Footloose, for e-bikes? The US town that banned all electric bicycles
As electric bicycles skyrocket in popularity and adoption rates soar, nearly everywhere in the US is seeing a higher number of e-bikes used for transportation. That is, except for one town that banned e-bikes and e-scooters devices altogether.
The Village of Key Biscayne, an island community in south Florida, has permanently implemented an emergency ban on electric bikes and e-scooters that was first implemented several months ago.
Key Biscayne is known as a hub of car alternatives, most popularly golf carts, which cruise the streets just as commonly as larger vehicles. Electric bikes have also become a popular form of transportation on the island, at least until they were banned this year after a local tragedy.
The original emergency ban was rushed into place back in February, just two days after the death of admired local tutor Megan Andrews, 66.
Andrews was riding a pedal bicycle at night when she was involved in a fatal collision with an electric bike rider. The twelve-year-old e-bike rider also involved in the collision was on his way to soccer practice and claimed not to see Andrews, who police said was riding a bike without lights and not wearing a helmet. The medical examiner ruled the collision accidental.
The town quickly enacted a temporary ban against all electric bicycles and motorized scooters, which was ultimately amended into a permanent ban on these micromobility vehicles.
Many community members laud the new ban after long bemoaning the high number of young riders traveling the roads and sidewalks on high-speed electric bicycles.
Some locals had already petitioned the city for months, encouraging stronger regulations to rein in such behavior.
On the other hand, many other residents lamented the new ban, which has stifled local use of the country’s fastest-growing form of alternative transportation.
According to the Key Biscayne Independent, local mayoral candidate Charles Collins would like to see micromobility vehicles viewed as a solution for the island instead of as an issue. Collins believes that e-bikes can help reduce traffic and improve transportation, explaining that every trip a child takes on an e-bike saves a parent’s round trip in a car.
Electrek’s Take
I don’t mean to make light of a tragedy, but this entire scenario is eerily similar to Footloose. A fatal road accident in a small community results in longer-serving elders enacting a knee-jerk reaction to ban a perceived threat popular among younger members of the community instead of addressing the root of the issue. It’s textbook. Replace dancing and popular music with e-bikes and e-scooters, and it doesn’t take six degrees of separation to get there.
And as we learned at the end of the movie Footloose, (spoiler alert) the central lesson is about the importance of balance between tradition and change. The story culminates in the realization that while traditions and rules are important for maintaining order and values within a community, they should not stifle the freedom and growth of the younger generation. The story ultimately conveys that open-mindedness, understanding, and compromise can lead to a harmonious and vibrant community where different generations can coexist and thrive.
Look, every cycling death is tragic and no one disputes this. But I’m not sure that banning electric bikes and e-scooters is the answer. In fact, if we want a quick and simple solution to cycling deaths, it would make more sense to ban cars, since more cyclists are killed by car drivers than e-bike riders.
But the better answer is a compromise built around education and enforcement. When cars became popular a century ago, they were quite dangerous. Drivers drove them dangerously and many people suffered for it. So traffic enforcement increased along with driver’s education. That’s the answer here. The helpful new technology of e-bikes shouldn’t be banned, it should be regulated in order to benefit from its incredible value.
There are instructional classes for e-bike riders who haven’t received a driver’s license. Age limits can be created to keep obviously too-young kids off of e-bikes. Helmets and lighting can be required to help save lives. Just a single one of those policies likely would have changed the outcome of the accident that led to the Key Biscayne e-bike ban.
I know drivers often complain about e-bike riders breaking traffic laws, riding through red lights, etc. We already have a solution for this: traffic police. It’s just as illegal to blow through a red light on a bicycle as it is to do it in an SUV. It’s the same traffic ticket, and it’s an expensive traffic ticket. That ticket, or just the fear of one, makes those brake levers seem like a much better idea. Where I live, sidewalk-riding can get you a hefty fine, and once enough people knew someone who got slammed with that ticket, sidewalk-riding rates plummeted.
So let’s all agree that outright bans aren’t the right answer to a tool that is otherwise so useful and beneficial. Because if we get all ban-happy, there are a lot bigger fish to fry before e-bikes.
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TELO Trucks, the maker of a super small electric pickup truck, announced that they raised $20 million, and Tesla co-founder Marc Tarpenning was among the lead investors.
At Electrek, we have been closely covering TELO’s journey over the last few years. Our resident small EV-lover, Jamie, got a close look at the first pre-production prototype earlier this year.
