TONIGHT 9pm: - E-Bikes: The Battle for Our Streets - Panorama

[flecc]

When you go in a bike shop and a pisspoor 20" wheeled ebike with a 140Wh battery is called 250W and £10k state of the art e-mountain bike with 110Nm of torque is also 250W you know the certification process is utterly incompetent or corrupt.

The fact that you persist in referring to ebike and e-mountain bike shows that that you, like almost all in this forum, simply do not understand the relevant legality or its purpose. Here once again for the umpteenth time is the correct position:

1) All e-bikes are motor vehicles which have to be type approved and registered in the UK.

2) Our compliant EAPCs are never e-bikes and should never be called that, they are simply assisted bicycles subject only to bicycle law. As such they are excused compliance with motor vehicle law, provided they fully comply with the relevant exemption conditions. Therefore they do not have need of any certification of actual power.

3) Since an assisted bicycle can range from a small wheeled light folder to a circa 150 kg pedicab or van capable of carrying three adults or 250 kgs of goods over any normal roads, the actual power permitted has to vary to suit the purpose. Therefore the power limit indicated in the exemption conditions has to be nominal, leaving the actual power and torque provided entrusted to the designer suiting it to the designed purpose.

So why do we have this vague situation?

The authorities almost worldwide have realised what a terrible mistake it was to permit near universal car ownership, so they are trying hard to get the public to accept less environmentally and legally damaging forms of transport. The ideal primary means is the bicycle, but with widely variable terrains and personal physical abilities, some assistance is necessary, without all the complexities of motor vehicle law to make that acceptance possible.

Hence our EAPC permission, which has now become the only world standard for such vehicles.
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[MikelBikel]

"E-bike - The Battle for our streets"
Well that's incitement from Panorama
Why aren't they being charged with a hayte krime? ;-)

 

[guerney]

The Cabbage Patch doll with down's syndrome presenting the programme is wrong! They're not "rules", they're laws, and they're clearly not "unenforceable" - we saw a policeman seize a throttle enabled bike, and another officer fail to catch and brutalise a food delivery dude riding a derestricted bike, because the copper wasn't properly equipped with a motorbike and truncheon. The existing laws are clear, there aren't enough police to enforce them. I say enforce speed limit laws for ebikes, ignore power. Speed causes more damage than power. Powerful bikes can be car replacements. Limiting ebikes strictly to 250W would increase use of less "green" modes of transport blackening lungs and stunting growth. People would become shorter and we'd become a country of midgets again. Can't win a ground war against Russia with midgets. That utterly useless programme was created by clueless airheads. It should be illegal for children's toys with limited capacity to present tv programmes. Hard to watch such cruel exploitation of the vulnerable.

 

[MikelBikel]

The wattage is irrelevant to safety, which is purported to be the purpose of the rules.
Speed is the crucial factor
I think 20mph should be the limit, same as for cars in a school zone.
We will always get idiots riding or driving like idiots, reasonable enforcement is the key. :-?

 

[Az.]

When you go in a bike shop and a pisspoor 20" wheeled ebike with a 140Wh battery is called 250W and £10k state of the art e-mountain bike with 110Nm of torque is also 250W you know the certification process is utterly incompetent or corrupt."

You can have a legal pisspoor 20" e-bike and legal state of the art 110Nm bike. What is wrong with that? What is incompetent and corrupt about that? You are using very strong words and accuse people without any proof.

BTW my pisspoor bike has 120Nm motor.

So why are people with direct drive hub motors seen as outside the law?

What are you talking about Bonzo? Who sees people with direct drives as outside the law??? As long as bike meets legal criteria it is legal. It doesn't matter if motor is direct drive or geared.

 

[soundwave]

just put a 100a controller on it

should make a good lawn mower

 

[portals]

The wattage is irrelevant to safety, which is purported to be the purpose of the rules.
Speed is the crucial factor
I think 20mph should be the limit, same as for cars in a school zone.
We will always get idiots riding or driving like idiots, reasonable enforcement is the key. :-?

20-22mph is the sweet spot on a bike in decent conditions (for me anyway, strikes the balance of getting me somewhere in a reasonable time (I got rid of my car 7 months ago as experiment) versus feeling safe as still in control of bike).

If the law was 20mph I would certainly look to downgrade and consider becoming fully legal, however, the 20mph would need to be attainable on steep hills too...

There was mention in past that gov.uk were looking at increasing 250W to 500W continuous, would that really make anything worse?

The short-sightedness in government planning is astounding in continuing to throw money at unsafe shared pathways, we need isolation and proper investment for bikes as they have in Netherlands and Denmark, ebikes like the bike aren't going anywhere any time soon, when will the penny drop...painting white lines and a few bollards doesn't cut it.

