These were the most popular electric bike news stories of 2023
Electric bikes have grown in popularity every year, and so too have their news stories. (If you don’t believe me, just ask yourself why your favorite car or motorcycle media sites are all suddenly covering e-bikes too.)
This year was no exception to the expanding e-bike takeover, with millions of you surfing on over to check out the most popular electric bike stories on Electrek. As 2023 winds its way down, let’s take a look back at the most popular e-bike stories of the year.
Honda shows off its first electric bike
Honda hasn’t exactly been hot to trot when it comes to electric vehicles. Both their motorcycle and automotive teams have dragged their tires when it comes to replacing fuel tanks with charging ports.
But that didn’t stop the company from apparently imagining what a Honda electric bicycle could look like.
Known as the Honda e-MTB Concept, it was shown off at this year’s Japan Mobility Show in Tokyo, where it joined several other futuristic and/or brand-widening debuts from other leading Japanese motorcycle companies and automakers.
Interestingly, the Honda e-bike featured a fairly primitive suspension setup and a motor that looks suspiciously like a German-made Brose mid-drive system. Considering Honda is perhaps best known as an engine company that also builds vehicles, it was a shame to not see a Honda e-bike motor debuting in the concept electric bike.
There’s no word on whether Honda would actually produce this electric bike, though the design seems fairly manufacturable, unlike some of the wilder concept e-bikes out there. So perhaps there is hope that Honda coul leapfrog its way into a leading e-bike maker among automotive companies. It probably won’t, but maybe.
These two guys built the world’s smallest (and cutest) camper on a bicycle
This one was a seriously fun project to follow along with. Two brothers, Chris and Jeff from the popular YouTube channel Dangie Bros, built a tiny camper on the back of tricycle to take on a 100-mile (160 km) road trip.
Technically this one wasn’t even an e-bike, though just about every commentor helped point out that a small e-bike motor could have made the grueling journey much easier.
The brothers took their trike-based camper on quite an adventure, though they found that the trials and tribulations of the road were more intense than they had anticipated. Ultimately, the trip was cut short after just a few dozen miles due to exhaustion and slow progress. That might not come as a surprise when you see just how boxy and non-aerodynamic their build ended up becoming.
Even so, it was a fun journey to follow along with, especially if you weren’t the one pedaling!
Cops on horseback in California are cracking down on illegal e-bikes
This summer we saw one of the first instances of police departments using mounted officers to catch illegal e-bike riders. The horseback cops are an interesting solution to the issue of overpowered and non-street legal electric bikes mixing it up with cyclists and pedestrians on bike paths and sidewalks.
This case came to us from the Newport Beach Police Department whose mounted police officers stopped and cited a rider of a Sur Ron electric motorbike that was riding on a bicycle-only path. The Sur Ron is a fun machine, but it’s an electric trail bike that is essentially lightweight electric dirt bike. A beach front bike path is not the place for a 45 mph motorbike (though a massive horse blocking both lanes of the bike path isn’t a great look, either).
Why more college campuses are starting to ban electric bikes
In an unfortunate turn of events, we saw a number of universities and college campuses announce that while students were welcome back at the start of the school year, their e-bikes were not.
Several campuses began banning electric bikes and scooters, either outright or from being stored inside campus buildings and dorm room housing.
The issue lies with a growing number of lithium-ion battery fires that have originated in electric bikes and e-scooters. The number of batteries that have caught on fire has been a very small fraction of total e-bikes, but the news stories are widely reported and have helped to create a much larger scare around the issue.
In response, many e-bike companies are switching to UL-compliant batteries that should be safer and better contstructed.
Why e-bike companies are fighting to stop riders from repairing their electric bikes
It’s rare that my articles are this divisive, but that was the case when I reported on a move by some e-bike drive system manufacturers to limit the ability of riders to make repairs on their own e-bikes.
The issue largely centered around the batteries, which can be dangerous to work on without proper training.
On the flipside, many e-bike riders worry that the issue is being used to further exclude e-bikes from “right to repair” laws, ensuring that manfuacturers can either force riders to use expensive company-owned repair services or push them towards simply buying a new e-bike instead of repairing the one they own.
Those were the top five e-bike stories of the year for 2023.
Who knows what next year has in store for us? The only way to find out for sure is to keep coming back here for the latest in e-bike news. We’ll see you in 2024!
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Ford’s electric pickup truck is back at the top. The F-150 Lightning is once again the best-selling electric pickup in the US after overtaking the Tesla Cybertruck in the first quarter.
Ford’s F-150 Lightning is the best-selling electric pickup
After launching in 2023, Tesla’s Cybertruck quickly outpaced the Lightning to become America’s top-selling EV pickup last year.
Since Tesla doesn’t break down regional sales, registration data gives us our best estimate. The latest registration data from S&P Global Mobility (via Automotive News) shows that the F-150 Lightning retook the title in March and the first quarter of 2025.
Ford’s electric pickup notched 2,598 registrations in March, topping the Tesla Cybertruck with 2,170. In the first quarter, the F-150 Lightning remained ahead with 7,913 registrations, compared to the Cybertruck’s 7,126.
