Banned! Why 2023 saw more e-bike and e-scooter bans than ever before
Electric bicycle ridership grew to never-before-seen levels in 2023. But despite the increased ridership, or perhaps even because of it, this year has seen an increase in the number of limits and bans placed on electric bicycles and e-scooters. Here’s a look back at some of the most infamous bans and what led to them.
NYC wants e-bikes stopped at the border
Earlier this year, NYC announced an upcoming ban on the sale of electric bikes that don’t have UL-compliant batteries. Companies were given a six-month grace period, then the ban kicked in a few months ago.
The underlying issue was that several dangerous fires have begun in NYC buildings, some turning lethal, after poorly constructed e-bike batteries caught fire.
Many leading electric bicycle manufacturers such as Rad Power Bikes rolled out UL-compliant batteries in response, ensuring that their models would still be allowed to be sold in the city.
Paris bans shared electric scooters, then something surprising happened
When Parisians took to the polls to vote on a referendum banning shared electric scooters, the results were fairly one-sided. Reports put the tally at around 90% in favor of banning shared e-scooters, though extremely low voter turnout meant that roughly 7% of registered voters actually voted in favor.
Regardless of the small number of votes, shared e-scooters were banned from the city.
Interestingly though, that wasn’t the end of the story. Within a year, shared dockless electric bike ridership had skyrocketed to over twice the levels previously seen before the shared e-scooter ban.
I guess it just goes to show, if you vilify shared e-scooters, the villains will just ride e-bikes. Or something like that?
Burning man may begin banning electric bikes
Bikes and other two-wheelers have always been a popular way to get around Burning Man. In fact, with cars banned, bikes are perhaps second only to walking as the preferred method of transportation.
There’s a 5 mph (8 km/h) speed limit around the entire desert encampment, which during the festival balloons to house tens of thousands of people. But even so, electric bike riders have been criticized for riding much faster, often startling festival goers and sometimes causing collisions.
Burning Man organizers, who normally avoid blanket bans as part of their policy of radical inclusion, took the dramatic step this year of pre-warning participants that if e-bike behavior didn’t improve, electric bikes would be added to the banned shortlist. It’s likely a case of a few bad apples ruining it for everybody, but it still underscores the importance of safe riding around pedestrians.
More college campuses banning e-bikes and e-scooters
This Fall when students returned to campus, many colleges and universities announced that their e-bikes and e-scooters weren’t welcome back with them.
The issue is similar to that facing NYC, with fears of fires related to poor-quality batteries. Unlike in NYC though, where steps were taken to regulate that only batteries with proper safety certifications would be allowed, many campuses announced outright bans on e-bikes.
The issue was particularly troubling because for many students, e-bikes and e-scooters are their only form of transportation. Cars can be expensive to store on campus due to limited parking permits, and many young adults have embraced car-free lifestyles enabled by electric bikes.
Despite the increasing number of bans, electric bicycles have continued to grow into a main form of transportation around the world.
As we head into 2024, the number of riders is only expected to grow even higher. With more e-bikes on the roads than ever before and no sign of the trend stopping, perhaps we should be asking how we can better and more safely incorporate e-bikes into our cities, communities, and campuses, instead of simply attempting to ban them.
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If you’ve ever wondered what happens when you combine a fruit cart, a cargo bike, and a Piaggio Ape all in one vehicle, now you’ve got your answer. I submit, for your approval, this week’s feature for the Awesomely Weird Alibaba Electric Vehicle of the Week column – and it’s a beautiful doozie.
Feast your eyes on this salad slinging, coleslaw cruising, tuber taxiing produce chariot!
I think this electric vegetable trike might finally scratch the itch long felt by many of my readers. It seems every time I cover an electric trike, even the really cool ones, I always get commenters poo-poo-ing it for having two wheels in the rear instead of two wheels in the front. Well, here you go, folks!
Designed with two front wheels for maximum stability, this trike keeps your cucumbers in check through every corner. Because trust me, you don’t want to hit a pothole and suddenly be juggling peaches like you’re in Cirque du Soleil: Farmers Market Edition.
