ROME – No license plate and insurance requirement for electric bicycles in Europe, at least for those with pedal assistance that cannot exceed 25 km per hour. In this case, in fact, the electric motor is only an aid to reduce the effort of pushing on the pedals. Different speech instead for the Ebike Speed Pedelec (or S-Pedelec), which can reach up to 45 km / h and therefore are comparable to motor vehicles, such as mopeds, and therefore have the obligation to have a license plate and insurance. This is what the Council and the European Parliament have provisionally agreed in recent days, as part of a complete set of rules to better protect the victims of road accidents.
The agreement will now have to be officially approved and, once approved, the new directive will enter into force 20 days after its publication in the EU Official Journal. The new rules will begin to apply 24 months after entry into force. Already a previous study on the safety of Personal Mobility Devices carried out by the Transport Research Laboratory for the European Commission recommended excluding E-bikes from the insurance and license plate obligation, which is instead foreseen in the forthcoming legislation on homologation in the European Union for bicycles. Electric Speed Pedelecs.
If the provisional agreement between the Council and Parliament is confirmed, tampering is foreseeable. Indeed, it seems that e-bike manufacturers are already working on a system to prevent “weakened” electric bicycles from being brought to full power.
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