Electric Bicycles, Motorcycle Market research

The Category Nobody Designed: How the High-Speed Electric Motorbike Slipped Between the Bicycle and the Motorcycle, and Why Regulators Are Closing In

by Francis Rozange | Sep 28, 2026 | 0 comments

On May 28, two men died on the Queensboro Bridge, the steel span that carries traffic, cyclists and pedestrians between Queens and Manhattan. One was riding a bicycle. The other was riding a high-speed electric scooter that, in the words of the sponsor’s memo accompanying a New York State Senate bill later drafted in response, was not street legal and had a top speed of over 50 miles per hour. The collision was head-on. Local press reported that the riders were 39 and 35 years old. It was one crash among many in a city that has made room on its streets for two wheels, yet it has become a reference point for lawmakers in Albany, whose push runs in parallel with efforts already under way in Sacramento and Washington.

The machine at the center of that campaign has no settled name. Riders and retailers often call it an e-bike. Lawmakers increasingly call it an e-moto. Engineers would describe it as a light electric motorcycle, sometimes with vestigial pedals, sometimes without any. What it lacks is a regulatory home. It is too fast and too powerful to qualify as a bicycle under American, European or British law, yet it is often sold without the vehicle identification number, safety certification and registration that the law demands of a motorcycle. It is a category nobody designed, grown in the space between two sets of rules written with something else in mind.

A Bill That Starts With a Number

The newest attempt to close that space is Senate Bill S10700, introduced in the New York State Senate on September 14, 2026 by Senator Kristen Gonzalez, with Senator Liz Krueger as cosponsor, and referred the same day to the Rules Committee. Press reports of the announcement said Assemblymember Diana Moreno would carry an identical bill in the Assembly, although the Assembly’s record for S10700, consulted for this article, listed no companion bill yet. The text is short. It defines an “E-moto” as “any device that is equipped with a motor capable of propelling the device in excess of twenty miles per hour,” excluding devices that state law already removes from the definition of motor vehicle, such as legal e-bikes and e-scooters, and devices eligible for registration.

The bill then does three things. It forbids any online retailer or physical store in New York from selling, offering or reselling an e-moto in the state. It allows electric off-highway motorcycles, a separate and legitimate category, to be advertised and sold only by all-terrain vehicle dealers physically located in New York and registered with the Department of Motor Vehicles, with registration required before delivery. And it makes it unlawful to market an e-moto or an electric off-highway motorcycle as an electric scooter, an e-bike or an off-highway motorcycle unless the device actually meets that definition. Sellers must also post, in bold and in the same font size as the price, a warning that riding the device on any public street is illegal under state law.

Penalties Measured in Hundreds of Dollars

The enforcement structure is modest in its sums, ambitious in reach. Sales violations can bring a civil penalty of up to $1,000 per violation in proceedings brought by the attorney general, which a court may waive for a first-time defendant that has taken effective preventive measures, and municipal consumer affairs offices and city lawyers may also enforce the section. Failing to post the warning carries a penalty of up to $250 for a first offense and up to $1,000 for each subsequent one. Deceptive marketing can cost up to $500 per violation, or up to $1,000 where a court finds the violation was knowing. The multiplier is what gives these numbers weight: under the sales and marketing provisions, each item sold or offered, and each day a violation continues, counts as a separate violation.

The bill also amends the Vehicle and Traffic Law so that a vehicle sold or offered in violation of the new sales ban may be seized by police and forfeited, and it would take effect immediately upon enactment. None of this is law yet. A bill introduced in September and sent to the Rules Committee, with no companion yet on the Assembly’s record, faces an uncertain path. Its significance, for now, lies less in its prospects than in its method. Rather than chase riders on the street, it moves the point of control to the moment of sale and to the words used to make that sale, which is where the category was born in the first place.

Three Classes, Written for Bicycles

American federal law contains two definitions that matter. The Consumer Product Safety Act, amended in 2002, treats a “low-speed electric bicycle” as a consumer product: a two- or three-wheeled vehicle with fully operable pedals and an electric motor of less than 750 watts, whose top speed on motor power alone, with a 170-pound rider on a paved level surface, is less than 20 miles per hour. In 2021 the federal infrastructure law added a separate three-class definition to the highway funding statute. Class 1 assists only while the rider pedals and stops at 20 miles per hour; Class 2 may use a throttle but cannot assist beyond 20; Class 3 is pedal-assist only and cuts out at 28.

