Is it possible to improve European electric bicycle (pedelec) laws ?

Use our new tool to plan bike, pedelec or ebike trips : http://www.ebikemaps.com The development of electric bicycle might be an important step toward sustainable mobility. There are many advantages: no gas emission, energy efficiency, no traffic jams, health benefit (active way of commuting) and low price. In the framework of the European regulation, an electric bicycle is considered as a bicycle if: -the motor only assists (pedaling is mandatory), -the motor stops assisting if the bike speed is higher than 25 km/h, -the motor assisting nominal power does not exceed 250 watts. It is a good way to regulate electric bicycle. Restrictions are useful to bring safety and simplicity (no driving license, no insurance). However, these rules are not the most appropriate ones for the whole range of applicability of electric bicycle. For instance, in Switzerland, the maximum nominal motor power is 500 watts. Indeed, in this mountainous areas, it is admitted that more power is necessary to make bicycle a popular way of commuting. More power strongly improve riding experience. It makes it faster, less exhausting and safer (more stability and more visibility by reducing speed difference with cars). Increasing the motor power limit from 250 watts to 500 watts at the European scale is not a good solution. Indeed, 500W is not needed for most of the riders and risks to bring additional restrictive legislations (helmet, insurance...). Still, more power is important for medical applications (cardiovascular risk, physical rehabilitation, disabled sports....) and for commuting in mountainous areas or in moderated slope with cargo bikes. Then, how to allow more power for these important applications and only them with a simple rule ? Physics tells us the solution. If the motor can handle 500 watts, to be sure that the extra power is only activated if necessary, acceleration of the bicycle has to be restricted. As an example, let consider a new set of rules: -the motor only assists (pedaling is mandatory), -the motor stops assisting if the speed is higher than 25 km/h, -the motor stops assisting if the acceleration is higher than 1.5 m/s^2, -the motor assisting nominal power does not exceed 500 watts. On the one hand, in a standard context, the motor power does not exceed 250 watts because of the acceleration limitation. On a flat road, 500 watts motor output produces a large acceleration. It is not allowed in the framework of this set of rule. The controller keeps the motor power around 250 watts as in the previous set of rules. On the other hand, for medical application where the human power is very limited or if there is a large resisting force (e.g. gravity force in a slope), the bicycle acceleration is low and allows the motor power to increase up to 500 watts. To conclude, we believe that electric bicycle is a promising vehicle for sustainable development. We propose to extend the electric bicycle class of vehicle. We believe that bicycle equipped with a nominal assisting power of 500 watts and with an acceleration limitation (e.g. 1.5 m/s^2) should be considered as bicycle as well. We can expect large benefits of this evolution in several field (medical application, urban cargo bikes, commuting in mountainous areas). ⁃ The bicycle electronic controllers is computing, at a high frequency, the motor electrical speed to drive it. Then, acceleration limit can be implemented without additional complexity, cost or sensor. With an embedded software implementation, there is no simple way to overcome this limitation for the end user. Acceleration limit can be easily tested and validated during homologation. Help us to spread the proposal !