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Ebikes & powered trailer legality?

(4 posts)
  • Started 5 months ago by Yodhrin
  • Latest reply from neddie
  • This topic is closed

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  1. Yodhrin
    Member

    I've been mulling over a powered trailer DIY project for picking up decent sized loads of wood, but when idly checking the pricing on a proper Carla powered trailer(yowza, DIY for sure) I found one retailer claiming it's illegal to use a powered trailer with an ebike as under UK law despite both being legal 250w motors it counts as being combined into a single 500w one once you hitch one to the other, which seems extraordinarily dumb, but not so dumb I'd put it past our lawmakers.

    Is that actually correct, because they don't specify a source and a casual google hasn't turned anything up, but you'd assume they're not deliberately sabotaging their own business needlessly...

    Posted 5 months ago #

  2. Morningsider
    Member

    Interesting! I've had a quick trawl through the relevant legislation and can't see anything. My gut feeling is this would be such a niche set-up that there simply isn't specific legislation. The retailers have probably added a disclaimer just in case there is some legal blowback.

    I reckon you would be fine, but I fear that there is a growing mood against e-bikes and scooters (largely created by maniac delivery riders on illegal e-motorbikes) and you could always run into an over-zealous police officer who took a dislike to what they saw.

    Posted 5 months ago #

  3. fimm
    Member

    What do PedalMeApp in London use? Don't they have powered bikes and powered trailers?

    Posted 5 months ago #

  4. neddie
    Member

    A common sense approach would be a rule that any powered trailer cannot 'push' the towing bike, but only reduce the amount of effort required to pull it.

    But we don't do common sense in this country

    Posted 5 months ago #

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