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E-bike rules in Australia will soon change with possible ban on sale of bikes faster than 25km/h
(www.brisbanetimes.com.au)
this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2025
34 points (97.2% liked)
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You can drop the sarcasm. My roadbike has 15,000km on it. My ebike doesn't even have a throttle. The only way to move it is to peddle.
But I live in a sub tropical region. It doesn't snow here, and temperatures have been hitting 35C this week, before we have even hit summer!
When I used to commute to work on my roadbike, it was a workout. I'd get there covered in sweat, and feeling good.
But I don't use my ebike for workouts. I use it for daily life because I don't own a car. And if every time I need to carry a load, it turns in to a workout and requires a change of clothes, then it's no longer suitable for day to day life, and instead, becomes a workout tool. But I've already got one of those, and it's not why I bought an ebike.
As a person who lives in the Netherlands where hills are not a problem and heat is not a problem, it's hard for me to understand the need for more than ~250W. I mean, I use all 600W when I want to get somewhere super-fast or after a traffic light, but it's a luxury and I'd survive just fine with 250W.
That being said, when it's hot and/or there are hills.. I think I understand you. I'd definitely prefer to see a person on a 500W bike than a person on a got-knows-how-much-W car. I wouldn't consider you a risk if you occupy the bike lane, if your electric support stops at 25km/h.
And from a third perspective, I do see the temptation to limit wattage to avoid the problem of "fat bikes" (as is observed in the last years in the Netherlands). Those bikes just rig the speed limiter, which is harder to reason about than motor power. But not really sure it's that relevant to AU at the moment. I think I'd support a higher Wattage cap overall, up to 500W and 200%-300% pedaling multiplier all seem fine to me.
Yeah, it's a huge problem in Australia. Mostly they have an unlock code in the electronic controller that lets you simply over-ride the speed limit. Some stores sell it already over-ridden, or just tell you how to do it.
But the other side of things is that Australia is a heavily car focused country, and whether they're speed limited or not, whether they're driven dangerously or not, they're still far less lethal than cars, far less polluting than cars and far less wasteful than cars.
Making ebikes unappealing to people will just ensure none of that changes.
And the European standards are probably relevant in Europe, but they're too conservative to increase ebike uptake here in Australia (or at least in Queensland, where I live). My state alone is 40 times the size of the Netherlands. And the city I live in has a comparable population to Amsterdam, but it's spread over an area 6 times the physical size, with hills and a subtropical environment. We actually have pretty good cycling infrastructure as far as Australian cities go, but it's nothing like what you have. So lots of our trips either need to be on the road, or on the footpath, and a 250W bike with a load going up a hill just isn't safe on the road...