New York is now coming for your fast and heavy electric bikes
The US electric bike industry has already seen a regulation-heavy start to 2025. Now, New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s potential new restrictions on fast and exceedingly heavy electric bikes could add to the proposed and enacted legislation we’ve seen lately.
Hochul proposed in her State of the State address yesterday that Class 3 electric bikes weighing over 100 lb (45 kg) be excluded from existing electric bicycle regulations and instead be treated more like mopeds.
That would mean imposing motor vehicle regulations resulting in licensing and registration requirements, as well as disallowing their use in bike lanes.
The governor explained that this new regulation would ideally help increase the safety of bike lanes, according to Streetsblog NYC.
As a reminder, Class 1 and Class 2 e-bikes can reach a top speed of 20 mph (32 km/h) on motor power, with Class 2 e-bikes including a throttle that allows motor use without requiring the pedals to be used. In most states, Class 3 e-bikes can reach higher speeds of up to 28 mph (45 km/h) with pedal assist but not throttle. However, New York State has stricter Class 3 limits that provide for speeds up to just 25 mph (40 km/h).
The proposed new regulations would only target Class 3 e-bikes that exceed the suggested weight limit of 100 lb (45 kg).
Most electric bikes weigh well under 100 lb (45 kg). Common e-bikes seen regularly on US streets and bike lanes weigh between 50-75 lb (23 to 34 kg). However, there are some e-bike models available on the market that can reach or exceed 100 lb (45 kg). We’ve tested a few of them.
Such heavy electric bikes are usually visually similar to mopeds and light electric motorcycles, often featuring large tires, heavy motors, dual suspension, chunky frames, and other components that add significant weight. However, many heavy electric bicycles are limited to 20 mph (32 km/h), and could exceed the arbitrary 100 lb (45 kg) proposed limit while still not falling under this proposed regulation due to their Class 2 designation.
Electrek’s Take
At face value, there’s some logic to this. A 100 lb electric bike has a lot more rolling mass than a 50 lb electric bike, and you can guess which one I’d rather get hit by. Though at the same time, when the rider nearly always weighs more than the vehicle, the weight of the e-bike certainly has a lower relevance to its safety. With a 200 lb (91 kg) rider on both bikes, we’re only talking about a relatively small 20% difference in mass.
And it’s a bit telling that there wasn’t much discussion in the State of the State address about any other road safety issues, certainly not about the several thousand-pound cars that actually kill many New Yorkers every year.
I’m not saying I don’t support reasonable regulations to ensure the safety of everyone, in the bike lanes and outside of them. But let’s get real here. The percentage of electric bikes that are 100+ lb is tiny, likely under 1-2% of all e-bikes on the road. And that’s a tiny slice of an entire pie that is itself a tiny slice of the injury-causing-vehicle pie. So I’m not saying there isn’t any good regulation opportunity out there for e-bikes. But this is all fluff on top of fluff if you think it’s actually about making a meaningful impact on road safety. If they really cared about better protecting cyclists, governments would enforce existing laws to prevent cars from killing them so frequently.
These types of clumsy, heavy-handed regulations are just that – quick and dirty attempts to appear to be working towards a solution, when in fact they are largely meaningless in their ultimate impact on protecting lives.
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EV sales kept up their momentum in December 2024, with incentives playing a big role, according to the latest Cox Automotive’s Kelley Blue Book report.
December’s strong EV sales saw an average transaction price (ATP) of $55,544, which helped push the industry-wide ATP higher, according to Kelley Blue Book. The December ATP for an EV was higher year-over-year by 0.8%, slightly below the industry average, and higher month-over-month by 1.1%. Tesla ATPs were higher year-over-year by 10.5%.
Incentives for EVs remained elevated in December, although they were slightly lower month-over-month at 14.3% of ATP, down from 14.7% in November.