To avoid the extra cost of designing a linked steering system for a pair of front wheels, the engineers who brought this salad shuttle to life simply side-stepped that complexity altogether by steering the entire fixed front end. I’ve got articulating electric tractors that steer like this, and so if it works for a several-ton work machine, it should work for a couple hundred pounds of cargo bike.
Featuring a giant cargo bed up front with four cascading fruit baskets set up for roadside sales, this cargo bike is something of a blank slate. Sure, you could monetize grandma’s vegetable garden, or you could fill it with your own ideas and concoctions. Our exceedingly talented graphics wizard sees it as the perfect coffee and pastry e-bike for my new startup, The Handlebarista, and I’m not one to argue. Basically, the sky is the limit with a blank slate bike like this!
Sure, the quality doesn’t quite match something like a fancy Tern cargo bike. The rim brakes aren’t exactly confidence-inspiring, but at least there are three of them. And if they should all give out, or just not quite slow you down enough to avoid that quickly approaching brick wall, then at least you’ve got a couple hundred pounds of tomatoes as a tasty crumple zone.
The electrical system does seem a bit underpowered. With a 36V battery and a 250W motor, I don’t know if one-third of a horsepower is enough to haul a full load to the local farmer’s market. But I guess if the weight is a bit much for the little motor, you could always do some snacking along the way. On the other hand, all the pictures seem to show a non-electric version. So if this cart is presumably mobile on pedal power alone, then that extra motor assist, however small, is going to feel like a very welcome guest.
The $950 price is presumably for the electric version, since that’s what’s in the title of the listing, though I wouldn’t get too excited just yet. I’ve bought a LOT of stuff on Alibaba, including many electric vehicles, and the too-good-to-be-true price is always exactly that. In my experience, you can multiply the Alibaba price by 3-4x to get the actual landed price for things like these. Even so, $3,000-$4,000 wouldn’t be a terrible price, considering a lot of electric trikes stateside already cost that much and don’t even come with a quad-set of vegetable baskets on board!
I should also put my normal caveat in here about not actually buying one of these. Please, please don’t try to buy one of these awesome cargo e-trikes. This is a silly, tongue-in-cheek weekend column where I scour the ever-entertaining underbelly of China’s massive e-commerce site Alibaba in search of fun, quirky, and just plain awesomely weird electric vehicles. While I’ve successfully bought several fun things on the platform, I’ve also gotten scammed more than once, so this is not for the timid or the tight-budgeted among us.
That isn’t to say that some of my more stubborn readers haven’t followed in my footsteps before, ignoring my advice and setting out on their own wild journey. But please don’t be the one who risks it all and gets nothing in return. Don’t say I didn’t warn you; this is the warning.
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Environment
Podcast: Trump/GOP go after EV/solar, Tesla, Ford, GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, 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 Trump’s Big Beautiful bill becoming law and going after EVs and solar, Tesla, Ford, and GM EV sales, Electrek Formula Sun, and more
Today’s episode is brought to you by Bosch Mobility Aftermarket—A global leader and trusted provider of automotive aftermarket parts. To celebrate Amazon Prime Day July 8th through 11th, Bosch Mobility is offering exclusive savings on must-have auto parts and tools. Learn more here.
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:
- Electrek FSGP 2025: New teams, new cars, same solar spirit
- Congress votes to send 2 million US jobs to China, increase deficit, energy costs
- Tesla (TSLA) confirms 384,000 deliveries in Q2 2025, right on expectations
- Tesla prototype sparks speculation: a Model Y, maybe slightly smaller
- Tesla launches Oasis Supercharger with solar farm and off-grid batteries
- Tesla unveils its LFP battery factory, claims it’s almost ready
- Here’s why Ford’s electric vehicle sales crashed by nearly a third in Q2
- The Chevy Equinox EV is GM’s breakout star, but that’s not the only surprise
- Xpeng launches G7, a new Tesla Model Y competitor for just $27,000
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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