Who loses out if new ebike rules are introduced?

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by Ben Haworth April 29, 2025 44

DJI? Deliveroo? Disabled people? Families? You? Proposals to set a 750w peak power limit appear to be on the cards.

There is a lot of talk flying around the internet about the possibilty of the regulations and classifications surrounding ebikes being amended. The principal thing that kicked off this most recent debate was a statement by the German Bicycle Industry (ZIV). More about this later.

The arguable cause of this debate is the relatively sudden leap up in certain motors’ peak power capacity.

Most full-fat ebike motors have had around 600-700w of peak power assistance. Then the DJI Avinox motor appeared out of the blue with 1,000w of peak power. And as of this week, an update from DJI gives this 1,000w of peak power permanently when in Turbo mode not just for 30 second blasts of Boost.

More recently there has been the new Specialized Levo with a claimed 720w peak. And it feels like Bosch are about to unleash something soon too (possibly an update to existing Performance Line CX motors to unleash a few more watts).

What’s the problem with power?

Why is more watts a problem? Well, it’s nothing really much to do with mountain biking rider safety or trail erosion or even the forever in the background spectre of illegal de-restriction. It’s to do with pedal assist bicycles straying too far from their original remit and raisn d’être. Namely, to add a bit of extra motor power on top of the rider power going into the pedals.

Anyone who’s ridden a DJI Avinox ebike – such as the Amflow PL Carbon – will know that it doesn’t take very many rider input watts to get the motor ro give out its much hyped 1,000 watts of motor assistance. The experience is akin to using soft-pedalling of the cranks as essentially a throttle.

It’s this ‘support ratio’ issue that the bike industry is concerned about. Although 1,000w pedal assist bikes are still quite far off things like Surron e-motos in terms of power (minimum 12,500w of peak), there’s no denying that higher and higher wattage e-bikes have the potential to stray too far from regular bicycles.

ZIV

So what are ZIV – and a lot of the bicycle industry globally – proposing? In a press release called ‘ZIV positions itself on future EPAC regulations‘ the key paragraphs are as follows:

It considers the following additional parameters to be characteristic of an EPAC*:

• support ratio of 1:4 and
• support ratio of 1:6 possible up to max. 15 km/h and
• max. assistance power of 750 W at the drive wheel and [sic]
• max. weight of 250 kg for single-track** EPAC or
• max. weight of 300 kg for multi-track** EPAC

Separate framework conditions and parameters must be defined for cargo bikes weighing more than 300kg.

*EPAC = electrically power assisted cycle, basically what we mean when talking about ebikes/eMTBs.
**single-track EPAC = two wheels behind each other ie. bicycle.
**multi-track EPAC = three or for wheels ie. tricycle, four-wheel cargo bike etc.

You can see from this that the DJI Avinox would fall foul of these regulations. Both in its more-than-750w peak power and its support ratio of 1:4 (and even the support ratio of 1:6 with a speed restriction of 15km/h).

Regardless of the suggested maximum power wattage (750w), for the support ratio of the Avinox to be allowed under the new proposals the rider would have to be putting in 250w of their own leg power to access the motor’s 1000w of assist.

The support ratio at maximum speed of 15km/h (1:6) is a bit closer to what the Avinox currently does, but it’s irrelevant because the proposals suggest that 750w peak power limit. Which overrules everything.

The maximum weight limits wouldn’t be relevant to e-MTBs but would impact things like cargo bikes and bikes used for car-free ferrying of kids about or certain types disabled persons’ mobiles, as well as those big delivery/courier four-wheelers that can currently use cycle lanes.

What about mountain biking?

As mentioned, those who will lose out are users of pedal assist vehicles with more than two wheels and/or exceed 250kg. Not MTBs then. And this issue is something for the wider bicycle industry to contemplate and find a proper solution for.

What does all this mean for pedal assist mountain bikes? Possibly not that much in the grand scheme of things.

Maybe DJI will have to introduce new firmware/software to restrict the peak power to the suggested 750w. What will exisitng DJI Avinox owners do? Probably nothing. Just hope they don’t get pulled over by the non-existent Rights-Of-Way Police for an inspection.

In all honesty, the peak power of the Avinox is not the be all and end all of the motor. It’s not useable anywhere other than boring fireroad and tarmac. The more interesting aspect of Avinox was its exceptional response, overall ‘intelligence’ and fuel economy.

eMTBs will get a bit more power in MY26 (Model Year 2026) but I suspect they’ll not stray far over 700w peak power and/or 100Nm of torque. And that is totally not a problem.

Potential pitfalls

People are probably going to moan a bit about the 15km/h speed restriction 1:6 support ratio thing ie. you’ll only be able to access your bike’s 750w peak power if travelling below 15km/h. And this is almost certainly going to result in people ‘chipping’ their bike motor to derestrict this. But I also think this won’t be significantly more people than already derestrict their current ebikes.

As ever, it’s the de-restriction issue that remains. Can ebike manufacturers design-out de-restriction? Because they need to.

Also, what if DJI don’t follow the proposals and keep selling 1,000w peak power machines? Who’s going to police such ‘illegal vehicles’ riding along mountain bike trails and bridleways etc?

Ben Haworth

185cm tall. 73kg weight. Orange Switch 6er. Saracen Ariel Eeber. Schwalbe Magic Mary. Maxxis DHR II. Coil fan.

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