We've been given several reasons for why the NY state revisions didn't pass. This seems like a legitimate concern for a big city where vendors are using ebikes in somewhat reckless ways.
What role is Bosch playing in all of this? The most popular DIY mid-drive is the BBSHD. Admittedly, it will produce 1500 watts with the highest performance battery. On the other, the motor is locked down to 30 amps (30 X 52v is the max wattage). When a vendor wants to bump up the wattage, they are forced to use a separate controller with the HD, and that is available. But Bafang has locked down the motor at 30 amps. I think this means they could lock it down to 20 amps, or whatever they felt they had to do. About 15 amps would be the 'most legal' with a 60 volt cutoff.
So, Bosch allows dongles or other hacks to increase the power of the motor? The motor and controller architecture is such that it can be tuned against the factory spec, and illegally? How much of this is on Bosch? They can't do what Bafang does, although Bafang is clearly cheating the wattage numbers.
The California labels, covering Max speed, wattage, and Class of bike, kick in a month from now. Bikes come out of California, so they may be Cal configured. I still don't know how they are going to do this, exactly, but once the label is set, it's more of a legal problem if you change the parameters on the label.
@Chris Head was talking about voltage conditioning on one of his bike lines. That works better with watt limits, I guess. It will be dealers and manufacturers of ebikes that will have to comply. But can't they force the manufacturers to make controllers that are locked down? Doesn't Bosch play both sides of the street, not locking their stuff down.
