Comments Off on LEVA-EU at Eurobike 2026: Visit Our Booth, Book a Free Regulatory Check-up and Join Our Info-Meeting
Eurobike remains the only truly international trade show in Europe that brings our entire sector together. LEVA-EU has pledged its full support to the show, and as always we will be present at the 2026 edition — with a booth, free one-to-one regulatory check-ups, and our traditional Info-Meeting. Here is everything you need to know, in one place.
Find us at our booth F50 in Hall 12
Our stand is a quiet meeting place for companies that want to learn more about what LEVA-EU can do for them. We help companies understand and correctly apply European technical regulations — such as the Machinery Regulation and the Battery Regulation — and clarify how standards like EN 15194 and the EN 17860 series relate to legislation.
LEVA-EU members are, of course, most welcome too. Anyone without their own stand can use ours as a meeting point for appointments, or simply drop by with specific questions on regulations and standards.
New this year: a free, 15-minute Regulatory & Compliance Check-up with LEVA-EU’s experts. In the LEV sector, classification is the foundation — a single misjudgement about which legal category your vehicle belongs to can send you down the wrong type-approval route, the wrong standards and the wrong obligations, and that is rarely cheap to fix once it surfaces.
In 15 focused minutes you will get straight answers to the questions that decide everything downstream:
Which legal category does your vehicle actually fall into?
What legislation applies as a result?
Which standards come into play?
Working with components rather than complete vehicles? We will do the same assessment for your components. No cost, no paperwork, no obligation — just a clear, expert snapshot of where you stand, and where potential gaps may be hiding.
The check-up is a genuinely useful starting point. The complete picture — in-depth guidance tailored to your products, ongoing regulatory monitoring, early warning on what is coming, and a partner who advocates for you in Brussels — is what LEVA-EU membership delivers.
LEVA-EU Info-Meeting
On Thursday at lunchtime, our traditional LEVA-EU Info-Meeting takes place. In this exclusive session we will explain:
The implementation of the Battery Regulation, with a special focus on the Battery Passport.
The possible development of a new European legal framework for all light electric vehicles, including electric bikes, electric cargo bikes, speed pedelecs, e-scooters and more.
The new Machinery Regulation, which applies from 20 January 2027 and will have a major effect on EN 15194 for EPACs.
Date: Thursday 25 June 2026 Time: 12:00 to 14:00 Location: Meeting Room Symmetrie 2, Hall 8.1
This is a lunch meeting, with sandwiches and hot and cold beverages provided.
LEVA-EU members participate free of charge but are asked to register. Non-members pay admission:
Media: members of the press are welcome to participate for free. Contact info@leva-eu.com with your press credentials.
LEVA-EU is the voice of the LEV sector — and increasingly, its trusted regulatory partner. Come find out what that means for your business. We look forward to welcoming you in Hall 12.
Comments Off on ZIV Proposal Poses Serious Risk to the Future of EPACs and Cargo Bikes in Europe
Last week, LEVA-EU took part in the International Cargo Bike Festival (ICBF) in Utrecht. We hosted a well-attended stand and an open information meeting, dedicated to the Battery Regulation and the ZIV position on EPACs. Our conversations in Utrecht clearly showed that many LEV companies have either not thoroughly read the ZIV position or do not fully understand the consequences for their vehicles and their businesses. Therefore, we will once again explain the possible implications of the ZIV position here. We will also keep our open letter calling on ZIV to withdraw its position online for one more week.
The German Bicycle Industry Association, ZIV, claims that the legal status of the Electrically Power Assisted Cycle (EPAC) is under threat and that the legal definition of EPAC therefore needs clarification. However, ZIV does not explain how or by whom the EPAC status is supposedly being threatened. The narrative around this EPAC status is also particularly confusing. ZIV asserts that the EPAC has the legal status of a bicycle, which is simply incorrect. Legally, the EPAC is not treated in the same way as a conventional bicycle. The technical requirements that ZIV seeks to change in order to “protect” the EPAC status are entirely different from those that apply to bicycles without motors.
What is true is that the 27 Member States have granted EPACs the same rules of use as conventional bicycles. However, EPACs are not unique in this regard. In some Member States, electric scooters, powered cycles (L1e-A) and speed pedelecs also enjoy similar usage conditions. Furthermore, no Member State is currently questioning these conditions for EPACs.
Yet according to ZIV, there is such danger that they propose to restrict the EPAC to a certain category of two-wheeled electric bicycles. This would mean pushing a large part of current EPAC vehicles out of this category and instead placing them under Regulation 168/2013 and its type-approval framework.
Amending Article 2.2(h)
In essence, ZIV is saying—though not explicitly—that their proposal would only be possible by amending Article 2.2(h) of Regulation 168/2013. That article currently excludes from type-approval
“Pedal cycles with pedal assistance equipped with an auxiliary electric motor having a maximum continuous rated power of 250 W, where the motor output is cut off when the cyclist stops pedalling and is otherwise progressively reduced and finally cut off before the vehicle speed reaches 25 km/h.”