 

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[Benjahmin]

15.5mph limit is an absolute, or at least it should be. Problem is, how do you actually measure it? As pointed out before, any speed measuring device on a bike is actually a rev counter deriving speed from revs via a calculation including wheel size. Wheel sizes, as we all know, are variable. ie How big actually is a 700c wheel? Add to this different tyre heights, so giving unspecified wheel diameter, and you have an unreliable, uncalibrated, approximate indicator. Yet the authorities seem to take this indication as gospel.
So, perhaps the only way would be to put a rider on it and measure with radar gun or gps the speed at which the motor cuts out.
The further sublety here, that Chiles did not point out or allude to, is that 15.5 is not a speed limit for the bike, it is merely assistance limit.
Where wattage is concerned. There is NO maximum wattage specified. So long as the motor is RATED by the manufacturer at 250W it is legal in the UK.
Once more and with feeling ! A motor, any motor, does NOT consume a set wattage. It is entirely dependant on what current and voltage is fed into it and what load is on the motor. Moreover a freshly charged bike is 'higher wattage' than a nearly discharged one. Where is the absolute here? And, again, how do you measure it? What is coming out of the battery is NOT what the motor is delivering.
My own hub motored bike has a 17A controller. At a freshly charged 42v this is a notional 714w max. At end of ride 34v volts this is a possible 575w. But neither of those figures will be seen at the wheel output (however that would be defined) because of mechanical and electrical inefficiences.
Those who argue for 250w maximum consumption had better be careful what they wish for. It may become 250w at freshly charged voltage so that it can never be more. This would mean a piddly 6A max controller for a 36v battery.
Fancy a hill climb anyone?

 

[Woosh]

Unless you ride like a lunatic, I don't think anyone would worry about you going over 15.5mph by one or two mph while pedalling. The problem is with those who derestrict their bike then use the throttle to go faster than they can pedal.

 

[Waspy]

The Cabbage Patch doll with down's syndrome presenting the programme is wrong! They're not "rules", they're laws, and they're clearly not "unenforceable"

I started to watch this and about 2 minutes in Mr. Chiles appears on screen and he's having his first ride on an E-Bike. His opening comment was, "These are an absolute doddle to ride, it's just a cheat."

I turned it off.

 

[Az.]

Unless you ride like a lunatic, I don't think anyone would worry about you going over 15.5mph by one or two mph while pedalling.

There is 10% + 2mph tolerance anyway.

https://www.met.police.uk/foi-ai/metropolitan-police/disclosure-2024/april-2024/speed-cameras-thresholds/

 

[AndyBike]

I watched the first ten mins, then that was enough for me as the dialogue was heading towards these Ebikes are bad.
Given the muppet arrived on a motorbike with a top speed of 180mph, it seems crazy to suggest the speed of ebikes is anything comparable.



The real problem is the number of people cycling instead of either walking or going their journey by car. Ebike or Analogue, there are more bikes on the road.
Space on UK roads is small and no real provision has ever been made for them, so its a bit of a jostle.

Population increases. Public transport is poor, more cars, more pedestrians, cars and fuel increasingly expensive so more people either hoof it or ride a bike.
Say we removed all Ebikes. would that solve the problem ? No, there would still be more analogue bikes, cars and pedestrians vying for space so nothing really would change statistic wise.
Remove all cars and lo and behold, its much safer for everyone.

Someone should do a program of similar vein, but with cars. Show a generalization of cars breaking the speed limit, or jumping red lights, or drink/drug driving and imply this is endemic of all drivers. Boy there would be an uproar and people would come out defending that not all cars, not all drivers are like that.
So the same should be pointed out for Ebikes. Not some sensationalistic program showing all ebikes in the light of some drug delivering Sur-ron rider

 

[saneagle]

Because "rated" here is itself not something definitive, its an arbitrary value accredited by whoever sticks the label on the unit. Its not IMO realistic in that 250 Watts is placed too low for much other than flat terrain.
In the diesel world, "we" rated against time and temperature stability limits. Even "continuous" itself had its time limits, its was not what might be implied, "continuous".

Here, this is an absolute gift for a vender to stick any power rating label on they like.

It is definitive. The motor's power has either been rated by the manufacturer or not. The rated power is written on the motor in most cases. You're inventing some sort of law that the power has to be limited to some undefined value, then saying it's not definitive because the value is undefined. No such rule exists, and that's definitive.

 

[saneagle]

When you go in a bike shop and a pisspoor 20" wheeled ebike with a 140Wh battery is called 250W and £10k state of the art e-mountain bike with 110Nm of torque is also 250W you know the certification process is utterly incompetent or corrupt.