Although the Cybertruck was the fifth top-selling EV in the US last year, it didn’t even crack the top ten in March. It placed ninth through the first three months of 2025, behind the Volkswagen ID.4.
While Tesla and Ford remained the leaders in the electric pickup market, several new models are gaining momentum. According to the most recent numbers from Cox Automotive, GM sold 2,383 Chevy Silverado EVs and 1,249 GMC Sierra EV models in Q1. Meanwhile, Rivian sold 1,727 R1Ts during the quarter.
Earlier today, Electrek reported that new models, including the Honda Prologue and Chevy Blazer EV, helped drive EV registrations up 20% in the US in March.
Although the Lightning reclaimed the crown from Tesla, Ford’s electric pickup isn’t exactly flying off the lot. Ford reported Lightning sales fell 16% to just 1,740 units in April. Through April 2025, Ford has sold 8,927 electric trucks, down 9% from the 9,833 it handed over last year.
Electrek’s Take
To be fair, Tesla is still ahead by a wide margin in the US. The S&P numbers show Tesla had over 51,000 registrations in March, up 1% after two months of lower YOY growth.
GM’s Chevy surpassed Ford to become the second-best-selling EV brand with nearly 8,500 registrations, an increase of 274% from last year. Ford dropped to third with 7,361 registrations.
Although it’s just one quarter, it’s starting to show how Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s political antics are likely impacting sales. After the Cybertruck’s initial hype, it appears many buyers are opting for traditional pickups, like the F-150 Lighting.
Meanwhile, Ram is delaying its first electric pickup, the 1500 REV, again. Ram is pushing production back until summer 2027, saying it’s “extending the quality validation period.” The plug-in hybrid (PHEV) Ramcharger will also be delayed until the first quarter of 2026.
After pulling the Ramcharger ahead of the fully electric version last year, Stellantis blamed weak demand for EV pickups in the US.
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Environment
Podcast: EV tax credit on chopping block, Tesla’s China problem, Slate gets interest, and more
In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss how the GOP plans to kill the EV tax credit, Tesla’s China problem, Slate getting some interest, and more.
The show is live every Friday at 4 p.m. ET on Electrek’s YouTube channel.
As a reminder, we’ll have an accompanying post, like this one, on the site with an embedded link to the live stream. Head to the YouTube channel to get your questions and comments in.
After the show ends at around 5 p.m. ET, the video will be archived on YouTube and the audio on all your favorite podcast apps:
We now have a Patreon if you want to help us avoid more ads and invest more in our content. We have some awesome gifts for our Patreons and more coming.
Here are a few of the articles that we will discuss during the podcast:
Here’s the live stream for today’s episode starting at 4:00 p.m. ET (or the video after 5 p.m. ET):
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Tesla’s Austin robotaxi fleet will be powered by ‘plenty of teleoperation’ as it “can’t screw up”, according to a new report from Morgan Stanley after meeting with Tesla.
You won’t hear anything negative about Tesla from Morgan Stanley very often.
Morgan Stanley’s Tesla analyst, Adam Jonas, has often been described as a ‘Tesla cheerleader’ on Wall Street for his extremely rosy view of the company. He generally believes whatever Elon Musk claims and adds a slight delay to the CEO’s timeline.
Recently, Jonas met with Tesla with some clients and released a new note that he hinted to be based on what he learned from Tesla during the meeting.
He claims that the planned “robotaxi” rollout in Austin next month is going to use “plenty of tele ops to ensure safety levels”:
Austin’s a ‘go’ but fleet size will be low. Think 10 to 20 cars. Public roads. Invite only. Plenty of tele ops to ensure safety levels (“we can’t screw up”). Still waiting for a date.
‘Tele ops’ stands for teleoperations, meaning that Tesla employees will be able to remotely access Tesla’s vehicles and operate them in some capacity.
Last year, Electrek reported that Tesla started hiring for this teleoperation team before the Robotaxi launch in Austin.
We have been extensively reporting on how much Tesla’s planned robotaxi fleet in Austin diverges from its previously disclosed plans of deploying “unsupervised Full Self-Driving” in its consumer vehicles.
Tesla plans to deploy “10-20” Model Y vehicles to offer ride-hailling services in a geo-fenced area of Austin, Texas using a version of its ‘Supervised Full Self-Driving’ (FSD), but instead of being supervised by a driver inside the vehicle, like the current product in consumer vehicles, Tesla is going to used employees to remotely supervise the vehicles.
The service is supposed to launch in June.
Electrek’s Take
I seriously don’t get why anyone could get excited about this. It is going to be a bit better than the current FSD, which has stalled for months as Tesla focuses on optimizing the system for Austin, but it will still basically be supervised – just remotely.
There’s a chance that it won’t even be remote as some believe Tesla will even fumble that timeline and use safety drivers, but I don’t know. I’m about 50/50 on that prediction right now.
Remote supervisors make more sense as Tesla can claim a little victory even though it would be less impressive than what Waymo has been doing for years.
The real goal that Tesla sold to consumers is that their privately owned vehicles would become self-driving without supervision and we are still so far from that. It’s clear that this project is mainly to distract them from that fact.
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