EV incentives were higher by an impressive 41% year-over-year and have been above 12% of ATP for six consecutive months. Strong sales incentives, which averaged more than $6,700 per sale in 2024, were one reason EV sales surpassed 1.3 million units last year, according to Cox Automotive, a new record for volume and share.
(My colleague Jameson Dow reported yesterday, “In 2024, the world sold 3.5 million more EVs than it did in the previous year … This increase is larger than the 3.2 million increase in EV sales from the previous year – meaning that EV sales aren’t just up, but that the rate of growth is itself increasing.”)
Kelley Blue Book estimated that in December, approximately 84,000 vehicles – or 5.6% of total sales – transacted at prices higher than $80,000 – the highest volume ever. KBB lumps gas cars and EVs together into this luxury vehicle category, so this is where Tesla Cybertruck is slotted.
However, Tesla bundles sales figures of Cybertruck with Model S, Model X, and Tesla Semi(!) into a category it calls “other models,” so we don’t know for sure exactly how many Cybertrucks Tesla sold in Q4, much less in December. However, Electrek‘s Fred Lambert estimates between 9,000 and 12,000 Cybertrucks were sold in Q4, and that’s not a stellar sales figure.
What will January bring when it comes to EV ATPs? What about tax credits? Check back in a month and I’ll fill you in.
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Tesla is now claiming that Cybertruck was the ‘best-selling electric pickup in US’ last year despite not even reporting the number of deliveries.
There’s a lot of context needed here.
As we often highlighted, Tesla is sadly one of, if not the most, opaque automakers regarding sales reports.
Tesla doesn’t break down sales per model or even region.
For comparison, here’s Ford’s Q4 2024 sales report compared to Tesla’s:
You could argue that Tesla has fewer models than Ford, and that’s true, but Tesla’s report literally has two lines despite having six different models.
There’s no reason not to offer a complete breakdown like all other automakers other than trying to make it hard to verify the health of each vehicle program.
This has been the case with the Cybertruck. Tesla is bundling its Cybertruck deliveries with Model S, Model X, and Tesla Semi deliveries.
Despite this lack of disclosure, Tesla has been able to claim that the Cybertruck has become “the best-selling electric pickup truck” in the US in 2024:
It very well might be true. Ford disclosed 33,510 F-150 Lightning truck deliveries in the US in 2024 while most estimates are putting Cybertruck deliveries at around 40,000 units.
Those are global deliveries, but Tesla only delivered the Cybertruck in the US, Canada, and Mexico in 2024, and most of the deliveries are believed to be in the US.
However, there’s essential context needed here, as we highlighted in our recent ‘Tesla Cybertruck sales are disastrous‘ article.
First off, Tesla had a backlog of over 1 million reservations for the Cybertruck that it has been building since 2019. This led many to believe Tesla already had years of demand baked in for the truck and that production would be the constraint.
However, based on estimates, again, because Tesla refuses to disclose the data, Cybertruck deliveries were either flat or down in Q4 versus Q3 despite Tesla introducing cheaper versions of the vehicle and ramping up production.
Again, that’s after just about 40,000 deliveries.
Furthermore, with almost 11,000 deliveries in Q4 in the US, Ford more likely than not outsold Cybertruck with the F-150 Lightning in Q4.
Electrek’s Take
Tesla is in damage control here. There’s no doubt that it is having issues selling the Cybertruck.
Inventory is full of Cybertrucks and Tesla is now discounting them and offering free lifetime Supercharging.
Tesla is great at ramping up production, and it’s clear the Cybertruck is not production-constrained anymore. It is demand-constrained despite having over 1 million reservations.
Again, those reservations were made before Tesla unveiled the production version, which happened to have less range and cost significantly more.
The upcoming cheaper single motor version should help with demand, but I have serious doubts Tesla can ramp this program up to more than 100,000 units in the US.
As a reminder, Tesla installed a production capacity of 250,000 units annually and Musk said he could see Tesla selling 500,000 Cybertrucks per year.
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