States built their own traffic codes on the same architecture. By February 2021, the National Conference of State Legislatures counted 26 states with a three-tiered classification system, New York and California among them. New York’s version, as published by its Department of Motor Vehicles, follows the federal model for Classes 1 and 2 but allows Class 3 only in cities with a population of one million or more, and caps it at 25 miles per hour. Every class shares the same ceiling of less than 750 watts. These rules were written for the bicycle world. They assume pedals, a rider’s own effort and a machine that can share a bike lane with a child on a commuter bicycle without dominating it.

What the Classes Leave Out

Anything that exceeds those limits is, by definition, not an e-bike. The law is clear on that point; what it is less clear on is what such a machine is instead. In New York, the Department of Motor Vehicles lists mini-bikes and off-road motorcycles among devices that cannot be registered or operated on any street, highway, parking lot or sidewalk, and specifies that off-road motorcycles must, unless exempt, be registered as all-terrain vehicles. A two-wheeler with a 1,500-watt motor, no vehicle identification number and no federal safety certification therefore falls into an awkward category: generally legal to own and to ride on private land, legal to buy in much of the state (New York City law already bars its sale), and illegal on nearly every surface where most buyers actually intend to ride it.

PeopleForBikes, an American bicycle industry association, published a working description of the device in October 2025. It characterizes an e-moto as powered by a motor of more than 750 watts and capable of more than 20 miles per hour on motor power alone, and lists further traits: a bench seat that cannot be adjusted, an open frame built around a large battery, wheels smaller than 24 inches, weight above 100 pounds and electrical systems above 50 volts. That description reads less like a bicycle than like a scaled-down motorcycle. The association’s point is precisely that the resemblance to a bicycle is superficial, and that the law should stop treating the two as neighbors.

Europe Drew the Line Differently

The European Union confronted the same boundary with different instruments and arrived at a stricter answer. Regulation (EU) No 168/2013, the framework for type approval of two- and three-wheeled vehicles, excludes from its scope pedal cycles whose auxiliary motor has a maximum continuous rated power of 250 watts or less, where assistance stops when the rider stops pedaling and is cut off before 25 km/h. Those machines are treated as bicycles and covered by a European safety standard for electrically power assisted cycles, EN 15194, whose scope, as summarized in a standards catalog, is limited to that same 250-watt, 25 km/h envelope.

Road vehicles above the envelope need type approval. A powered cycle that still requires pedaling but has up to 1,000 watts falls into category L1e-A, with assistance cut off at 25 km/h. Anything else in the light category, with a design speed of up to 45 km/h and up to 4,000 watts, is an L1e-B moped, which places it among type-approved motor vehicles rather than bicycles. The European system therefore leaves little room for a throttle-driven, 50 km/h machine to pass as a bicycle. Yet it contains its own trap door. The same regulation also excludes “vehicles primarily intended for off-road use and designed to travel on unpaved surfaces.” The off-road exemption at the heart of the American debate has a European twin.

Britain Declined to Loosen

The United Kingdom applies the same 250-watt, pedal-assist logic outside the European Union. Government guidance states that an electrically assisted pedal cycle must have pedals that can propel it, a continuous rated power of no more than 250 watts, and a motor that cannot propel the bike above 15.5 miles per hour. Riders must be at least 14. A machine that can move without pedaling, the so-called twist-and-go type, needs vehicle type approval or individual motorcycle approval. A bike outside these rules is treated as a moped or motorcycle, and must be registered, taxed and insured, with a licensed rider wearing an approved helmet.

The Department for Transport consulted on raising the power limit to 500 watts and allowing throttle assistance up to 15.5 miles per hour without type approval. The outcome, published on January 28, 2025, after 2,121 responses, was a refusal to proceed with either proposal. The department cited a significant lack of evidence for the claimed benefits and reported that the vast majority of the main stakeholder organizations, a group that included police forces and fire and rescue services, opposed the proposals. Among the concerns it recorded was that higher limits could drive customers to order high fire risk products online or to tamper with existing e-bikes. The British decision is notable because it treats the definition itself as a safety device.

