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New York City officials are preparing to roll out a new speed limit for electric bikes – and it’s not exactly a green light. Under the newly announced plan, the city will soon set a 15 mph (25 km/h) speed cap for all e-bikes, as part of a broader crackdown aimed at addressing rising concerns about sidewalk safety, delivery rider behavior, and e-bike-related crashes.

The plan was announced by Mayor Adams yesterday, as reported in the New York Daily News.

“I have heard, over and over again, from New Yorkers about how their safety — and the safety of their children — has been put at risk due to speeding e-bikes and e-scooters,” Adams said in a statement. “Today, our administration is saying enough is enough: We are implementing a new 15 MPH speed limit for e-bikes and e-scooters that will make our streets safer.”

The 15 mph speed limit would be the lowest in a major US city, and matches the speed limit for electric bikes in most of Europe, where legal e-bikes are capped at 25 km/h.

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Previously, New York City had limited electric bikes to 25 mph (40 km/h), though the legal limit for e-bikes in most of the US is 28 mph (45 km/h) under Class 3 designation (e-bikes without throttles). For e-bikes with throttles, most states enforce a 20 mph (32 km/h) limit.

The plan caught e-bike rideshare companies like Lyft off-guard, with no apparent heads-up that the company’s shared e-bikes operated in the city could no longer be legally ridden at their current top speeds.

E-bike usage in NYC has exploded in recent years, fueled by delivery workers, commuting cyclists, and recreational riders. But with that growth has come a wave of backlash from residents, particularly over sidewalk riding, accidents, and the occasional viral video of reckless behavior.

Critics argue that a hard 15 mph limit could unfairly penalize law-abiding riders while doing little to deter the actual bad actors. The vast majority of e-bike-related injuries in the city involve cars, not other bikes. And for delivery workers, many of whom depend on their e-bikes to make a living, lowering the speed limit could mean fewer deliveries and less income.

According to the city’s own data, motor vehicles remain the overwhelming cause of traffic fatalities and serious injuries in New York. E-bikes, while more visible and thus often scapegoated, are still far safer than cars when it comes to pedestrian impact and urban street use.

Even so, enforcement has increasingly focused on micromobility. The NYPD has recently stepped up a crackdown on e-bike riders, with claims that bike-related enforcement outstripping motor vehicle enforcement raising concerns that e-bike regulation is being driven more by optics than by actual risk data.

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Day 1 of the Electrek Formula Sun Grand Prix 2025 [Gallery]

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Day 1 of the Electrek Formula Sun Grand Prix 2025 [Gallery]

Today was the official start of racing at the Electrek Formula Sun Grand Prix 2025! There was a tremendous energy (and heat) on the ground at NCM Motorsports Park as nearly a dozen teams took to the track. Currently, as of writing, Stanford is ranked #1 in the SOV (Single-Occupant Vehicle) class with 68 registered laps. However, the fastest lap so far belongs to UC Berkeley, which clocked a 4:45 on the 3.15-mile track. That’s an average speed of just under 40 mph on nothing but solar energy. Not bad!

In the MOV (Multi-Occupant Vehicle) class, Polytechnique Montréal is narrowly ahead of Appalachian State by just 4 laps. At last year’s formula sun race, Polytechnique Montréal took first place overall in this class, and the team hopes to repeat that success. It’s still too early for prediction though, and anything can happen between now and the final day of racing on Saturday.

Congrats to the teams that made it on track today. We look forward to seeing even more out there tomorrow. In the meantime, here are some shots from today via the event’s wonderful photographer Cora Kennedy.

Stay tuned for more!

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Tesla sold 5,000 Cybertrucks Q2, Optimus is in chaos, plus: the Infinity Train!

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Tesla sold 5,000 Cybertrucks Q2, Optimus is in chaos, plus: the Infinity Train!

The numbers are in and they are all bad for Tesla fans – the company sold just 5,000 Cybertruck models in Q4 of 2025, and built some 30% more “other” vehicles than it delivered. It just gets worse and worse, on today’s tension-building episode of Quick Charge!

We’ve also got day 1 coverage of the 2025 Electrek Formula Sun Grand Prix, reports that the Tesla Optimus program is in chaos after its chief engineer jumps ship, and a look ahead at the fresh new Hyundai IONIQ 2 set to bow early next year, thanks to some battery specs from the Kia EV2.

Prefer listening to your podcasts? Audio-only versions of Quick Charge are now available on Apple PodcastsSpotifyTuneIn, and our RSS feed for Overcast and other podcast players.

New episodes of Quick Charge are recorded, usually, Monday through Thursday (and sometimes Sunday). We’ll be posting bonus audio content from time to time as well, so be sure to follow and subscribe so you don’t miss a minute of Electrek’s high-voltage daily news.

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Drop us a line at tips@electrek.co. You can also rate us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or recommend us in Overcast to help more people discover the show.


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Tesla launches Oasis Supercharger with solar farm and off-grid batteries

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Tesla launches Oasis Supercharger with solar farm and off-grid batteries

Tesla has launched its new Oasis Supercharger, the long-promised EV charging station of the future, with a solar farm and off-grid batteries.

Early in the deployment of the Supercharger network, Tesla promised to add solar arrays and batteries to the Supercharger stations, and CEO Elon Musk even said that most stations would be able to operate off-grid.

While Tesla did add solar and batteries to a few stations, the vast majority of them don’t have their own power system or have only minimal solar canopies.

Back in 2016, I asked Musk about this, and he said that it would now happen as Tesla had the “pieces now in place” with Supercharger V3, Powerpack V2, and SolarCity:

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All of these pieces have been in place for years, and Tesla has now discontinued the Powerpack in favor of the Megapack. The Supercharger network is also transitioning to V4 stations.

Yet, solar and battery deployment haven’t accelerated much in the decade since Musk made that comment, but it is finally happening.

Last year, Tesla announced a new project called ‘Oasis’, which consists of a new model Supercharger station with a solar farm and battery storage enabling off-grid operations in Lost Hills, California.

Tesla has now unveiled the project and turned on most of the Supercharger stalls:

The project consists of 168 chargers, with half of them currently operational, making it one of the largest Supercharger stations in the world. However, that’s not even the most notable aspect of it.

The station is equipped with 11 MW of ground-mounted solar panels and canopies, spanning 30 acres of land, and 10 Tesla Megapacks with a total energy storage capacity of 39 MWh.

It can be operated off-grid, which is the case right now, according to Tesla.

With off-grid operations, Tesla was about to bring 84 stalls online just in time for the Fourth of July travel weekend. The rest of the stalls and a lounge are going to open later this year.

Electrek’s Take

This is awesome. A bit late, but awesome. This is what charging stations should be like: fully powered by renewable energy.

Unfortunately, it will be much harder to open those stations in the future due to legislation that Trump and the Republican Party have just passed, which removes incentives for solar and energy storage, adds taxes on them, and removes incentives to build batteries – all things that have helped Tesla considerably over the last few years.

The US is likely going to have a few tough years for EV adoption and renewable energy deployment.

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