NEV/LSV in Your State?

Dauntless

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Ain't that a horrible link down there? That's for Neighborhood Electric Vehicle/Low Speed Vehicle laws for California. Does your state have such a law?

In California you have one mile to get the car up to 20 mph. At 20 mph it takes 3 minutes to go a mile. I would think that 0-20 in 5 minutes would be legal. Sorry, I think that's just too permissive.

Top speed is 25 mph, no driving on (But you can cross) a road going 35 mph or more.

How does this work in your state?

https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/pubs/brochures/fast_facts/ffvr37/!ut/p/z1/nZFLb4MwEIR_DUe0yxuOVptCIGkqIRHwBZlXoAqGEAe1_76mkdpTUqU-zR6-8ewsUEiBcjZ3Bya6gbOjnDNq59H6eaUFPka-tSFIoiDYJatE9z0DEqBASy5G0UJW9XNeDlzUXOQ1V1DOCo6X4qxgMQ1le5lqKRt2FnnDSrHoZp4MZ_EYy66CTLc1VtmVo9ZMR9V0NV11K2aontk4NuqFUdU27L9D4Y1HEOj9zJnkndxbo6u5MUa7-NVBQsJAC8039F40iB8MdDW89aNlP2wY_rWCvEv3fjpRIstfCv8QkP67fWmmT9un7UFmZKJVO94MkC4kpD8kpL-k1Fdyv-x1_xZj37vGp8oKFw3rOG9IE5MvlYb2WQ!!/dz/d5/L2dBISEvZ0FBIS9nQSEh/
 
I'd rather use my ebike (trike), SB Cruiser. I can reach 20MPH before I finish crossing the intersection (if I was stopped at the red light), under most conditions, and I can ride on any road (other than a freeway within city limits, or an access road that's exclusively for getting on / off such a freeway) as long as I'm not "impeding traffic". (actually I'm not even sure that "impeding traffic" applies to a bicycle on the road, just motor vehicles; I'd have to look that up).

There are, of course, a lot of roads I wouldn't ride on, even with speed limits as low as 30MPH, because the road is just too dangerous for various reasons.
 
amberwolf said:
actually I'm not even sure that "impeding traffic" applies to a bicycle on the road, just motor vehicles

In Oregon it does. Every state is likely different.

No LSVs in Oregon too.
 
In Texas, NEVs have no specification for acceleration rates. NEVs are limited to 35mph, but may use streets marked for speeds up to 45mph. There's a comparable category for scooters called "motor assisted scooter" that has a 25mph speed limitation and 35mph right-of-way limitation, but allows a 40cc engine or an electric motor of unspecified power.

Because a Texas electric bicycle is limited to 100 pounds, amberwolf's trike would have to be a motor assisted scooter here.
 
35mph is a more useful speed, but they rarely care about usefulness when passing laws, eh?

A bike with enough batteries for some.range is gonna top 100 pounds, right?
 
Dauntless said:
h?
A bike qith enough batteries for some.range is gonna top 100 pounds, right?

Not necessarily. Start with a lightweight chromoly nonsuspension bike (probably not something from wallyworld ;) ), and use either a small middrive or friction drive, or a small geared hub, and you'd likely have plenty of weight leftover for batteries and mounting of those.

It wouldn't be very useful for someone like me, but the majority of people would find it met their needs quite well.

For me to stick within that limitation, I'd have to build just the trike itself to carry me and some cargo or dog, and then have a detachable pusher trailer with just the motors, batteries, etc on it, so that the actual bicycle would not exceed the weight limit (and neither would the trailer, by itself).

Or I might be able to have the trike with a middrive motor on it going thru the bike gears (or some lightweight variation thereof), and have batteries all in the trailer.

Depends on what materials I could get for the trike construction. lightweight aircraft cromoly tubing for the frame, and coroplast for all panelling, I might be able to do it. I'd probably have to carry a number of spare tires and tubes with me as I might have to save weight by using thin tubes and tires and no slime/etc, rather than use heavier durable ones, and just suffer the frequent flat tire problems that would likely result.

But it'd be less safe (and more annoying) to pull a trailer around all the time and do all the other stuff to make it light enough, than to keep it all on the trike and just build it like it needs to be. ;)


(Someday I'd still like to make a lighter weight middrive version of the SB Cruiser...but I need a fair bit of money before I can start, to buy all the parts beforehand, since I can't cannibalize anything off the existing one. And probably some help with the design to make it strongest with least tubing, but still make it able to carry what I need it to).
 
Dauntless said:
A bike qith enough batteries for some.range is gonna top 100 pounds, right?