The Word Doing the Work

Across all three jurisdictions, the most consequential word in the device’s life is not “electric” or “bike.” It is “off-road.” A machine sold for off-road use escapes the on-road safety standards that govern motorcycles, and in Europe it can escape type approval altogether. In the United States, the phrase can serve as the disclaimer that lets a fast machine be shipped to a city apartment. The Safe SPEEDS Act, a federal bill discussed below, addresses this directly. It defines an “other off-road electric device” as a consumer product designed, manufactured or recommended by its seller for off-road use, powered by an electric motor, that “may or may not have operable pedals,” with fewer than four wheels, a straddle seat and handlebars.

That definition is a candid description of the product, and it shows the regulatory logic now taking shape. Rather than argue about whether such a device is a bicycle, the bill would require a permanent label stating its motor power, its top speed on motor alone, a minimum age recommendation and, for the off-road category, that it is not intended for on-road use and does not satisfy federal motor vehicle safety standards. In other words, the disclaimer that today appears in small print on a product page would be bolted to the frame. The assumption is that a buyer who reads “not a motor vehicle, not for roads” on the machine itself will understand what the listing was careful not to say.

How the Listings Speak

For a firm like CSM International, whose work combines motorcycle research with content analysis, the advertising of these machines is itself a data set, and the regulatory record now describes its main features. New York’s attorney general, in a consumer alert issued on July 31, 2026, reminded businesses that they “cannot advertise or sell vehicles that are intended to be modified to exceed legal limits” and that misrepresenting a vehicle’s characteristics is illegal. PeopleForBikes has called for bans on modification devices such as dongles and apps. The Safe SPEEDS Act would require the federal standard to prohibit selling as a low-speed electric bicycle any product displayed as capable of being configured to exceed that definition.

Each of these provisions targets the same presumed pattern: a listing that presents a legal speed or a modest nominal wattage in the headline, then describes higher speed modes, unlockable limiters or peak output further down. A local transportation news outlet reported that the device ridden by a 17-year-old killed in Lower Manhattan on July 29 had a 1,500-watt motor, was advertised at 30 miles per hour with the throttle, and that its seller’s website explained how to override the limiter to reach up to 50. A systematic content analysis would code such claims by position, wording and emphasis. That work has not, to our knowledge, been published at scale by any regulator, and in our reading it is the kind of evidence most of the bills now in play lack.

A Channel That Was Never Built for Motor Vehicles

The sales channel matters as much as the product. A new motorcycle in the United States typically reaches its owner through a dealer, with a manufacturer’s certificate of origin, a 17-digit vehicle identification number and a certification that it meets federal motor vehicle safety standards. The high-speed electric two-wheeler reaches its owner through online marketplaces, direct-to-consumer websites and general retailers, none of which is built to verify road eligibility. New York City’s mayor’s office said in August that dangerous illegal e-bikes and stand-up e-scooters “have proliferated in recent years largely through online sales,” and announced cease-and-desist orders to 42 online retailers.

Under city law, the mayor’s office said, retailers that continue selling prohibited devices after such an order may face a civil penalty of up to $2,000 for each illegal sale. A local transportation outlet later reported that the largest marketplaces had complied while some smaller direct-to-consumer sellers were still shipping to New York addresses; that account comes from press reporting rather than from an official tally. The New York State bill’s decision to send electric off-highway motorcycles through registered all-terrain vehicle dealers is, in this light, an attempt to reattach the product to a channel that knows how to handle motor vehicles, with paperwork, registration and a physical counter.

Counting the Harm With Blunt Instruments

Any account of the risk runs into a measurement problem. The Consumer Product Safety Commission’s micromobility report, published in April 2026 and covering 2017 through 2024, counts 310 e-bike-related fatalities over the period, rising from none reported in 2017 to 97 in 2024, and estimates 155,200 emergency department visits linked to e-bikes, of which 59,200 occurred in 2024. The agency notes that reporting for 2023 and 2024 is still ongoing and that counts may change, and the report states that it was prepared by staff and has not been reviewed or approved by the commission. Those figures describe a fast-growing problem. They do not distinguish a compliant Class 1 commuter bicycle from a 50-mile-per-hour machine sold as one.

