Written Content
Picture a California sheriff's deputy watching a throttle-equipped e-bike blow through a stop sign at 28 mph with no identifying plate or registration. That's not a hypothetical scenario dreamed up for effect; it's the exact problem California Assemblywoman Rebecca Bauer-Kahan cited when she introduced AB 1942, a bill that would require license plates and DMV registration for Class 2 and Class 3 e-bikes. The bill's backers argue that law enforcement officers currently have no way to identify or cite a rider on a high-speed e-bike once they've sped off.
That single traffic-stop problem is a small microcosm into something much bigger happening across the country this year, amidst rising popularity of e-bikes and other various PEVs. According to PeopleForBikes, the trade association representing the U.S. bike industry, nearly 700 bike-related bills were introduced nationwide in 2026 alone; covering everything from new e-bike definitions, registration mandates, battery labeling rules, and trail access restrictions. That's an extraordinary amount of legislative attention aimed at a category of vehicle most riders assume already has a settled, standardized legal definition.
It doesn't. And that's the part of this story most coverage skips.
A Model Law, Not a Mandate
The "Class 1, Class 2, Class 3" system that most e-bike owners have some familiarity with was never handed down by Congress or the federal government. It's a model bill written by PeopleForBikes, adopted piecemeal, state by state, going back to California's 2015 law (AB 1096), which first split e-bikes into speed and power-based tiers so they could use bike lanes and paths without the registration or insurance required of mopeds and motorcycles. Other states largely copied the template, and as of early 2026, 36 states plus D.C. had some version of the three-class framework on the books.
But "widely adopted" isn't the same as "federally required," and the country's top product-safety regulator has said so directly. When asked about the framework in 2023, Consumer Product Safety Commission Chair Alex Hoehn-Saric stated plainly that the three-class system "is not part of CPSC's statutes" — meaning the federal government has never formally recognized it as the definition of an e-bike, even though nearly every state law referencing "Class 1/2/3" assumes that baseline exists somewhere above it...but it doesn't. It's an industry standard that states chose to write into law, and it's likely why individual legislatures now feel free to rewrite it however they see fit.
The E-Moto Problem
Part of why states are revisiting this now comes down to what showed up on the market as it rapidly develops, after the three-class system was written (2014). A growing wave of high-powered, throttle-driven two-wheelers — often marketed on social media directly to teenagers — blur the line between "e-bike" and "electric motorcycle." PeopleForBikes calls this the e-moto problem, pointing to serious crashes involving these out-of-class devices in California, Massachusetts, Oregon, Virginia, and Florida, and arguing that most of the incidents fueling public alarm about "e-bikes" don't actually involve compliant Class 1-3 products at all.
While that may ring true, it is worth noting PeopleForBikes has a clear interest in that framing: steering blame toward unregulated e-motos protects the compliant e-bike market its members build and sell. Despite the bias, the underlying pattern is hard to dispute, and it frames how states have been responding to that mismatch in strikingly different ways. These devices exist, they're proliferating, and they don't fit cleanly into a classification system that was designed around pedal bikes with modest power caps.
Four Ways States Are Patching the Cracks
Rather than one national fix, 2026 has produced a spectrum of approaches, ranging from minor tightening to full replacement of the class system.
Tightening the definition: Washington's SB 6110, effective June 11, kept the three-class system fully intact but narrowed what qualifies as an e-bike in the first place. Any device capable of exceeding 20 mph on motor power alone, with no pedaling, no longer counts. Same classes, narrower door.
Adding a tier alongside the old one: Illinois passed a new statewide micromobility framework that keeps the three-class structure for standard e-bikes while creating an entirely new "high-speed" category — regulated like motorcycles, with a license, insurance, and title required — for anything exceeding 28 mph. California is attempting something similar with SB 1167, which would formally define "e-moto" as its own product category and require registration for off-road electric dirt bikes, while explicitly preserving unregistered access for standard e-bikes.
Bolting on accountability tools: California's AB 1942, mentioned above, doesn't touch the three-class definitions at all. It leaves Class 1, 2, and 3 exactly as they are, but adds DMV registration and a physical license plate requirement on top of Class 2 and 3 specifically, as a way to give police something to cite. It cleared the Assembly Transportation Committee 12-0 in April, but has since stalled. As of mid-May, the official legislative record shows it "held under submission" in the Appropriations Committee, meaning it's parked for now and could either resurface as a two-year bill or quietly die without a floor vote. Still, if it eventually passes, it would be the first law in the country to require plates on an otherwise-standard e-bike.
