WoodlandHills said:
So what's wrong with having an ultra-light electric motocross bike? Moving up from a wimpy 350w Bosch to a 1500w Bafang is simply what Americans always do: we want More Power and we love to hot rod! There is room on the trails for all sorts of machines,
Sure. Germany and US is diffeernt. we are uite pussies, because we want someone to be insured if he drives overs someone else and we want to regulate the motor(!) vehicles that are on the road. Mots people want it that way and they don't want freedom. Sure for themselves, but they do not want to get hit by someone with no insurance, this is not so funny for both sides.
Regarding high speed eBikes: my i3 will go 95mph, but I never drive over 80 or so on the freeway and never over 60 otherwise, that's what the throttle and brakes are for. Are you suggesting that we also restrict the top speed of our cars too?
well, driving 95mph on the Autobahn is considered the lower limit over here, most prefer to have a vehicle that drives over 100mph and is able to accelerate at those speeds. It works well because the Autobahn is designed for those vehicles and we have the TÜV that should remove those vehicles that would fall apart at those speeds or would not be able to brake well enough...
So the vehicle needs to fit the circumstances. I see little possibility to drive a 40mph "bicycle" over here, not amtter if you add some pedals or not. This is an illegal motorbike and police will get you sooner or later. They are not stupid.
I think that the 25kph EU limit is to low (for me) and think that 32kph woud better for daily rides on a bicycle(!), but 25kph is ok for older people or if you travel long distances with heavy luggage or uphill or in deep snow with spike tires. The nice thing is that those Pedelecs are perfectly legal bicycles. If you want to go faster you have the 45kph option, but you loose some bicycle options, which is quite ok. No average person is able to ride a bicycle at 45kph, in reality most ride around 15-30kph.
would I like to have a DIY 40kph electric motorbike. Of course yes. sadly the infrastructure for those does not exist in my place and it would be useless for daily commuting. An accident could completely ruin my life financially.
And btw, I would never call a vehicle a bicyccle that uses much more electric energy than human energy. Those bikes I would call motorcycles with human assist. I see no reason why those should have the privileges of human powered bicycles.