E-bike popularity is surging, creating regulatory challenges on U.S. roads

John Yang:

E-bikes are bikes with electric motors to assist riders, and their popularity has soared recently. Last year, U.S. sales topped $1.3 billion. While they're being hailed as a more accessible form of transportation, as Ali Rogin reports, their introduction hasn't been a totally smooth ride.

Ali Rogin:

Since the introduction of the modern e-bike in the 1990s, their popularity has steadily grown in many parts of the world. But it wasn't until 2020 that their use in the U.S. for recreation and as a cheaper, clean and equitable means of transportation really took off.

They have many benefits, but the sudden rise of e-bike use in America has come with challenges, including deadly battery fires and rider and pedestrian deaths. Molly Hurford writes about e bikes for the magazine Bicycling and is the co-host of the podcast Consummate Athlete. Molly, thank you so much for joining us. In terms of e bikes, how does it work?

Molly Hurford, Contributing Writer, "Bicycling": Yeah, e bikes are a little bit you don't really get how they work until you're ones. E-bike can't actually just down the street without your pedal power. So basically all that it's doing is giving you a little extra oomph with every pedal stroke and all the e-bikes let you sort of regulate just how much extra you want.

So picture a bit of like a throttle basically on the handlebars that lets you say, like, I want to go a little bit harder up this hill, and then suddenly you're getting that extra little boost.

Ali Rogin:

And what is behind this surge in popularity in the United States?

Molly Hurford:

You don't like to give COVID credit for anything, but we do have to say cycling just really exploded in popularity in 2020, 2021, especially e-bikes, partially because, especially in cities, people weren't comfortable using public transportation. So what do you do? You get an e-bike and suddenly it's much easier to make that 5, 10, 15 miles commute without showing up to work completely drenched in sweat.

The price on e-bikes has also come down hugely. It used to be when I first started covering e-bikes. Bikes would start at $4,000, $5,000 and could go up to, you know, 10,000, 15,000. Now you can still buy a $15,000 e-bike, but you can also get $1,500 e-bike that's actually quite good quality.

We're not only seeing people using them for delivery work in the major metropolitans, we're seeing people do the commute, we're seeing people ride on the road for fun and the older people being able to keep up with their kids or their friends on the group rides, for people who either have been injured or have neuromuscular issues or have certain disabilities. The e-bikes have actually given them the ability to ride a bike again, which is absolutely amazing.

Ali Rogin:

What about battery fires? What are the concerns over batteries and e-bikes?

Molly Hurford:

Yeah, so the biggest problem with this is actually it's aftermarket batteries and aftermarket chargers. So if you're using, you know, a new e-bike with the battery it came with and the charger that it came with, you shouldn't have any problems with charging.

I know in New York City, they actually are adding some ability to go in and trade in your old battery to get a safer new one. Unfortunately, it is also causing some apartment buildings in New York to actually ban having e-bikes or scooters or anything like that does have these lithium batteries.

Ali Rogin:

One paradox seems to be that these e bikes are faster than your average analog bike, but they're slower than cars. So how are they being regulated and are they being regulated?

Molly Hurford:

You kind of hit the nail on the head with one of the very tricky topics of e-bikes. Now they do mostly. I think actually all of them in the U.S. would have a speed governor on them. So you can only go so fast. It's only going to give you a certain amount of assist. So you're not going to really get up to speeds over even like 20 miles an hour on flat, for the most part.

And some municipalities actually have started kind of monitoring where e-bikes are allowed to go, if they're allowed to go on pedestrian trails, if they're allowed to go on the mountain bike trails.

Ali Rogin:

And one other concern seems to be that as the popularity of these e-bikes rises, so too has the rate of injury and some of the severity of injuries. And in fact, the city of Encinitas, California, declared a state of emergency for e-bike safety after the death of a 15-year-old who was one of them. What is the debate like right now over e-bike safety and whether anything needs to change?

Molly Hurford:

Yes. I mean, e-bikes really are going to bring up the helmet laws. Do we need to have helmets on? Is that going to be a law for when you're riding your bike right now? It's not in most states unless you are a minor.

And I mean, the other thing really is just education around them. We don't really think that hard about the ability to ride bikes safely as adults. We just kind of assume that, oh, of course we know what we're doing. But especially when you're on an e-bike and your speed has suddenly increased much faster than you've ever gone, suddenly things like coming to a stop, especially with like a heavier cargo e-bike, you need to stop a lot sooner. Cornering, you know, your chances of sliding out in a corner are much greater.

But it's not to say that the e-bikes themselves are dangerous. It just requires a little bit more thought and care, I think, with our riding.

Ali Rogin:

Molly Hurford with the magazine Bicycling. Thank you so much for your time.

Molly Hurford:

Thank you so much for having me.