Tearing it up entirely: Then there's New Jersey, the true outlier thus far. Governor Phil Murphy's S4834, signed in January, doesn't patch the three-class system, instead largely abandoning it. Class 2 and Class 3 e-bikes are reclassified as "motorized bicycles," requiring a driver's license, registration, and insurance by a July 19 deadline, with Class 1 bikes nominally still treated differently but subject to enough overlapping requirements that critics argue the distinction barely matters in practice.
It's worth pausing on the contrast: while New Jersey was ripping the framework out, North Carolina's HB 1094 was moving through its legislature to adopt the three-class system for the first time. One state joining a model law the same year another state walks away from it is a pretty good snapshot of how unsettled this whole area still is.
What About Everything Else?
Everything above is about e-bikes specifically, and if you ride an EUC, a Onewheel, or another electric rideable device, none of it really applies to you. The three-class system was only ever built for pedal bicycles, and other PEVs were never inside this fraying framework.
In most states, that means these devices exist in a genuine gap. One legal explainer on the subject frames it as a "classification trap": a missing legal category most often means there's no legal authorization for it on public roads or sidewalks at all, rather than it meaning they are automatically legal to ride. Where states do address these devices, they're often swept into a much blunter catch-all. New Jersey, for instance, gives e-bikes and e-scooters their own defined, bicycle-like categories, but hoverboards, EUCs, and other self-balancing devices fall under "motorized scooter" — the same bucket as pocket bikes and mini choppers — which is barred from roads, sidewalks, and public land entirely, to be used on private property only. Even cities that are otherwise proactive about micro-mobility improvise here: Boulder, Colorado's own transportation guide acknowledges that EUCs and similar devices without a defined local category may simply get treated as "low-power scooters" or "toy vehicles" depending on their specs. Even the National Park Service's own proposed rule treats "powered micro-mobility devices" like EUCs and hoverboards as a category distinct from e-bikes, which is confirmation that this is a recognized regulatory gap, not just an oversight in state law.
The Other Side of the Argument
Not everyone thinks tighter rules are the right response, even among people who agree something needs to change. Bike advocacy groups have pushed back hard on New Jersey's law specifically, with the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia and the New Jersey Bike and Walk Coalition calling it the most restrictive e-bike law in the country. Within that criticism, they noted it moved through the legislature over opposition from seniors, mobility-challenged riders, bike shop owners, delivery workers, and more. Regional Plan Association made a related point: a bike that tops out at 20 mph is being regulated like a motorcycle, and the people most affected by the new licensing and insurance requirements are more likely to be commuters and delivery workers that use e-bikes as everyday transportation rather than reckless e-moto riders. At a Statehouse rally covered by Electrek, advocates specifically raised equity concerns for immigrant and low-income riders who depend on e-bikes to get to work, which is a weighty point considering the state of our economy and the price of cars.
There's a real irony in the middle of this. Groups like PeopleForBikes and the local coalitions opposing New Jersey's law aren't arguing against more enforcement, they're generally agreeing stricter action against actual e-motos and high-speed electric devices is warranted. Their objection is that blanket registration and licensing catches every rider in the net, compliant and non-compliant alike, rather than targeting the specific devices or behaviors causing the problems and outrage.
A Naming Problem, Not Just a Legal One
There's a subtler critique running underneath all of this, and it comes from inside the safety-advocacy world rather than the bike industry. Writer and cycling safety advocate Steven Goodridge has argued that even where the three-class framework is substantively sound, the language itself may be the problem. "Class 1, Class 2, Class 3" is clear to engineers and manufacturers, but it's not how ordinary people, police officers, or parents actually talk or think about what's in front of them. If nobody outside the industry can reliably tell a Class 3 e-bike from an e-moto just by looking at it or hearing it described, it's not surprising that legislators keep reaching for blunter tools — plates, registration, outright reclassification — instead of refining a system whose own vocabulary doesn't translate well to enforcement on the ground.
Where This Leaves Riders
None of this adds up to the three-class system dying, but it does point to a framework built on a voluntary industry template getting stress-tested from every direction at once: tightened in Washington, layered with a new tier in Illinois and (potentially) California, bolted onto with plates in another California bill, and abandoned outright in New Jersey, all in the same year North Carolina adopted the original version for the first time. With nearly 700 bike-related bills already introduced in 2026, the likeliest outcome for next year isn't a national resolution, but. more of the same patchwork, state-by-state, with New Jersey standing as the cautionary tale of what happens when a legislature takes the extreme route.
If you ride an e-bike, that means paying attention to your specific state, as well as not assuming the class printed on your bike's spec sheet means the same thing everywhere. And if you ride an EUC, a Onewheel, or anything else that never had a class to begin with, it means something a little different: staying alert to whatever catch-all category your state or city quietly slots you into, because right now, that's often the only rule that applies to you at all.
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