TELO aims to bring to production a small electric truck, the MT1, that is no larger than a Mini, yet still packs a ton of utility, with a base price of $41,000 (before incentives, if any) and a range of 260 miles.
- Seating for 5 adults
- A 5-foot bed that extends to 8 feet with a folding mid-partition
- Once extended, the bed has space to fit plywood flat on the floor (not over wheel wells)
- All-wheel drive
- Up to 350 miles of range
- Exceptional navigability for high-density towns and cities
The company had raised only $8 million to date, which is really nothing in the capital-intensive world of electric vehicles, but the team still managed to produce two working pre-production prototypes.
Now, TELO announced that it raised $20 million in its Series A round of funding.
The round was led by Yves Behar, a renowned industrial designer and co-founder of TELO, and Marc Tarpenning, one of the two original co-founders of Tesla and a Venture Partner at Spero Ventures.
TO VC, E12 Ventures, Neo, Marc Benioff, Uncorrelated Ventures, Nova Threshold, MCJ, and others have also participated in the round.
Behar commented on the news:
“I have great confidence in the TELO team as we build a future-proof vision for mobility. The MT1 proves that innovation can deliver smarter design, greater practicality, and uncompromised capability, shaping how we’ll all move tomorrow.”
Tarpenning added:
“TELO has the vision, product, capital efficiency, and manufacturing strategy to make the next great transportation company.”
Capital efficiency is the name of the game. While $20 million is more than twice the money in the bank than TELO ever had, they plan to reach “production readiness and pass all federal requirements to get the TELO MT1 on the road” with that money, which would be extremely impressive.
TELO now has over 12,000 orders for its small electric pickup truck.
The company is also planning to incorporate Aptera’s solar technology on its vehicles.
Electrek’s Take
Tarpenning, now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time. I’m happy to see him still involved in the EV world. He and Eberhard, with their presentations on the founding of Tesla and its aftermath, played a significant role in convincing me that battery-powered electric vehicles are the future of transportation.
I do like the TELO project. This form factor really doesn’t exist in this part of the world, and I really don’t see any reason why.
Now, $30 million raised to reach production in the EV world is ridiculously low, but it’s not impossible.
Joshua Phitoussi, Managing Partner at TO VC, who participated in the round, said it best: “disciplined scale-up is the name of the game in auto manufacturing.” You can make it work if you remain liquid and track your costs like your life depends on it.
You have to design for manufacturability.
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Volvo launched the new and improved 2026 Volvo EX90 on Monday. The upgraded EX90 is smarter, delivers faster charging times, and Volvo is rolling out the improvements to current owners, for free.
Meet the upgraded 2026 Volvo EX90
First unveiled in 2022, the EX90 was one of the most highly anticipated electric vehicles. Although it was initially scheduled to launch in early 2024, Volvo delayed it several times, saying that it needed more time to work through software issues.
Volvo finally began production of the EX90 at its Charleston, South Carolina, plant in mid-2024, followed by the first customer deliveries later that year.
After rolling out in the US and Europe, Volvo said the three-row electric SUV would be missing key features at first, including Apple CarPlay. Shortly after, complaints began to appear in online forums regarding glitchy software and other issues.
Despite the issues, the electric family hauler remains a stunning SUV (see our review of it), and Volvo is promising to get it right this time around.
Volvo opened orders for the upgraded 2026 EX90 on Monday, which fixes the biggest issues that haunted the outgoing model.
The 2026 Volvo EX90 is now based on the company’s advanced new 800V platform, up from the 400V system in the 2025 model year. In addition to improvements to its in-house battery management software, Volvo said the upgrades deliver significantly faster charging speeds, with the ability to add up to 250 km (155 miles) of range in just 10 minutes.
Other new features include a host of safety alerts for road conditions, hazards, and more. Volvo also improved the automatic emergency steering function and Park Pilot assist.
Like the new ES90, the 2026 Volvo EX90 now comes with a high-tech electrochromic panoramic roof that allows you to adjust the transparency.
With an upgrade to its core computer, a dual NVIDIA DRIVE AGX Orin-based system, the new 2026 Volvo EX90 now has 500 TOPS (Trillion Operations Per Second) of computing power. To put that into perspective, Apple claims the iPhone 16 is capable of 35 TOPS.
The upgrade is not just for new buyers, either. Volvo is offering owners of the 2025 EX90 a one-time upgrade, free of charge. Current owners can receive the upgrades through a scheduled service visit.
