Overview

E-bikes and e-scooters have exploded in popularity across California’s HOA communities. And with that explosion, the Legislature has passed a variety of laws, many of which are scattered across California’s Vehicle Code, governing how these devices, and the batteries that power them, are built, certified, sold, and ridden. The serious fire risk posed by their lithium batteries has separately driven storage and charging restrictions at the HOA and local fire-code level. So far, though, none of these laws appears in the Davis-Stirling Act itself. That leaves homeowners caught between two different sources of authority. State and local law control how these devices may be built, sold, stored, and ridden, while your HOA controls the common areas, and in limited circumstances, the streets where you ride them. Understanding where one stops and the other begins is the difference between a rule you have to follow and one you can challenge.

An HOA newsletter out of Clovis, California, prompted this Fact Sheet. It not only illustrated how HOAs appear to still be violating AB 130’s fine limitations, but it also bundled e-bikes and e-scooters together under a single set of safety rules, speed limits, and fines. The latter approach reflects a common mistake because California law treats e-bikes and e-scooters as two distinct legal categories, and that distinction drives almost everything. Vehicle Code 312.5 defines an e-bike and sorts them into three classes based on how the motor engages and how fast it assists, while Vehicle Code 407.5 defines a motorized scooter, with separate operating rules located in Vehicle Code 21235. The two devices carry different speed limits, different age rules, different helmet requirements, and different licensing demands. An HOA newsletter that lumps them together under one set of rules, like the HOA in Clovis is attempting to do, almost certainly gets parts of it wrong because state law doesn’t treat the two the same.

More recent legislation has changed the landscape even further, and homeowners should know what is now in force. As of January 1, 2025, Vehicle Code 312.5 requires new e-bikes and their batteries to meet recognized safety-certification standards and bars the sale of devices designed or modified to exceed the legal limits. As of January 1, 2026, an amendment to the under-18 helmet law added new consequences and a safety-course option for young riders. These are not abstract updates. They affect fire risk, who is liable after a crash, and what your HOA can legitimately require.

Your HOA’s authority over these devices is real but bounded. On streets and common areas your HOA actually owns, it may adopt reasonable operating rules under Civil Code 4350 if its high-level governing documents authorize rulemaking (as the vast majority do). On public streets that run through the HOA, its authority is far more limited and exists only where the city or county has granted it through an ordinance, agreement, or permit program, and even then it cannot enforce against the general public.

This Fact Sheet explains the full legal framework for e-bikes and e-scooters in California, the three e-bike classes and their speed, age, and helmet rules, the separate rules that govern e-scooters, the new certification and anti-modification laws, the serious fire risks that drive many HOA charging restrictions, and where your HOA’s authority to regulate or ban these devices begins and ends. It also returns to that Clovis newsletter as a real-world example of an HOA that appears to have overstepped, including its attempt to impose fines that run past the limits set by AB 130.

Key Points

E-bikes and e-scooters sit at the intersection of two legal systems that rarely speak to each other. California’s Vehicle Code dictates how these devices may be built, sold, and ridden, while your HOA’s authority comes from the Davis-Stirling Act and its governing documents. In the context of HOA-homeowner conflicts involving e-bikes and e-scooters, the central conflict rests with whether the rule in question is reasonable and consistent with the HOA’s governing documents. The points below lay out the full legal framework, the three e-bike classes, the separate e-scooter rules, the new 2025 and 2026 laws, the fire-risk restrictions HOAs are starting to adopt, and the precise limits on your HOA’s power to regulate or ban these devices. Once you can separate what state law requires from what your HOA may add, you can tell quickly whether your HOA’s e-bike and e-scooter rules are enforceable or not.

