alt Hacker NewsI think there are many more factors to it than that. I own a Radwagon, a cargo e-bike and I take my kids to school on it. It’s both pedal assist and has a throttle and maxes out at 20mph. I find the throttle very useful because the bike is pretty damn heavy with two kids on it and moving from a standing stop is much easier when I can give it a quick throttle burst then start pedalling.
All that said, I do agree the term is overloaded. The bike lines in NYC often have people riding electric mopeds in them and that feels dangerous. Their max speed is clearly way above 20mph and they’re bulky. They belong on the road with other mopeds. So IMO the definition of ebike should factor in max speed more than it should throttle vs not.
(And also, seconding the awesomeness of ebikes. My kids love riding on it and it’s allowed us to take so many trips that would have been difficult otherwise. It’s also allowed us to avoid buying a car, for now at least)
The problem with max speed is that while big legit ebike manufacturers respect it (e.g. you can't buy a Bosch ebike in the UK that will go above 15.5mph), you can easily get Chinese models that don't care, or you can mod other bikes that do fairly easily.
I don't know what the solution is tbh.