Nothing is corrupt. Both are allowed. There's nothing stopping the 20" wheeled bike having the same motor, etc as the MTB. Both can be rated at 250w. It's no different to say that you can drive a Ferrari with 400hp on the road legally, the same as you can a Toyota Aygo with 60hp. The 250w, just means legal.

 

[flecc]

Remove all cars and lo and behold, its much safer for everyone.

We can't, we cannot even restrict their use enough, simply because we have constructed a country in which the car is essential to so many.

Before you deny that, read the below:

Over seventy years ago when we managed to live to our sixties or seventy if lucky, I had a corner shop a few yards away for the odd things we ran out of. Two streets and a couple of hundred yards away the was a local shopping centre covering all needs, butchers, greengrocers, fishmongers, post office, bank, gents and boys outfitters, shoe shop, cobblers, tobacconists, off-licence, bike shop, doctor's, dentists and much, much more. From there a frequent bus service went into the town centre for everything else.

Life for all of us was locally so convenient then for everyone of any age.

Fifty years ago the corner shop no longer existed and the local shopping centre was much reduced in range,

Now the typical local shopping centre is mainly a mix of empty shops, charity shops and fast food outlets with little useful left.

So I cycled further afield for many years, until the new problem we've created for so many of us, living much longer into an old age when I can no longer do that or even walk long distances.

But throughout I have been able to drive in comfort for everything I need, in a country now designed for the car with out of town shopping centres, retail car parks etc. So we are stuck with what we made, short of starting all over again with bulldozers.
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[Nealh]

It is rediculous imv to have 20mph EAPC's , 20mph is far above the speed that an average person will or can pedal at and be comfortable with.
The odd few cycle fit riders can muster 20mph but really for how long given prevailing conditions, most will only manage the speed via a thumb speed switch or in max assist level. Mainly it will be commuters or fast food riders wanting faster speeds.

 

[flecc]

It is rediculous imv to have 20mph EAPC's , 20mph is far above the speed that an average person will or can pedal at and be comfortable with.
The odd few cycle fit riders can muster 20mph but really for how long given prevailing conditions, most will only manage the speed via a thumb speed switch or in max assist level. Mainly it will be commuters or fast food riders wanting faster speeds.

From the invention of the bicycle for some 140 years to the 1970s we usually cycled at no more than 10 mph, often less. In the 1940s and '50s when we all cycled in poor post war Britain, the roads were packed with 10 mph bicycles with only the rare appearance of a car. But then as we became more affluent we abandoned our bicycles, taking to mopeds and cars and cycling all but disappeared, becoming something kids did.

The invention of the mountain bike in 1979/80 which gradually became popular, reinvented cycling as sporting in style, bringing with that attitude higher speeds, which now people commonly think is normal to cycling and even necessary.

It's not necessary and certainly not normal, and while that attitude persists and people see grim-faced, helmet-wearing, even lycra-clad cyclists working hard on the pedals to maintain such unnatural speeds, they find it unappealing and sit tight in their cars.

If, as in the 1940s, they saw normally clad people ambling easily along at 10 mph, they would more happily join in, just as they all do in The Netherlands and Denmark from childhood into old age.

And of course in these respects EAPCs being known as electric bikes, even by pedelecers who should know better, and often ridden at high speeds, dont help the cause.
.

 

[Cadence]

It is rediculous imv to have 20mph EAPC's , 20mph is far above the speed that an average person will or can pedal at and be comfortable with.
The odd few cycle fit riders can muster 20mph but really for how long given prevailing conditions, most will only manage the speed via a thumb speed switch or in max assist level. Mainly it will be commuters or fast food riders wanting faster speeds.

Couldn't agree more. We have many "shared use" cycle tracks/footpaths locally, some of which I use as both a cyclist and a pedestrian. When a cyclist I'm appalled at dog walkers with expanding leads and people ambling along with earphones in - all oblivious of any potential cycle usage. I've been harangued by a pedestrian for riding (slowly and carefully) on one, even though it is clearly marked as a National Cycle Route!
As a pedestrian I have been "buzzed" by cyclists (electric and analogue) without any warning bell or slowing down. The worst is at school kicking out time, when ebikes (legal or not) are most prevalent.
In the above circumstances I consider that even the 15.5mph limit is too high. I'm not against a 20mph limit as such - in fact I would suggest 18mph for an EAPC would be very useful. But, and it's a big but - it should only apply on roads and not shared use pavements. Totally unenforceable of course, as are the present restrictions. I'm afraid it comes down to attitudes and lack of tolerance for other users. The Panorama programme will have done nothing to improve matters.

 

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