Comment on E-bike rules in Australia will soon change with possible ban on sale of bikes faster than 25km/h
Grail@aussie.zone 1 day agoThey’re banning it based on wattage? That’s ridiculous. That means a 50kg person can go three times as fast as a 150kg person.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 13 hours ago
Well, no. For starters, you’re forgetting that gravity it’s probably the only force acting on a bike that’s linear with speed. And even it technically isn’t linear—just close enough to be a good approximation over human scales. But air resistance goes with the square of speed. i.e., to double your speed requires quadrupling the power.
More importantly though, there’s also a speed cap. EN15194 has a hard cap of 25 km/h. It can provide up to 250 W of assistance if you’re doing 24.9 km/h, but the motor must cut out entirely and be no help at 25.1 km/h. It also must be pedal assist, meaning it can only provide power while you are also providing power through your legs. The exception is up to 6 km/h it is allowed to assist with a button or throttle, sometimes called “walk mode”.
The NSW law is a 500 W cap at present, but the law specifically calls out that it must “progressively reduce as the bicycle’s speed increases beyond 6km/h”, in addition to cutting off at 25 km/h, and the pedal-assist requirement.
Grail@aussie.zone 3 hours ago
I still think the wattage cap should be increased for fat people and tradies, who both need to carry heavy loads.
Zagorath@aussie.zone 2 hours ago
Yeah, I won’t disagree with you there. You can check elsewhere in the thread if you want to see more details, but in summary: the specific combination of heavy loads and steep hills (take away either one, and 250 W is easily sufficient) do make a 500 W limit more necessary.