Do you really have to pedal to be entitled to assistance from your electric bike? A judge has just ruled

The Dutch police recently seized a fatbike, these electric bikes with oversized tires which look like small motorcycles and which have been in the sights of the Dutch government for two years already, because its owner did not complete full pedal revolutions to benefit from the electric assistance.

What is the basic rule?

Instead, he just moved his feet up and down to trigger the motor. A technique nicknamed “mimic pedaling”. The user contested this entry, and the case ended up before a judge, who had to decide: is this gesture considered pedaling or not?

To understand the issue, we must return to the initial rule. In Europe, an electrically assisted bicycle (VAE) remains a bicycle with several conditions: the motor must only help when you pedal, without accelerator, and the assistance cuts off at 25 km/h. As soon as a machine does not comply with these regulations, it generally falls into the category of mopeds.

The problem is that neither European nor Dutch law specifies what exactly “pedaling” means.

360 degrees or not: what the court says

The owner of the bicycle therefore contested the seizure, believing that no complete rotation is required to benefit from the assistance. The police judged that this practice transformed the fatbike into a machine that operated more like a moped. The court entrusted the expertise to Rutger Oldenhuis, advisor on compliance and product safety. The central question: is a 360-degree rotation necessary to qualify for assistance?

Answer: no. According to the expertise carried out by Rutger Oldenhuis and notably reported by Bike Europe, the up and down movement, even if it seems strange and not very effective, is enough to activate the assistance: it causes the rotation sensor of the bike to react, even though the pedals do not describe a complete rotation. The court also noted that the bicycle had not undergone any modification, did not have an accelerator and that the cyclist had not exceeded the 25 km/h limit. Result: the police must return his fatbike.

A technical detail that goes beyond fatbikes

This story of partial rotation is in reality nothing trivial. On many electric bikes already, a complete turn of the crankset is no longer necessary to move forward. This is the case for models equipped with a rotation sensor: assistance starts after half a turn of the pedals, with an on/off effect which delivers all the power of the motor at once.

The basic principle does not change however: you must always move your legs to move forward. Sitting still and pressing an accelerator remains prohibited.

If the decision here concerns the Netherlands, it could set a precedent beyond the Netherlands alone, due to the lack of a European definition of “pedaling”. As long as no text specifies what a “pedal stroke” is, this type of dispute risks reoccurring.