OPINION
What we need to do now. Bike Brands: Get audited Promote your involvement Encourage others Build e-Bike Positive into your retailer programmes Support the scheme financially where you can
Retailers: Join the pledge Stop dealing with illegal product Use the comms pack to explain the value to customers
If insurers, landlords, and employers start insisting on
“approved bikes” and “approved retailers,” and trust me, they are heading that way, then being outside the scheme will be commercial suicide.
We can complain about what the cost may be, or we can recognise the opportunity: To differentiate from online tat To sell safer product To build trust To keep customers riding and coming back
Then I come onto conversion Kits. Let’s not dance around the bush on this. I think my views are well known! A large share of fires and structural failures of bikes
are linked to converted bikes. Frames, wheels, brakes, etc. not designed for motor torque or load. Batteries of unknown provenance. Installers assuming liability without understanding what that means.
The BA’s position is sensible and not ideological: Kits cannot be part of the assurance scheme Retailers should not fit them Government should close the “for use on private land loophole” for high-power kits
OPSS should require clear risk disclosure and liability warnings
This is not anti-choice. It is pro-safety and pro-industry. If
we let this unregulated kit culture define e-bikes, regulators will simply shut the whole category down.
34 | January 2026
Why This Matters: It’s Not Just About Avoiding Fires We are in a long-term fight for the future of cycling. Pedal bike sales are down. UK e-bike adoption lags behind Europe. The delivery gig economy is distorting demand. Media sentiment is turning negative. But e-bikes are the single biggest opportunity we have to turn that around. Properly regulated, responsibly sold, widely adopted, e-bikes can: Grow cycling participation, replace car journeys, improve health and mobility and deliver commercial growth, but that future only happens if people trust the products.
United We Win, Divided We Fail For once, we have a chance to demonstrate maturity and self-governance. A chance to show government, insurers, landlords and the public that cycling is not a wild west of battery fires and illegal mopeds, but a responsible industry delivering safe, tested and transformative products. That starts with legitimate bike brands standing together and saying: We’ve done the work. We’ve passed the tests. We’re not hiding from scrutiny. And we want consumers to choose safe, legal, high-quality e-bikes. If we cannot unite behind that, then frankly, we deserve the regulation we will inevitably get.
But if we do unite? We protect consumers. We protect retailers. We protect the reputation of cycling. And we unlock growth. The e-Bike Positive campaign may not be perfect, but it is ambitious, credible, necessary and more importantly, it is ours. Let’s get behind it, build it and show consumers, regulators and the media that we take safety seriously because we take cycling seriously. The future of our industry may just depend on it.
www.bikebiz.com
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