Beware, Americans: there’s a battery-powered threat cruising down beach paths, rolling up hiking trails and zipping along the streets of our cities.
By now, you’ve probably seen footage on social media of teens racing along streets, popping wheelies and weaving around car traffic with reckless abandon. The Los Angeles Times recently dubbed them the “new Hells Angels”. Other news outlets have referred to them as “motorized menaces” terrorizing communities. Sounds scary.
In reality, these aren’t members of a federally designated violent criminal organization – they’re young adults riding electric two-wheeled vehicles: e-motorcycles, e-scooters and e-mopeds that have often been illegally built or modified to reach higher speeds than legal and regulated electric bicycles.
The proliferation of these vehicles is especially noticeable in fair-weather California, where mostly male riders have made headlines for dangerous antics and fatal crashes.
In May, Todd Spitzer, the Orange county district attorney, launched a specialized unit targeting “juveniles and adults, including parents who knowingly allow their children to ride illegal E-Motorcycles”.
That followed charges brought against parents earlier this year in the aftermath of crashes, including one in which a teen on an e-motorcycle fatally struck a pedestrian. In another case, a father was charged for modifying his 12-year-old son’s e-motorcycle to reach 60mph. The boy suffered serious injuries after he ran a red light and was hit by a motorist.
The media attention and government crackdowns extend beyond the Golden state. In New Jersey, the state legislature passed a law requiring registration, a license and, in some cases, insurance for anyone to ride an ebike. Similar laws are already on the books in a few other states, and comparable legislation has been proposed in others, including California and New York.
Look beyond some of the more hyperbolic headlines and you’ll see a familiar story about young people doing what they’ve always done: making dumb, dangerous decisions as they feel out the freedom of movement that grows with age.
That generational constant is happening as local and state authorities play catch-up with cheap, speedy vehicles that have flourished through mostly unchecked online retail sales. They are often marketed as ebikes, despite exceeding speed and power rules set for actual ebikes. Critics argue this makes it difficult for consumers to know the difference.
In this regulatory wild west, legal ebikes are caught in the crossfire. Experts, advocates and retailers say many officials are opting for scattershot over precise targeting to rein in illegal vehicles and invest in more education and infrastructure, putting the broader ebike revolution at risk.
How e-moto’s ‘legal gray area’ threatens ebike boom
The US and dozens of other nations experienced a surge in electric bike sales during the pandemic, as millions of people craved open space and movement in response to stay-at-home orders. People found an alternative travel mode for local errands, school drop-offs and work commutes, leaving behind the hassles that come with driving.
As components and batteries became cheaper to manufacture, new kinds of two-wheeled vehicles started to enter the market, many from China and often labeled as ebikes. Many of these vehicles had frames much more akin to motorcycles and dirt bikes than traditional bicycles. Another key difference: e-motos can go much faster, allowing riders to hit the same speeds as cars that many riders are too young to drive.
Ebikes are classified under federal law with specifics about their battery power – no more than 750 watts – plus rules about operable pedals to power the motor, and top speeds of 20mph for throttle bikes and 28mph with pedal assist only.
It’s these mis-marketed, cheaply made “junk” vehicles that have given real ebikes a bad rap, said Kendra Ramsey, director of the California Bicycle Coalition. Her organization advocates for policies that promote the benefits of riding bikes, including ebikes, and protect riders on the road.
“It is clear what an ebike is, but it’s not clear what it isn’t,” Ramsey said.
Biking advocates point to existing rules for actual ebikes and argue the majority of riders are not thrill-seeking speedsters but commuters who have tapped into ebikes’ convenience and low environmental impact as a replacement for local car trips.
Dillon Fitch-Polse, co-director of the BicyclingPlus research collaborative at the University of California, Davis, is concerned that authorities are responding to this “legal gray area” by adding bureaucratic barriers that will deter people of all ages from riding ebikes.
“That’s too bad, because either [riders are] going to do it illegally or they’re going to lose out on the freedom that an ebike can provide,” he said.
A better solution, Fitch-Polse said, would be to prohibit retailers from advertising these illegal bikes in the first place. There’s a bipartisan effort in California’s state legislature to do just that, which Ramsey’s organization is co-sponsoring.
Rush to meet demand of unregulated vehicles leaves ‘big information gap’
The e-moto trend is also putting shops that sell legal ebikes in a bind, said retailer Brett Thurber. He and his wife own the New Wheel, with locations in San Francisco, Oakland and nearby Larkspur.
