March 9, 2026
Hans Rey doesn’t write open letters for fun. When one of the most recognizable names in mountain biking takes the time to address the entire cycling industry in writing, you pay attention. His recent letter — calling for clearer language, stricter power limits, and industry-wide self-regulation around e-bikes — is worth reading slowly. Not just as advocacy. As a strategic warning.
Link to the letter here
Because what Hans is describing isn’t just a regulatory problem. It’s a brand problem, an access problem, and ultimately a market survival problem. And the cycling industry, for all its intelligence on the product side, has a long history of being surprisingly slow to recognize existential business threats until they’re already at the door.
Hans opens with what sounds like a semantics argument: the word “e-bike” has been stretched to cover everything from a lightweight Class 1 trail machine to what is functionally an electric moped. He’s right, of course. But let’s translate that into business language.
When your category descriptor covers products with wildly different performance characteristics, regulatory exposure, and use cases, you no longer have a category. You have a mess. And messes don’t command premium pricing, don’t build coherent communities, and don’t survive regulatory scrutiny.
The cycling industry spent decades carefully constructing the identity of mountain biking — trail access, stewardship, a culture of earned access. The Class 1 e-MTB entered that world on the coattails of that identity. It got trail access because it was positioned as a bicycle, not a vehicle. That positioning is now being eroded from within by manufacturers competing on specs that fundamentally change what the machine is.
Hans is asking for clear labels: E-bicycle, E-moped, E-motorcycle. This isn’t pedantry. It’s the foundation of defensible market segmentation. Without it, regulators will do the segmenting for us — and they won’t be nearly as generous.
The regulatory examples Hans cites deserve more attention than they typically get in trade press. New Jersey has already moved toward requiring insurance, registration, and motorcycle helmets for electric bikes. California is working to reinforce the 750W peak limit. These are not fringe developments. They are leading indicators.
The pattern is familiar to anyone who has watched regulatory cycles across other categories. First comes the product proliferation, then the incidents, then the media coverage, then the populist political reaction, then the legislation. By the time legislation arrives, industry lobbying is reactive and expensive, and the resulting rules are almost always blunter than what self-regulation would have produced.
The cycling industry has a narrow window. The businesses and brands that understand this will be advocating loudly for clearer standards right now — not because they’re being altruistic, but because they’re protecting their own long-term market access.
Hans is diplomatic about it, but the core accusation in his letter is clear: some manufacturers are chasing higher wattage numbers because it sells bikes today, at the expense of the access and regulatory goodwill that makes the category viable tomorrow.
This is not a new failure mode in the cycling industry. We’ve seen it before — with suspension travel arms races that produced bikes nobody could actually ride, with carbon layup specs that optimized for weight weenie marketing instead of durability, with dropper post integration that ignored serviceability. The industry has a recurring tendency to confuse what sells at Eurobike with what builds long-term category health.
The difference with the power/torque escalation is that the downside isn’t a bad product cycle. It’s potential trail closures, mandatory insurance, reclassification as a motor vehicle — outcomes that would devastate the e-MTB market far more than any economic downturn.
The 750-watt line is not arbitrary, as Hans notes. It is the threshold that, in most US jurisdictions, determines whether your product is legally a bicycle. Cross it in terms of peak power — not nominal, not rated, but actual measurable peak — and you have built something that no longer belongs on a bike trail. Selling it as if it does is a short-term revenue decision with long-term category consequences.
If you’re a brand competing in the e-MTB space, Hans Rey’s letter is a strategic brief as much as a values statement. Here’s what I’d take from it operationally:
Be precise in your marketing language. If you’re running Amazon listings, meta descriptions, ad copy, or press releases for a Class 1 product, say so explicitly. Specify peak power. Don’t let your copywriter round up or use “750W nominal” as a proxy for “actually 1200W peak.” That ambiguity might look harmless today but it contributes to the regulatory fog the industry cannot afford.
Support clear industry standards publicly and loudly. Brands that are already building within Class 1 constraints have a competitive interest in clear definitions. Advocacy isn’t charity — it’s market protection. If your product genuinely complies, make that part of your positioning.
Watch the regulatory signals at the state level. New Jersey and California are bellwethers, not outliers. If you have retail or distribution exposure in those markets, you should already have someone monitoring the legislative environment and preparing scenario plans.
Consider the access dimension in your brand story. Trail access is not a given. It is a relationship between the cycling community, land managers, and policymakers. Brands that explicitly frame their products around that relationship — and demonstrate genuine commitment to staying within the parameters that protect trail access — will be better positioned as scrutiny increases.
Hans ends his letter with a line worth sitting with: “We must stop asking how much power we can get away with — and start asking how much power is too much.”
That’s not a soft statement. That’s a challenge to the business model of a significant portion of the e-bike market. And it’s correct.
The brands that will win in the e-MTB space over the next decade are not necessarily the ones with the most torque. They’re the ones that understood, early, that the value of trail access is worth more than the short-term margin on a higher-wattage motor — and that built their product strategy accordingly.
Hans Rey built his career on access. Earned access, stewardship, and the patience to build something that lasts. That’s as good a business philosophy as it is a riding philosophy.
The industry would do well to listen.
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