The report is candid about why. Until 2024 the injury surveillance system used a single product code for powered bicycles that captured both e-bikes and mopeds, and many hospital records described only an “unspecified bicycle” or a “motorized bicycle.” In the agency’s 2024 follow-up study, 88 cases were confirmed as e-bikes, and 53 of those had originally been coded as non-powered bicycles. On speed, 15 percent of the estimated 2024 e-bike injuries involved riders traveling at 20 miles per hour or more, 47 percent below that, and 38 percent did not specify. The national data system, in other words, has no code that corresponds to the e-moto as lawmakers now define it, a gap that the analysis by device type proposed in the federal bill would begin to address.

What the City’s Own Numbers Show

New York City has produced a sharper cut. In its August announcement, the mayor’s office said that between 2017 and 2025, 45 rider fatalities involved illegal e-bikes capable of traveling faster than 25 miles per hour, accounting for 54 percent of all e-bike rider deaths in the city over that period. Over the same years, 14 rider fatalities involved stand-up scooters capable of more than 20 miles per hour, 52 percent of all stand-up scooter deaths. Those shares are official figures, and they carry an important implication: the question of who is dying on electric two-wheelers in New York cannot be separated from the question of what those two-wheelers legally are.

The City Council, announcing in early August a hearing on e-bike and e-scooter safety scheduled for September 30, said there had been more than 500 collisions involving e-bikes in 2026 and that e-bike collisions were up 31.7 percent on the previous year. The Council’s release does not name the agency behind those numbers or specify the cut-off date, so they should be read as the Council’s own statement rather than as a verified series. The city’s figures and the federal ones point in the same direction without being comparable: one is a national estimate built on hospital visits, the other a local count of deaths filtered by the legal status of the device.

California Moves From Labels to Definitions

California, the most populous state, has gone further than most in rewriting its vehicle code around the problem. Senate Bill 1167, introduced on February 18, 2026 by Senator Catherine Blakespear, would redefine a moped as a device with an electric motor or engine producing less than 4 gross brake horsepower, or 3,000 watts, with a top speed of no more than 30 miles per hour, designed for highway use, compliant with federal motor vehicle safety standards and carrying a 17-digit vehicle identification number. A motor-driven cycle would include electric machines of up to 5 gross brake horsepower, or 3,750 watts, under the same conditions.

The bill also requires manufacturers, importers and sellers of electric mopeds, motor-driven cycles and off-highway electric motorcycles to include a specified disclosure in all advertising, including online and social media. It prohibits operating any two- or three-wheeled electric device capable of more than 20 miles per hour on motor power alone on a public road unless the vehicle code expressly authorizes it, and it restricts the sale and installation of e-bike classification labels to physical retailers and repair shops. The legislature’s record shows the Assembly passed it 77 to 0 on August 25, the Senate concurred 39 to 0 on August 28, and it was presented to the governor on September 4; the record showed no action by the governor when consulted for this article.

Washington’s Slower Instrument

In Congress, the vehicle is H.R. 7839, the Safe Standards for Personal E-bike and E-moto Device Specifications Act, or Safe SPEEDS Act, introduced on March 5, 2026 by Representative Min of California with Representatives Lawler and Huffman, and referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. It would require the Consumer Product Safety Commission to issue, within a year of enactment, a standard, to be treated as a consumer product safety rule, for the classification and labeling of low-speed electric bicycles and other off-road electric devices, with distinct classes, minimum age recommendations for each, and permanent labels disclosing class, motor power and top motor-only speed.

The bill would also require the commission to analyze crashes, injuries and deaths over the preceding five years, broken down by rider age and device type, and to repeat that analysis periodically. It authorizes $2.5 million a year from fiscal 2027 through 2031 for grants to police, emergency services, states and local governments to improve data collection and device identification. This summer the three sponsors and a fourth member, Representative Fitzpatrick, wrote to the commission urging stronger standards. Their accompanying statement claimed that e-bike sales nearly quadrupled between 2019 and 2022 while e-bike and e-moto injuries rose nearly tenfold; these are the lawmakers’ figures, and the release attributes the injury trend to estimates from the commission’s national injury surveillance system but gives no source for the sales figure.