I wouldn't want an e-bike over 100 pounds unless it was a heavy cargo model. And I weigh about 3-1/2 times that much all by myself.

Reckon that a decent quality new touring bike or rigid mountain bike is unlikely to weigh more than 30 pounds. Allow a generous 20 pounds for a big heavy hub motor and controller. That leaves an allowance of 50 pounds for the battery and some way to carry it. That's huge.

My first 36V e-bike had 51 pounds of Hawker Odyssey SLAs. But it was a pig to ride because of that pack weight.

My current cargo e-bike has a 26 pound, 1.2kWh pack that is a power-to-weight underperformer by today's standards. But even with that heavy thing aboard, and even being built from scrap metal to carry a 6'8" ape and a big box of payload, I don't think it breaks 100 lbs until after I start piling stuff into it.

The upside of Texas' e-bike law is that there's no power limit. Only a motor-only speed limit and a weight limit.
 
Dauntless said:
35mph is a more useful speed, but they rarely care about usefulness when passing laws, eh?

A bike qith enough batteries for some.range is gonna top 100 pounds, right?

What do you mean by "some range?" My bike is about 70 lbs and I can travel over fifty miles at economy speeds and over thirty miles at typical speeds around 25 mph. I could double my range and still be within the 100 lb Texas limit.
 
Yes, Arizona does. They limit speed to 25 mph and operation on streets wtih speed limits of 35 mph or less. The whole point of the category is to allow for low speed vehicles without requiring them to meet the more stringent safety requirements set out for cars.

A.R.S. 28-101
43. "Neighborhood electric vehicle" means a self-propelled electrically powered motor vehicle to which all of the following apply:
(a) The vehicle is emission free.
(b) The vehicle has at least four wheels in contact with the ground.
(c) The vehicle complies with the definition and standards for low-speed vehicles set forth in federal motor vehicle safety standard 500 and 49 Code of Federal Regulations sections 571.3(b) and 571.500, respectively.

A link to the Federal codes referenced:
https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/49/571.500
 
wturber said:
What do you mean by "some range?" My bike is about 70 lbs and I can travel over fifty miles at economy speeds and over thirty miles at typical speeds around 25 mph. I could double my range and still be within the 100 lb Texas limit.

I guess you got a point about what that could really mean. That should mean not just how far it goes but how quickly. I once locked my keys in the car with no bus service to intervene on the 12 mile walk home. The 350w Currie got me back quicker than walking, barely on both counts, but that thing is way too slow for a 12 mile commute. At 25 that's a half hour trip.
 
Dauntless said:
I guess you got a point about what that could really mean. That should mean not just how far it goes but how quickly. I once locked my keys in the car with no bus service to intervene on the 12 mile walk home. The 350w Currie got me back quicker than walking, barely on both counts, but that thing is way too slow for a 12 mile commute. At 25 that's a half hour trip.

None of these items is expected to fully replace a car. The basic idea is to allow an exception for short trips at low speeds in a relatively small "neighborhood" area.Also, the average U.S. commute time is 26.1 minutes. So 30 minutes isn't very bad at all.

Traveling 12 miles generally takes you out of your neighborhood and might be difficult to do while avoiding streets with speed limits above 35 mph. It would be impossible for me to avoid such streets if I had an NEV.
 
Oh, missed that response. The particular 12 mile trip I could have made on 35mph or less streets, except an NEV car wouldn't fit in my trunk when I got there. My MX350 hopped up, doing 30, 12 mile range. I might make weight but there's no room for the batteries on that thing.
 
markz said:
I disregard anything California states, because they are just too wacky with their laws.

https://www.narcity.com/ca/bc/vancouver/lifestyle/36-strange-laws-you-didnt-know-existed-in-canada
 
Dauntless said:
Oh, missed that response. The particular 12 mile trip I could have made on 35mph or less streets, except an NEV car wouldn't fit in my trunk when I got there. My MX650 hopped up, doing 30, 12 mile range. I might make weight but there's no room for the batteries on that thing.

I guess I've lost what you are after. NEV/LSVs are four wheeled vehicles. You want something like that in your trunk? Or maybe you want to have an emergency backup transport in your trunk. In that case get a folding bike and put a small motor on it. Even without a motor, that would be far better than walking. Anyway, I'm totally unclear about what it is exactly that you'd like to do. As I said before, 25 mph for a 12 mile commute isn't that bad.
 
You were responding to the trip I made that was probably 8mph on a Currie, at 25 it would have been a half hour. Since you said 25mph wasn't bad I was mentioning what I could possibly throw together.
 
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