An electric bike rider passes a runner as she cruises along the boardwalk at Huntington State Beach in Huntington Beach on Tuesday, January 4, 2022. Along with the growing trend of e-bikes comes concerns of safety, rules of the road and trips to hospitals for its riders. So the owner of that nearly $80,000 Model X that you saw cruising down the I-5 recently might have gotten $7,500 back from the government after his purchase.
To understand this paradox, we’ll need to go back 10 years ago, when a bicycling lobbyist group, People for Bikes, expanded the definition of an e-bike into three classes and saw its guidelines be widely adopted by most states, including California. However, pedals are a requirement of the antiquated e-bike class system, which means most e-bike rebate programs are limited to e-bikes with pedals.
Given that your taxes fund this project, doesn’t it make sense that for every dollar spent, there should be a maximum amount of air pollutant reduction? The current e-bike rebate pedal requirement does not help achieve this goal of reducing air pollutants, and, conversely, limits air pollutant-reducing electric mobility options.