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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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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.