So there’s apparently debate in Germany that e-bikes are being “tuned” by some miscreant law-breakers to exceed speed & power constraints built into them by manufacturers and German law. This happens, and can have bad consequences for the bike let alone the rider, but in the sledgehammer-meets-nut way of political regulation:
Ernst Brust […] has recently been pressing for e-bike motor manufacturers to incorporate Bluetooth interfaces, “to make it easier to identify manipulated motors.”
https://ebiketips.road.cc/content/news/bluetooth-could-help-police-spot-e-bikes-hacked-for-higher-speeds-4949
Brust is no lightweight: variously an industry analyst, founder of a human-powered-vehicle test laboratory, managing director of the German bicycle industry association, and now on the board of Rohloff, he’s not a crank (ha!) to be dismissed.
What he’s proposing is that all e-bikes essentially broadcast their power ratings via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) and incidentally thereby providing a digital license-plate for every e-bike… and who knows what other features.
From the freewalled posting that road.cc rewrote:
For Ernst Brust e-bike motor manufacturers should use Bluetooth interfaces to make it easier to identify manipulated motors. He recently participated in the battery technology conference organised by the Criminal Investigation Department in the city of Würzburg, Germany. He told the audience of the conference that a Bluetooth interface would make it very easy for the police to find out whether an e-bike has been tuned or not.
“If the police can read via Bluetooth that the output of an e-bike motor is more than 12 watt hours per kilometer, then the motor is tuned. The normal output is 5 to a maximum of 10 watt hours per kilometer,” said Ernst Brust. “Due to the variety of tuning kits, proving whether a motor has been tempered with or not is very time-consuming; you have to open the engine and require specialist know-how. The interface would greatly simplify everything and contribute to security.”
https://www.bike-eu.com/46353/bluetooth-interface-essential-solution-to-prevent-e-bike-tuning
Speaking to the UK market for the moment, the politicians and police and polity here are already so much anti-cycling that I suspect they will seize upon this idea even though, over here, it is far from being a significant issue for the police to deal with.
Of course we are already in a world where many vehicles are equipped with a massive digital footprint, from onboard-wifi to tiny chips that chirp the individual tyre-pressure to anyone and anything that cares to listen. Many, perhaps most of our vehicles are passively digitally trackable.
But putting a Bluetooth API on your bicycle is a pretty scary Rubicon to cross, for privacy and freedom.
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