Ugh, what a tool. > I rode that [2600 watt] ebike like a motorcycle right in the middle of the lane all around the city. I accelerated much faster than the ca

Ugh, what a tool. > I rode that [2600 watt] ebike like a motorcycle right in the middle of the lane all around the city. I accelerated much faster than the cars did and frankly I got pretty annoyed at how slow the cars really were. Cars clearly were annoyed with me when they saw me at a stop light taking up the whole lane, but once the light turned green I just left them in the dust. This is the way that ebikes were meant to be ridden. This guy doesn't want an "ebike". What he wants is an ELECTRIC MOTORCYCLE. What he built is an electric motorcycle. (Or maybe a moped, depending on the state, but probably it's an electric motorcycle if it is totally ungoverned.) I'm glad he likes it -- electric motorcycles, and motorcycles generally, are a lot of fun. Welcome to the club! But let's not pretend that this is some brand-new invention. All he's doing is building electric motorcycles and then flouting the insurance and registration laws that already exist around them. Nobody is saying that you can't have a 2600W, two-wheeled, electric-powered personal transportation device. What the law requires, in most states, is that you put a fucking license plate on it, and pay insurance, and prove you know how to ride the thing, and generally not act like a dipshit. Which is kind of what he's doing by riding around on an illegal, unlicensed, probably uninsured electric motorcycle. People build motorcycles all the time. It's a cool hobby. Unlike building your own cars, there aren't a ton of safety regs or crash testing that you have to do, so it's not too difficult to get into. But just because you build one around a bicycle frame (not new -- early motorcycles evolved from bicycles!) doesn't mean you suddenly get to ignore the decades of legal infrastructure which were created to regulate them.