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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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it's not supposed to be a car. I don't know why you think it is.
You don't need to be condescending to get your point across. We're having a discussion and disagreeing. The first sentence would have got your point across just fine.
In any case, I know it's not a car. But at the moment, my ebike means I don't need a car. I want a bike that lets me get through life without having to own a car. A 250W would mean that I'd have to call taxis and ubers more often. I couldn't just carry shopping, or garden supplies etc home, without it becoming a sweat inducing workout.
I mean, I could do those things, but at 250W, I'm putting in a lot of the power myself. And I've already got my exercise covered. I don't need to be changing clothes and taking a shower every time I ride up a hill on my bike.
They really didn't come across as condescending at all IMO. You're complaiing about legal e-bikes not doing specific tasks you want them to, it's entirely reasonable to suggest that your expectations may be misaimed.
I don't know in what world any comment ending with "I don't know why you think it is" could be read as anything but condescending.
Yes, she is. So am I. Because I want cycling to be accessible to everybody. Because of the massively lower cost of a bike compared to a car, and the massively lower risk of them, they have the inherent power to be much more accessible to a lot more people. Building better infrastructure is the most important part of that and we mustn't lose sight of that fact, but the laws governing how you ride are also relevant. In this case, ebike laws. EN15194 comes out of famously flat parts of the European peninsula. Hills are not as much of a factor there as they are here. For most people, most of the time, that's still sufficient.
But something as basic as being allowed to use your bike to go grocery shopping, or if somebody wanted to do something like Martin Broer in the UK and run a small tradie business out of an electric bakfiets, should be a legal option. In Dutton Park and Highgate Hill in Brisbane's inner south, or around Everton Park/Arana Hills in the northwest, that's just not going to work very well if you're not allowed any more than 250 W on your motor. Heck, even the lesser but still noticeable hills of St Lucia/Toowong/Indooroopilly might be a struggle if you're carrying a bunch of stuff.
If there's any task that forms part of people's daily lives that a bike can't do, I'm going to ask "why not?" and wonder if it would be appropriate to change things so that they can. In this case, the solution is obvious and simple.
It really reads like you're going to the hardware store for orange juice.
If a bike isn't doing what you need / want it to, then the answer is not a bike.
Please explain what you think the appropriate solution is, then, and why it's better than mine.
Well OP is saying that legal ebikes will be insufficiently powerful for what they need. They don't have a car, so assuming they don't want one they could look at a moped, a motorbike, scooter bikes, all of which will provide more power and be street legal.
I'm in Victoria, where we're already limited to 250w and have been the entire time, so I'm seeing a lot of arguments against bike regulations fall flat on their face.
Right. And they're saying that although 250 W is insufficient, 500 W would not be. And that 500 W would be perfectly safe because you're still not going to get crazy high acceleration, and it's a separate issue from the max speed (which is capped by law regardless of the power).
And then you're saying "250 W isn't enough for you therefore ebikes are not good enough for you, therefore there's no reason to be arguing in favour of 500 W." It's begging the question.
That's not accurate at all The 500w have only been legal briefly due to a loophole. They were never meant to be so.
So to posit your position back at your - a 500w bike won't do what I need, why can't I have a 1000w?
Got a source on that? All NSW's pages describing the law, which presumably had to be specifically written describing the intent of the law, said 500 W.
What is it that you need? If you can make a good case I might be convinced. So far, nothing I've thought of fits the bill, since 500 W + a bit of leg power is enough to be able to get up hills while carrying heavy loads, as far as I can tell.
What if they need to have 500W e-bikes off the road for some reason?
What's "some reason"? I'm primarily concerned with letting people get about their cities to go places. To get to work or school, to do their shopping, to ride the kids to their cricket club, etc. With cycling for its own sake, I am far less concerned about making ebikes relevant. Whether that's mountain, road, or gravel biking.
I don't know what reason they could possibly have, tbh.
I imagine that car drivers see the people on bikes and scooters, and just get mad.
They'll say it is for safety or whatever, and I do think people on bikes and scooters underestimate how scary it feels to be a pedestrian and have a bike pass by closely, but if you keep asking questions, it seems like they just want cars to predominate and are threatened by non-cars.
They're not expectations. They're how I would like to see things work, because of how I use a bike. There's literally no reason for this to be anything other than a conversation.
There's nothing to "misaim"