To implement the ZIV proposal in legislation, this article would need to be changed to:
“Pedal cycles with pedal assistance with a maximum weight of 250 kg for single-track cycles or 300 kg for multi-track cycles which are equipped with an auxiliary electric motor having a maximum continuous rated power of less than or equal to 250 W, a maximum assistance power of 750 W at the drive wheel, a support ratio of 1:4, and a support ratio of 1:6 possible up to a maximum of 15 km/h, where the output of the motor is cut off when the cyclist stops pedalling and is otherwise progressively reduced and finally cut off before the vehicle speed reaches 25 km/h.”
Destructive Proposal
As a result, a large number of EPACs would be removed from the current Machinery Directive framework—combined with standards such as EN 15194, EN 17404 and the EN 17860 series—and instead be pushed into the L1, L2, or L6 categories. This also means that the existing compliance procedure—where self-certification is possible, optionally combined with testing by a test laboratory of choice—would be replaced by a mandatory type-approval system. Under this system, you must build a vehicle type in accordance with 1,032 pages of requirements and tests. That type must then be approved by an accredited technical service. There are only a handful of such services in the EU capable of testing LEVs to L-category legal requirements. Worse still, these legal requirements are completely unsuited to the technical characteristics of LEVs.
If vehicles are pushed into the L-category, they will automatically lose their existing usage rights in Member States. Many Member States do not even know how to deal with L1e-A vehicles, of which there are virtually none on the road today. In L1e-B, L2 or L6, these vehicles are almost automatically classified as mopeds.
Under the ZIV proposal, the following vehicles, for example, would be forced into the L-category:
EPACs with two wheels and an assistance factor > 4, even if assistance is limited to 25 km/h, maximum continuous rated power to 250W, and peak power to < 750W
EPACs with two wheels and peak power > 750W, even if assistance is limited to 25 km/h, maximum continuous rated power to 250W, and assistance factor to < 4
EPACs with two wheels weighing over 250 kg, even if assistance is limited to 25 km/h, maximum continuous rated power to 250W, peak power to < 750W and assistance factor to < 4
EPACs with three or four wheels weighing over 300 kg, even if assistance is limited to 25 km/h, maximum continuous rated power to 250W, peak power to < 750W and assistance factor to < 4
It appears that ZIV uses “weight” to refer to total permitted weight, including the vehicle, rider, passenger(s), and cargo.
The above examples clearly show that the ZIV proposal—supposedly intended to protect the EPAC—would in reality devastate a large portion of the EPAC market.
Violation of Technological Neutrality Principle
Regulation 168/2013 already violates the legal principle of technological neutrality because it places vehicles with exactly the same kinetic energy into two completely different legal frameworks. An EPAC weighing 25 kg, with assistance up to 25 km/h and 250W, produces exactly the same kinetic energy as one with 300W. Yet the first is excluded from Regulation 168/2013 and subject to the Machinery Directive (under which millions of EPACs have successfully been placed on the market), while the second falls under L1e-A (under which almost no EPACs have entered the market).
ZIV likes to portray LEVA-EU as merely trying to endlessly raise power limits. Coincidentally or not, LEVA-EU has recently been attacked twice by journalists based on this misconception. ZIV knows full well that an EPAC with a maximum continuous power of 500W limited to 25 km/h cannot travel a nanosecond faster than one with 250W. They also know that for instance heavy cargo bikes need higher peak power to operate safely, especially in hilly environments.
With the ZIV proposal, many EPACs would be removed from the Machinery Directive and instead fall under Regulation 168/2013, destroying the existing market for these vehicles. Nearly all vehicles seen in Utrecht would be affected. A representative of a multinational e-commerce and logistics company asked at ICBF how cities would react if all electric cargo bikes currently used for urban logistics had to be replaced by vans again in the short term.
Destructive proposal
With this disastrous proposal, ZIV claims to be safeguarding active mobility. The idea of manipulating technical legislation to supposedly promote certain forms of mobility while killing others is utterly absurd. Active mobility is encouraged through financial or fiscal incentives, not by rewriting technical legislation to exclude certain vehicles from the market. The claim that “the majority of global bicycle manufacturers, together with 13 drive system manufacturers” support this proposal is incomprehensible—unless, of course, these manufacturers do not fully understand its consequences.
We therefore once again strongly urge you to carefully read the ZIV proposal and its potentially disastrous consequences for the LEV sector. Part of the LEVA-EU Info Meeting at ICBF was dedicated to this topic. You can find the relevant part of the presentation here: https://tinyurl.com/3y53hbhv
If you have any further questions, we are ready to answer them. If you, like us, believe that this proposal must be urgently withdrawn, and you have not yet signed the open letter, you can still do so here: https://leva-eu.com/sign-leva-eu-open-letter-stop-ziv-proposal/. Please scroll down to the bottom of the webpage. The letter will be definitively closed on Friday evening, 24 October.