off public sidewalks and trails designated for E-bikes.

Given that these bikes could go faster than 28 mph, we naturally see people riding faster than 28 mph. Many of these riders are not licensed to drive a car and have very little to no understanding of how to operate a vehicle safely on the road. But, their parents bought them the E-moped because the bike shop told them they were buying and E-bike.

Major brands like Super73 appear to be doing all they can to backtrack and limit their bikes to safe speeds. However, we continue to get requests by brands who want us to review their moped-style e-moto. These brands still openly flaunt their bikes’ abilities to be unlocked and go 30+ mph – it’s a great selling point for a lot of people who love to ride fast.

Because so many of these E-motos continue to have motors that exceed 750 watts and go faster than 28 mph, legislators often place these bikes right alongside more powerful E-motos, such as ones from Surron and Talaria.

The issues with classifying both styles as one is that the legal, class 2 or 3 E-mopeds get thrown out with the bathwater. This also presents certain challenges to law enforcement officers.

Currently, electric vehicles that propel riders beyond Class 2 and 3 speeds are in a legal grey zone that is often undefined and not governed by the CPSC or NITSA.

This loophole has created a challenge for law enforcement. When an e-Moto passes a police officer at 35 mph in a bike lane or on a sidewalk, the responding officer faces ambiguity – the vehicle may or may not have pedals, no license plate, and no obvious motor vehicle markings. Classification stickers, which are supposed to identify these products, are frequently absent or deliberately placed out of sight, under the seat or near the bottom bracket.

LaCarrell, representing the motorcycle industry, pointed out that the confusion cuts both ways. “At the scene of one incident they’ll say it’s a bicycle,” she noted. “The next incident – same type of unit – they’ll say it’s a motorcycle.” Both industries absorb injury and fatality statistics that don’t accurately reflect their own products.

In many jurisdictions, particularly in California, officers are effectively prohibited from pursuing riders on these vehicles. If a rider crashes during a chase, the resulting liability falls on the department. “So they just don’t respond,” LaCarrell said.

No community has felt the impact of this challenge more than Marin County, California. As a high-income area with many early adopters of E-bikes, it became an instructive – and cautionary – case study.

Kullaway, who serves as both executive director of the Marin County Bicycle Coalition and as an elected official in San Anselmo, described watching the problem unfold over five years. Early enthusiasm about E-bikes quickly gave way to a different reality. Middle schoolers were posting footage of themselves riding Super 73s standing up, hands off the handlebars, on main arterial roads. The local press started calling them “the E-bike gangs of San Anselmo.” Community meetings that were supposed to address infrastructure and other community issues had to instead focus their attention on E-motos. Standing-room crowds of parents had no idea what they had actually purchased for their kids – because they had been told something different at the point of sale.

The downstream consequences have been significant:

• Schools banned all E-bikes from campus because administrators couldn’t distinguish legal models from illegal ones. Campus audits claimed to find that 80 to 90% of the vehicles students were riding, all sold as E-bikes, were actually illegal E-motos. That number hasn’t changed meaningfully despite years of sustained education efforts. Furthermore, it’s difficult even for experts to recognize if a moped-style e-bike is an illegal e-moto based solely on looks. They have to power on the bike and check the actual settings and speeds.
• A community e-bike safety program was shut down after insurance providers dropped coverage. The liability exposure from E-motos showing up to classes made the program uninsurable.
• Infrastructure advocacy has been derailed. “Every time I go in and talk about creating better infrastructure,” Kullaway said, “the chorus is always: what are you going to do about kids on E-bikes?”

The media has compounded the problem. Kullaway described a New York Times story headlined “An E-Bike Almost Killed Her, and Now She’s Fighting for Regulation.” She had been interviewed for the piece and said the reporter did solid work. An editor added the headline at the last minute. The vehicle involved was an e-Moto, not an e-Bike. Kullaway stated that “[I] interview with live journalists, I have them repeat things back to me, I think they get it, and then the article ends up being wrong every single time.”

Part of the reason why journalists incorrectly classify E-motos as E-bikes is because the Associated Press doesn’t have a word the reporters can officially use for E-motos. Everything falls under the ‘e-bike’ umbrella.

When lawmakers are inundated with constituent complaints about 40 mph “E-bikes” on sidewalks and bike paths, the policy response tends to be blunt rather than surgical.

New Jersey has emerged as the clearest example of what happens when legislatures act without drawing a distinction between E-motos and legitimate E-bikes. The state introduced sweeping policies that apply equally to both.

Kullaway described the consequence: “If you’re in New Jersey, and you are a mom on a cargo bike, with two kids on the back, you have to be registered, you have to have insurance, you have to have a license, and then each of you have to be wearing a motorcycle helmet.”

Under those requirements, a parent using a Class 1 cargo bike for the school run faces the same DMV obligations as a rider on a 500cc motorcycle. The panel’s position was uniform: that kind of blanket legislation does not solve the e-Moto problem. It eliminates the accessibility that makes legitimate E-bikes viable as a transportation and climate tool in the first place.

Kullaway noted that E-bikes are responsible globally for replacing at least one million barrels of oil emissions per day – a number that depends on continued, frictionless adoption.