Hawaii and New York City Add Their Own Layers

Other governments are not waiting for Washington. Hawaii’s Act 259, signed by Governor Josh Green on July 15, 2026, according to the state’s Department of Transportation, bars devices exceeding 750 watts or 28 miles per hour from public roadways, bicycle lanes, paths, sidewalks and other public areas. It requires a permanent classification label on each electric bicycle and obliges distributors to give buyers a booklet or pamphlet explaining state law. The approach is blunt but readable: rather than rely on detailed definitions alone, it defines the public space where the device may not go, and it puts the burden of explanation on the seller.

New York City’s Council, for its part, is scheduled to take up a long list of proposals at its September 30 hearing. According to the Council, one of them, Introduction 244, would prohibit the sale and rental of Class 3 e-bikes, with civil penalties of up to $2,000. According to a local transportation outlet’s review of the package, other proposals would bar marketing e-motos with e-bike terminology, create a trade-in program for owners of Class 3 e-bikes and unclassified e-motos, and require the police department to run dynamometer testing with the transportation department to verify motor wattage and top speed. The last idea is telling: the city wants a machine that measures what the listing claims.

The Bicycle Industry Chooses a Side

For the established bicycle industry, the e-moto is both a competitor and a reputational hazard. In the industry’s framing, every crash involving a heavy, fast machine described as an e-bike weakens the case for bicycle access to paths and lanes. PeopleForBikes has made its position explicit. In its October 2025 policy paper, it called for classifying vehicles that exceed 20 miles per hour on motor power alone as mopeds or motorcycles, banning easily modified vehicles and crossover products that pair pedals with high-powered motors, regulating false advertising of e-motos as street-legal bicycles, and requiring sellers to disclose classifications to buyers.

The association also worked on California’s SB 1167 and, according to trade press reporting at the time, described it as closing important gaps in state law and protecting the integrity of e-bikes. Its broader policy page states that it does not think it appropriate to insert other types of devices into the bicycle regulatory structure. Our interpretation, not the association’s wording, is that the industry wants the line drawn sharply because a vague line lets the fastest products borrow the legitimacy of the slowest, while the backlash falls on anything with pedals and a battery. A California proposal to cut Class 1 and Class 2 assistance from 20 to 16 miles per hour, held in committee in May, showed how that can happen.

Where Motorcycle Makers and Dealers Fit

The motorcycle trade has been less visible in the public record of this debate, though its stakes are real. A high-speed electric two-wheeler sold without a vehicle identification number competes, in practice, with entry-level mopeds, small motorcycles and youth off-road machines that carry the costs of certification, dealer networks and compliance. In product research terms, and as analysis rather than measured data, it offers much of the utility of a light motorcycle at a price point that reflects the absence of those costs. California’s proposed moped and motor-driven cycle definitions, and the New York bill’s provision routing electric off-highway motorcycles through registered all-terrain vehicle dealers, would move part of that demand back toward a channel the powersports industry already operates.

That shift would not be automatic. Buyers who chose these machines for their price, their availability online and their freedom from registration may not follow them into a dealership. Understanding who those buyers are, what they believe they purchased and how they use it is a question for customer research as much as for law, and the kind of question that motorcycle research at firms such as CSM International is built to answer. The e-moto is a vivid case: a product defined by its buyers’ behavior, sold in the vocabulary of one industry and performing like the product of another. How much of that demand is recoverable by legitimate vehicles is, for now, an open empirical question.

A Category Waiting for a Name

The regulatory convergence of 2026 is striking in its shared threshold. New York’s bill uses 20 miles per hour on motor power. California’s SB 1167 uses 20 miles per hour for its prohibition on public roads. PeopleForBikes uses the same figure, and the federal consumer-product definition of a low-speed electric bicycle has used it since 2002. Europe and Britain drew their line lower, at 25 km/h, and in 2025 Britain declined to loosen its limits on power and throttles. The disagreement is no longer about where a bicycle ends. It is about who takes responsibility for what lies beyond that line: the rider on the street, the police officer with a dynamometer, or the seller who wrote the listing.

The bills now in play tilt decisively toward the seller. They regulate words, labels, channels and points of sale, because that is where the category was invented and where it can be most cheaply undone. Whether they succeed will depend on enforcement against small online merchants and on a federal standard that does not yet exist. The Queensboro Bridge crash did not create this problem; it made it legible. A machine that can exceed 50 miles per hour on a bridge crossing shared with cyclists was never a bicycle, and the law is only now finding the vocabulary to say what it is.