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Comment by ilyt | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, people really just want a small electric motorcycle but without fucking with getting actual license for it.

Yeah, except I do have a motorcycle license. So, find me a road legal e-fucking 1000w bike, where I can get it registered, taxed and insured.

It's called a electric scooter, they're about $1500-2500.

Which is neither an eBike, nor legal in the UK and many parts of the EU. Other than that, perfect solution.

A scooter as in a moped? Should be legal in the entire EU and you can ride it on a A or AM license. For a ebike that category is called a speed pedelec, legal in most EU countries (license requirements differ from no license to license AM).

Ah, I would think of an electronic scooter to be a standing style one, similar to the ones you can hire in most major cities. A moped scooter, is really not comparable to the solution of an ebike/escooter.

A pedelec is limited to 250W in most of the EU and UK, which goes back to my first point.

Ok misunderstanding, i'm mainly familiar with Dutch/Belgian law. In NL pedelecs can be 4kW and 1kW in Belgium.

Interesting, I didn't know that.

Does it need be, and is it even possible for it, to be registered? I understood 2002/24/EC limited it to 250W for it to be legal unregistered pedelec, but member states didn't seem to provide a way of it being registered, as they didn't have the correct vehicle classifications for them, which means there was no legal way to use an ebike above 250W. I'd love to be wrong!

The pedelec's in NL must be registered, they have a license plate and require a license and a helmet.

That's the problem, once you're targeting people that had some kind of license majority of them want something a bit more than a simple e-bike so the market is tiny. So there is plenty of scooters but not really much else

this is the worst in amsterdam where you see ebikes flying past at 45-50kph without a single care in the world who they might hit

And usually without a helmet - in NL it's not obligatory to wear a helmet on a standard or basic electric bicycle. There is a lot of disscussion about this safety issue but I'm not aware of any plans to improve the situation

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