With the 2026 model year coming and the $7,500 federal EV tax credit set to expire on Sept 30, Volvo is currently offering a few deals that might be worth checking out. The 2025 EX90 is listed for lease at $869 per month, while the smaller EX30 is available for just $399 per month. Looking to test one out for yourself? You can use our links below to find Volvo EX90 and EX30 models near you.
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A company that recently installed charging points for every parking spot in a 90-unit condo complex at a cost of just $405/unit is back, with a newly updated charger with more capabilities that should make apartment charging even easier.
You may remember a post we did about how a condo complex installed an EV charger in every parking spot for just $405/unit, after a utility incentive that covered $2k per unit.
The basic idea was, through use of a low-cost (and lower speed) charging outlet, a budget installation could meet the needs of most drivers at a much more affordable rate than putting whiz-bang dedicated fast chargers with dedicated service for every unit at higher cost. And by installing it for every unit, the project would benefit from economies of scale.
The chargers are capable of charging at “level 2” speeds, but will often throttle down to lower speeds based on availability of electrical capacity.
Finally, with available incentives from a local utility, the complex was able to bring the cost down to almost nothing. At $405/unit, that’s less than a single month’s worth of the complex’s HOA fees.
At the time, with 90 units, it might have been the largest apartment EV charging project in the nation with “100% coverage,” that is, where all parking spots in the complex are covered by EV chargers.
But now Pando’s offering is getting an upgrade with a bunch of new features, but also a higher price.
Pando’s new “Gen2 Smart Outlet” starts at $649 per unit, whereas the Gen 1 started at $599 and is currently discounted to $449. But it will be phased out in favor of the new tech.
The new smart outlet has better tap-to-charge integration, allowing easy starting of charging sessions without having to pull out your phone to start the charge from Pando’s app. It also improves connectivity, so there’s less chance the system will lose contact with home base, with a stronger antenna and the ability to use a driver’s phone as a wi-fi bridge. Finally, it has a manual mode that doesn’t require any connection to cloud services in case the charger is in a really difficult spot to reach wirelessly.
In addition, Pando is announcing the Pando+ Modular Charger, which has all the features of the Gen2 but with an included modular cable attached, for sites that would rather include a cable instead of having drivers bring their own. But, in order to solve the reliability problems associated with maintaining a cable attached to a charging station, the cable is easy to swap out and doesn’t require an electrician to do so.
The Pando+ charger also interfaces with a new feature called “Pando Pulse” which can dynamically manage building loads, understanding just how much electricity is available to push to the chargers. It can then set charging speeds based on how much electricity is available, better ensuring that everyone gets the electrons they need when they need them.
Electrek’s Take
These options are more for building managers than renters, but this is just another step towards helping to make charging easier for apartment-dwellers. If you’re looking for more resources for apartment EV charging, either as a owner or a renter, find more on that here.
I’ve long said that the only real problem with EVs is charging for people who don’t have access to their own garage. Whether this be apartment-dwellers, street-parkers or the like, the electric car charging experience is often less-than-ideal outside of single family homes, at least in North America.
There are workarounds available, like charging at work, or using Superchargers in “third places” where you often spend time, but these still aren’t optimal. The best bet is just to charge your car wherever it spends most of its time, which is your home. When you do that, EVs outshine everything in convenience.
So there’s a need for solutions in this space, and Pando’s seemed like a pretty good one when I first heard of it, and seems even better now with these new upgrades. My one misgiving when I first heard about it was the need to use Pando’s app, but it seems like these upgrades will have full tap-to-charge functionality, directly from Apple/Google wallet, without the need to have cell service enter the equation. That’s a huge plus for usability and reliability.
Other companies do have similar solutions, like a 143-unit project that just broke ground yesterday at Bayview Condos in Millibrae, CA. This one will apparently cost nothing out of pocket for the HOA, thanks to the same utility incentive from the same utility, Peninsula Clean Energy. It uses GoPowerEV chargers, a competitor to Pando, and we’re sure we’ll hear more about it as the project proceeds.
Hopefully the more competition we see in this space, and the more big projects like these get off the ground successfully and at low cost, the more we can finally move towards solving the problem of apartment charging once and for all.
And, frankly, we also need legislation/building codes to hop in and require this sort of thing, so it becomes the rule rather than the exception and apartment dwellers can feel secure that they’ll be able to find a place to charge. And the lower install costs get, the more realistic a legislative requirement would be.
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