Among the bills Governor Newsom recently signed into law are a series designed to improve e-bike safety. One law bans selling or advertising electric bikes as e-bikes, if they can go over 20 miles an hour with a throttle or 28 miles an hour with a pedal assist. Faster bikes will be treated as e-motos, or mopeds, requiring registration and a license through the DMV. Grass Valley Police Lieutenant Brian Blakemore says more clarifying information will need to be provided from manufacturers and retailers on a particular two-wheel vehicle…

Blakemore says one new law also gives officers the ability to impound e-bikes or e-motos when they’re being ridden outside of those restrictions. And another restricts the speed of e-bikes and bicycles to no more than 10 miles an hour on a sidewalk. But he says all such vehicles have been banned completely in Grass Valley for many ye

The sponsor of one of the bills says there are many examples of essentially motorcycles being driven by kids who are underage and parents buying things that they don’t even know what it is. She says many residents looking to purchase e-bikes have ultimately been sold a very different and much less controllable product.