You’ll Need A License And Insurance To Ride An E-bike In This State Now

On his final day in office, the Governor of New Jersey signed off on a sweeping new law aimed squarely at dangerous e-bikes, stirring immediate backlash from cycling advocates who say it goes too far. They may have a point.

More: New York’s E-bike Chaos Hits A Breaking Point After Fatal Collision

Once the law goes into effect, anyone on an e-bike – not just an e-moto – will need to have a DOT-approved motorcycle helmet, e-bike insurance, current registration for the bike in question, and a license to ride it.

That’s right. Your grandma, coasting down the boardwalk on her electric Townie, now needs to be geared up like she’s heading to a track day. Otherwise, she’s breaking the law.

One of the Strictest Laws in the Nation

That’s the crux of the criticism now swirling around Trenton after Gov. Phil Murphy signed one of the strictest e-bike laws in the country into effect on Monday.

The bill scraps New Jersey’s previous three-tier e-bike classification system and replaces it with a far broader framework that pulls nearly all electric bikes under the same regulatory umbrella. That’s regardless of power output, speed, or how they’re actually used day to day. We’ll come back to that, though.

Murphy told the New Jersey Monitor that the law is long overdue. E-bike use has exploded across the state, particularly among teens and commuters, and several recent fatal crashes involving electric bikes, including one that killed a 13-year-old boy, helped push the legislation forward quickly during the Legislature’s final voting session.

The Price of Compliance

Senate President Nick Scutari, the bill’s sponsor, argues that faster, more powerful e-bikes have outpaced existing rules, creating real safety risks for riders and everyone around them. Riders will have six months to comply, with fees waived for the first year, after which annual registration will cost $8. $50 fines kick in once the grace period ends.

Age restrictions are also tightening. Riders under 15 will be banned from operating low-speed e-bikes or motorized bicycles, while 17-year-olds must hold a basic driver’s license. Sixteen-year-olds can only ride low-speed e-bikes through approved municipal rental programs like Citi Bike.

There’s one giant issue, though, and it’s that the term e-bike is getting thrown around when e-motos and e-mopeds are the real issue.

The Difference the Law Ignores

There’s a huge difference between e-bikes and e-motos. E-bikes are bicycles with electric assistance. Porsche, McLaren, and countless legitimate bicycle manufacturers build these machines. Power output is typically limited to 750 watts (which is still a lot), and it comes on as the rider pedals. They have normal pedals and everyday bicycle components. In plenty of cases, they look so much like a normal bicycle that the average person might not be able to tell that they have electric assist at all.

On the flip side, e-motos or e-mopeds often offer 1,000 watts or more at the twist of a throttle. They’re rarely functional if a rider isn’t using the throttle because they’re extremely heavy. Lots of them look more like motorcycles or mopeds than they do a normal bike. Of course, the line between the two is very blurry at times due to how manufacturers build out their products.

Seth Alvo from the YouTube channel Berm Peak points out all of these issues and offers some solutions in his latest coverage on the topic.

Throttle Loopholes

He suggests retooling laws to target throttle control. His argument is that throttles allow designers to ignore pedal design and function, and that, in turn, allows them to focus on building the types of products most associated with abuse, misuse, and injury that the law is trying to target in the first place. “Allowing throttles has created a market for mopeds that look like ebikes,” he says.

Plenty of e-moto and e-moped brands attach pedals to what is otherwise unquestionably an e-moto because it allows them to sell the product as an e-bike rather than something else.

That’s ultimately how we ended up in this situation, where a 65-year-old just trying to exercise a little on a lightly assisted comfort bike now needs a motorcycle helmet, a license to ride it, registration on it, and insurance for it that mostly doesn’t even exist yet.

Credit: Trek, Audi, Super73