Thurber said kids and parents call his shops frequently or stop by in person seeking to buy e-motorcycles, which community-based businesses like his don’t sell. He uses those opportunities to educate people on the hazards of unregulated vehicles and preach the legal ebike gospel.
Though he’s made some converts, Thurber is sure many callers hang up and buy the e-moto they wanted online. As a longtime bike rider, he gets the appeal.
“Kids want freedom. They want something that’s cool,” Thurber said. “They like doing things that the adults kind of frown on and wag their fingers at.”
E-moto retailers have marketed that freedom with cheap, illegal vehicles just a few clicks away on Amazon, Walmart and other online platforms. A quick Amazon search revealed how easily consumers can purchase an e-moto, even if they’re seeking a street-legal ebike.
Typing “ebikes for teens” into Amazon’s search bar yielded dozens of vehicles that lack pedals and exceed the battery power of regulated ebikes.
The first sponsored result advertised a 2,000W dirt-bike style “Electric Bike for Adults [and] Teens”. The product description read: “Whether you’re climbing mountain trails or speeding through city streets, this ebike for adult [sic] delivers thrilling acceleration and reliable climbing power.”
Other listings contained similar mixed messaging. One “off road motorcycle” featured videos of young riders speeding and popping wheelies on public streets, which is illegal on this type of bike that is supposed to be registered in California as an off-highway vehicle.
“Safety is a top priority and we require ebikes sold in our store to meet applicable safety standards and Amazon policies. We are looking into the products in question,” a spokesperson for Amazon said via email when asked about those listings.
Amazon had previously announced it would stop selling electric vehicles in California that don’t comply with state laws. Some e-motos advertised on their platform now include a notice that “this item cannot be shipped to your selected address due to local laws or Amazon policy”, before advising would-be buyers to change the shipping address.
Ramsey said that lack of market regulation leaves a “big information gap” for parents, the majority of whom might not knowingly put their children in danger.
“A lot of adults are not in a good position to teach their kids good bicycling skills because they don’t ride bicycles themselves,” she said.
Some states and cities are beginning to crack down on these online markets. In April, Rob Bonta, California’s attorney general, issued a consumer alert for “too fast, too furious” electric vehicles.
“Sometimes, what looks like an ebike or is marketed as an ebike is not a bike at all,” Bonta said. “Bike riders and parents: if your or your teen’s electric two-wheeled vehicle goes too fast, it might be a motorcycle or a moped – not an ebike.”
Earlier this month, New York’s mayor, Zohran Mamdani, sent cease-and-desist letters to 42 retailers who sell illegal two-wheeled electric vehicles that don’t meet the city’s legal requirements for ebikes or scooters.
Unsurprisingly, as more people hop on both legal and illegal electric vehicles, more people are being hurt or killed. Researchers at UC San Diego analyzed California collision data from law enforcement agencies and found that ebike injuries increased “exponentially” from 2018 to 2024 and were “associated with a higher severity of injuries compared with traditional bicycles”.
Researchers noted that far more people on non-electric bikes were injured in crashes during the study period – more than 14 times as many compared with ebike riders. And the data is murky because e-motos “may be visually mistaken for ebikes and not be accurately identified by reporting agencies”.
But recent media coverage and public discourse about ebikes tend to miss a car-sized blindspot: the majority of crashes that kill ebike riders involve automobiles, according to federal data.
If you think it’s bad when someone operates a 50lb ebike recklessly, wait until you learn about how people drive around in 4,000lb cars, trucks and SUVs.
Ebike proponents worry the critical coverage of ebikes and e-motos could further obscure the fact that US roads are deadlier than nearly every other comparatively wealthy nation. And that’s driven by reckless behaviour of people behind the wheels of increasingly larger motor vehicles.
Recent data compiled by the US Consumer Product Safety Commission show 19 pedestrians were killed across the US in collisions with ebike riders in the eight years from 2017 to 2024. That’s roughly the average number of pedestrians killed by motorists every single day of 2024.
“It’s really sad to me that we have normalized so much traffic violence in society,” Fitch-Polse said. He argued public discourse and government officials take the easy route by pointing the finger at teenagers on trendy vehicles rather than reckoning with the systemic issues that make streets so dangerous in the first place.
For Thurber, the mounting toll of kids being hurt and killed while riding bikes represents “a societal failure”. He said authorities should address that not by stifling the autonomy that more kids and young adults have embraced through biking, but by redesigning streets to better protect them and other vulnerable road users from people behind the wheel of an automobile.
“My worry is that here … the tendency is to just put kids back in cars and have them be chauffeured around by their parents,” he said.