Transport for London (TfL) has announced that non-folded e-bikes will be banned on its network from March 31 – a move that has come in the wake of growing union pressure to ban all e-bikes following a fire last month. So what's given rise to this ostensibly bizarre distinction? TfL imposed an e-scooter ban across its entire public transport network in December 2021 following a number of fires on its premises and services. E-bikes have however still been permitted up until now.
I did some research a while ago: There are a lot of conversion kits around for foldings bikes. Most kits are just replacing your front tire with a motor hub and that is of course also available for 16" or 20" wheels. AliExpress is full of them. Amazon has them. A ban on unsafe electric devices would be the more sensible way.
They’re definitely out there, but folding bikes are somewhat less standardized than full-sized bikes so it’s a bit harder to guarantee that you’ll have a good place to mount the batteries, run the wires, etc and still be able to fold the bike properly.
And anecdotally I see far less folding bikes and even less folding conversions around me. Maybe (probably) they’re more common in London than in a semi-rural American suburb like where I live, but I suspect by overall numbers there’s probably still less folding bikes (electric or otherwise) than full-sized bikes. From a numbers perspective, are you more concerned about the fire risk of say 1 folding e bike, or 100 non-fording e bikes?
Yes, most ideally it would just be a ban on unsafe electronics, but you run into an issue with enforcement. Are they going to have mandatory safety inspections, approved vendors and installers, a list of safe models, etc. and check that every e bike that passes through checks out? Sounds like kind of a nightmare to implement. Probably easier to just accept the smaller risk due to smaller numbers of folding bikes and blanket ban regular ebikes.
Also, I don’t know the situation in London, but a fair amount of non-folding e bikes around me seem more like underpowered electric motorcycles with token pedals than traditional bikes, bigger, heavier, fat tires, really not well-suited to taking on the subway. If that style is common over there too, this kind of has the added advantage of keeping them out too.