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California Wants to Put License Plates on E-Bikes and Slow Them Down. Cyclists Are Not Happy About It
(guessingheadlights.com)
this post was submitted on 04 May 2026
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It's likely a very slight underestimate. The EN-15194 standard comes out of the EU but has basically become the international standard definition of "safe, legal, ebike". It requires the motor to cut out at 25 km/h and have no more than 250 W.
It's about the speed that someone pottering about on a Dutch style bike is probably going, though it's quite slow for a road bike. The 250 W limit is the bigger problem. It's fine in the Netherlands, but for people in hillier countries it makes e-cargo bikes rather inaccessible.
That's 15.5mph, not far off. That makes the ebike barely worth it.
Eh, I wouldn't go that far. As advocates very often say: ebikes aren't for making you go faster, they're for helping you go further. And the evidence bears that out: ebike riders do tend to ride further than regular bike riders do. They go about as fast as a casual cyclist usually will on the flat, and much faster up hills. It's not about speed, it's about convenience.
That said, I have advocated here in Queensland for increasing it from 25 to 32 km/h in the past, to bring it in line with America's 20 mph. And more recently I used my submission to a parliamentary inquiry to suggest a 35 km/h limit for users with a licence (the context here being that the government is proposing a law which will restrict ebikes to 10 km/h on footpaths and shared paths—which make up over 90% of the things called "bike paths" in my city—as well as requiring a licence for all ebikes, even EN-15194 25 km/h ones). As a stronger cyclist, when on flat ground I tend to average about 30 km/h and can go above that for reasonable periods of time, and I don't think it would be a safety risk for responsible adults to go just a hair faster than that.
But I really do want to emphasise that speed is not the primary advantage of an ebike, and it shouldn't be seen as if it is.
You don't live in the mountains, I presume?
The ebike benefit isn't for going faster. It's great for helping to climb mountains. 15.5 mph is FANTASTIC compared to walking up and pushing a bike