The bill text has now been published here, although this is almost certainly a placeholder which will be edited/expanded later in the legislative process.
The assembly member has posted a survey here, where people can submit their input.
Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan, representing central Contra Costa and eastern Alameda Counties in Assembly District 16, has introduced the “E-Bike Accountability Act”.
California is at a crossroads for climate and transit equity. The “E-Bike Accountability Act” threatens to derail our progress by mandating license plates and registration for all Class 2 (throttle-operated, 20 mph limit) and Class 3 (pedal-assist, 28 mph limit) e-bikes statewide, including the hundreds of thousands of Class 2 and 3 e-bikes that people already own and use. Only Class 1 (pedal-assist, 20 mph limit) e-bikes will not require license plates and registration.
Why this Bill Fails California and the East Bay Community:
- It Ignores the Real Danger: The leading cause of traffic violence, especially for bike riders, is that of outdated street design and heavy vehicular traffic. We need protected bikeway networks for all ages and abilities, not license plates.
- It Targets the Wrong Problem: Most “e-bike” safety concerns stem from illegal “e-motos” or hacked devices that operate in excess of legal speeds, not the legal Class 2 and 3 bikes used by families, commuters, and workers.
- It Punishes Sustainable Choices: While a gas car emits 374 g of CO2 per mile, an e-bike emits only 8g. By adding DMV-style red tape to e-bikes, we discourage the exact behavior needed to meet the state’s ambitious climate goals.
- It Enables Biased Policing: In 2022, California abolished local bike registration requirements (AB 1909) in part because they were used as a pretext for biased stops. Reintroducing regulation and plate requirements provides a new tool for discriminatory enforcement.
This bill was developed without consultation with Bike East Bay, our local coalition partners throughout the district, or our state partners at the California Bicycle Coalition.
It creates financial and bureaucratic barriers for sustainable active transportation while doing little to solve the real dangers on our roads. Additionally, this will disproportionately impact low-income and senior riders.
Sign the petition below to join Bike East Bay in our opposition to this legislation, as it is counter to traffic safety, sustainability, and equity goals.
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Traffic Safety
Traffic safety is indeed a major concern in many of our East Bay jurisdictions, predominantly in lower income communities, but this is not an e-bike specific issue. We receive reports and respond to severe or fatal crashes every week, mostly involving pedal bike users or pedestrians who are hit by drivers, including many hit and run incidents.
Seniors, people with disabilities, and unhoused individuals are disproportionately harmed in these crashes. There is a desperate need for targeted action on this crisis.
The underlying problem is outdated street design which doesn’t serve the growing demand of active transportation users well, coupled with increasingly dangerous vehicle design via larger and faster cars. Solutions are hampered by insufficient funding for bicycling and pedestrian programs, infrastructure construction, and maintenance.
Getting more people out of cars and onto legal e-bikes is one of the ways we can help mitigate our traffic safety crisis. However this bill will create additional hurdles for individuals to access this transportation option. Many will opt to not try an e-bike at all, and for others these hurdles may make e-bikes completely inaccessible.
Sustainability
More and more people have been using e-bikes to replace car trips, in some cases enabling them to reduce the number of cars in their household altogether. This includes families in hilly or sprawling neighborhoods where human-powered bikes were not as easy an option.
According to a report from the Colorado State University Sustainability Research Lab, a mile of e-bike operation is associated with only 8 grams of CO2 emissions, versus 161 grams per mile for an electric car or 374 grams for a gasoline-powered car.
The California Air Resources Board indicates that personal transportation is the largest individual source of CO2 emissions in the state.
California holds more than half of the e-bike market share across the entire United States, with rapid year-over-year sales increases. So squeezing the hydraulic disc brakes on this demand by imposing additional licensing and registration requirements could have global climate impacts.
Economy
Here in the East Bay e-bike rebate programs in Contra Costa and Alameda Counties have been very popular, even while the state program was cancelled and defunded following technical difficulties and mismanagement.
Individuals across all income ranges have come to rely on these e-bikes for daily travel, including many approved Class 2 and 3 models, saving money by reducing their reliance on car trips.
Adding an additional financial burden through the cost of licensing and registration, as well as the time and resources burden of fulfilling these requirements, will convince some individuals to not participate in these programs.
Equity
In 2022 California passed a bill (AB 1909) to prohibit mandatory bicycle registration requirements statewide. Prior to this bill, local jurisdictions were allowed to require bike registrations, and some did. However most people who owned bikes did not register them, and the cost of administering the registrations was higher than the fees collected.
Police officers used this as a justification for pretextual stops and searches, often with racial bias, because they knew that most people did not have their bikes registered.
Adding back registration and license plate requirements for e-bikes once again increases the opportunity for biased, pretextual stops, even if an individual is otherwise biking safely with no other violations.
Why is more e-bike regulation being considered?
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We wrote about this last summer. Non-legal e-devices that are being advertised as e-bikes, or which are being “hacked” to operate above legal speeds, have become more popular, especially among youth riders often in wealthier jurisdictions.
Some cities have opted to try to crack down on individual users through increased enforcement or locally specific regulation of trails and sidewalk riding.
We have attempted to reach out to staff and elected representatives in these cities when there have been factual errors in some of the educational materials, or to coordinate on proactive measures encouraging safe behavior without discouraging bicycling altogether. For the most part we have not received responses or offers for collaboration in return.
There are already state regulations available for cities to enforce against the use of these illegal e-devices (sometimes referred to as e-motos), and more of these regulations were adopted in 2026.
Beyond local enforcement, however, a more effective solution is state action against the manufacturers and retailers of these known, prohibited devices. But in either case, this is not an issue which needs more regulation to address.
Part of the solution should also involve reviving and funding the state e-bike rebate program, and adding more funding for the local rebate programs.
These allow for the purchase of only approved, legal models that are not hackable. They also require purchases from local shops which helps the economy and initiates relationships for ongoing maintenance and educational opportunities.
What about safety concerns with legal e-bikes?
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A recent study commissioned by the state legislature found that safety outcomes related to e-bikes were unclear.
A lack of detail in crash reports and hospital data meant that they could not conclude whether there are significant, broad concerns with legal e-bike use, or whether the problems are primarily associated with already illegal e-moto devices.
Better crash reporting and data collection is needed in order to inform the response.
The study authors did indicate that e-device safety issues were largely specific to certain communities and not widespread, that severe crashes were more common among senior e-bike riders, that motor vehicle drivers were involved in most of the fatal crashes, and that e-bike crashes with pedestrians were relatively rare.
Improved high-quality bikeway infrastructure was also one of the top recommendations from the study, stating “One of the most effective ways to reduce electric bicycle safety incidents is to provide riders with safe bicycling facilities that reduce potential conflict points between bicycles and other road users.“
Currently most jurisdictions in Assemblymember Bauer-Kahan’s district have few to no physically protected bikeways, such as San Ramon which has to date built zero of the dozen protected bikeways recommended in its 2018 bicycle plan adopted eight years ago.
Meanwhile San Ramon has invested tens of millions in roadway widening projects, further exacerbating already hostile environments for anyone outside a car.
NFL coach Greg Knapp was killed in 2021 while riding a pedal-powered bike in San Ramon, after a driver drifted into the paint-only bike lane that Greg was in. The street had a physically protected bikeway recommendation in the 2018 bike plan, but it still has not been built as of 2026.
Significantly increased funding availability on the local, regional, and state levels is desperately needed in order to help jurisdictions make progress on these plans.
Mandating plan implementation as a condition of funding, and requiring local jurisdictions to keep their bike plans up to date with all ages and abilities bikeway network proposals included, also needs to be a priority.