European bike industry comes out strongly against e-Bike tampering

15 national bicycle industry associations and 68 companies have become signatories to an industry-wide self-commitment to prevent the e-Bike tampering, something that is increasingly seen as a risk to the electric bike’s status as a bicycle.

Under the umbrella of CONEBI, the trade bodies have taken a strong stance against this practice, identifying that riding manipulated e-Bikes on public roads may not only lead to safety issues and technical problems, but also result in serious legal consequences. Riding a tampered e-bike on public roads can lead to criminal prosecution. Riding a tampered e-Bike also risks invalidating third party or personal injury insurance. Furthermore, cyclists risk losing their guarantee and invalidating their warranty claims.

To further support this position CONEBI prepared a self-commitment for the prevention of tampering of e-bikes. All the signatories, ranging from national industry associations to global companies active in the industry, commit to ensuring that all applicable anti-tampering requirements are met, to continuously evaluate and improve existing standards, as well as to raise awareness about this illegal practice to related stakeholders such as retailers via trainings, documentations, workshops and campaigns.

While the large majority of e-Bike riders do not tamper with their bicycle, CONEBI is concerned about the negative effect that the illegal action of a few will have on the innocent many who conduct themselves according to the law. CONEBI strongly believes that the current regulatory framework for e-Bikes is well suited and the equal treatment of e-Bikes and bicycles is fundamental for the rise in electric bike use in recent years. CONEBI does however see the tampering as a threat to this stable framework. Therefore there is a strong motivation for the bicycle industry to fight tampering.

Erhard Büchel, President of CONEBI: “The Bicycle Industry takes the topic of tampering very seriously and has started several actions to curb this dangerous practice. This self-commitment is only one pillar of our overall strategy. Moreover, market surveillance must be strengthened at national level supported by European legislations. Last but not least, we condemn very strongly the sales of tampering kits which endanger the safety of consumers as the e-bike is not designed for such an increased speed. We therefore call upon the European legislators to clearly forbid the sale, application and use of tampering equipment”

CONEBI is working together with its members, technical experts and other associations to prepare supplementary information that will help to follow the steps of the self-commitment including, but not limited to, information material on the risks and dangers of tampering, advice on how to cooperate with national market surveillance authorities, as well as building partnerships with like-minded associations, consumer organisations, retailers, police, accident research and testing institutes.

The complete self-commitment showcasing all the signatories can be found here.

The subject of electric bike speeds, the risks tampering exposes a business and rider too an the speed pedelec market has been recently addressed here on CI.N. Shortly after, CONEBI and a panel of industry leaders met on Eurobike’s stage to further address the subject, a  recap on which will be in CI.N’s next magazine.