• California sorts e-bikes into three classes, and the class determines almost every rule that applies. Vehicle Code 312.5 defines an e-bike as a bicycle with fully operable pedals and a motor no greater than 750 watts, then divides them into three classes by how the motor engages. A Class 1 e-bike assists only while you pedal and stops assisting at 20 mph. A Class 2 e-bike adds a throttle that can propel the bike without pedaling but also stops at 20 mph. A Class 3 e-bike assists only while pedaling, reaches up to 28 mph, must carry a speedometer, and cannot be operated by anyone under 16. Knowing your bike’s class is the starting point for every other rule because speed, age, helmet, and trail-access requirements all flow from it. Your HOA can adopt a rule requiring residents to comply with these state and local requirements and enforce it through its governing documents, so an HOA could, for example, prohibit a 14-year-old from operating a Class 3 e-bike on its property and treat a violation as an enforceable rule violation rather than leaving it to law enforcement.
  • Your HOA can set its own stricter speed limits on the private streets and common areas it owns. The 20 mph and 28 mph figures in Vehicle Code 312.5 describe where a motor must stop assisting, not a ceiling an HOA has to accept on its own property. On private streets and common areas it owns, your HOA may adopt a lower limit, such as 15 mph, as a reasonable operating rule under Civil Code 4350, the same way it sets other common-area safety rules.
  • A modified e-bike, or a device built to be modified, can lose e-bike status entirely, and selling speed-tampering tools is now illegal. Vehicle Code 312.5 excludes from the definition of an e-bike any vehicle built to be modifiable past 20 mph on motor power alone or beyond 750 watts, any vehicle actually modified to exceed those limits, and any vehicle with its operable pedals removed. A bike that falls outside the e-bike definition is no longer treated as a bicycle and can be reclassified as a moped or motorcycle, which carries the licensing, registration, and insurance obligations that come with a motor vehicle. Reinforcing this, as of January 1, 2026, California prohibits selling products or apps designed to modify an e-bike’s speed beyond its class limits, which closes the loophole that let riders quietly turn a compliant e-bike into an unlawful one.
  • Some powerful “e-bikes” were never e-bikes at all, and the legal exposure for parents can be devastating. Devices like a Surron Ultra Bee, which can reach speeds up to 60 mph, are off-road e-motorcycles, not e-bikes. California law, therefore, classifies them as motor-driven cycles or motorcycles that require riders to be at least 16, licensed, registered, and insured. The danger is that a parent who doesn’t understand the difference can face catastrophic liability. In a pending 2026 Orange County case, prosecutors are charging the mother of a 14-year-old boy with child endangerment and accessory after the fact after her son, who was performing wheelies on a Surron Ultra Bee e-motorcycle, allegedly struck and critically injured an 81-year-old pedestrian. [The pedestrian later died as a result of his injuries.] While the district attorney’s office has alleged that there was no confusion or ignorance on the part of this boy’s mother, who had been repeatedly warned by law enforcement regarding the fact that her son was not legally allowed to ride the Surron Ultra Bee in question (including in a nearly half-hour video-recorded interaction with law enforcement during which time they made it clear to the mother that her son could not legally ride the e-motorcycle), other parents in Orange County have been prosecuted in situations where the degree of prior knowledge was less. [The lesson for honest, well-meaning parents is to confirm what their child is actually riding because a device that looks like a beefed-up e-bike may legally be a motorcycle, and the distinction can carry criminal consequences.]
• As of 2025, every new e-bike and its lithium battery must meet a recognized safety certification. Vehicle Code 312.5, as amended by SB 1271 effective January 1, 2025, ties directly to the fire-risk problem driving HOA concern. The law requires new e-bikes and their batteries to meet established safety-certification standards as a condition of sale, and it bars selling, advertising, or labeling as an e-bike any vehicle designed or modified to exceed the legal limits. For a homeowner, the practical takeaway is to buy a certified e-bike and battery because an uncertified or modified battery is both a legal problem and the single biggest contributor to the lithium-battery fires that have prompted many HOAs in California to pass rules about e-bike and e-scooter storage.
• The under-18 helmet rule changed in 2026, and the consequences now reach parents. Vehicle Code 21212, as amended effective January 1, 2026, requires anyone under 18 to wear a helmet on any bicycle or e-bike, and it reshaped what happens on a violation. A first offense is now dismissed, a parent or legal guardian is jointly liable with the minor for any fine, and a citation can be cured by completing a bicycle or specialized electric bicycle safety course. Under Vehicle Code 21213, every Class 3 rider must wear a helmet regardless of age, and no one under 16 may operate a Class 3 e-bike at all. Adults on Class 1 and Class 2 e-bikes face no statewide helmet mandate, though an HOA may be able to adopt its own helmet rule on its property if the rule is reasonable and authorized by its governing documents, which is a question of Civil Code 4350 reasonableness rather than a settled point.
• E-scooters are a separate legal category with their own, stricter rules. Vehicle Code 407.5 defines a motorized scooter as a two-wheeled device with handlebars and an electric motor, distinct from an e-bike, a motorcycle, or a moped. Its operating rules live in Vehicle Code 21235. A motorized scooter may not be ridden faster than 15 mph anywhere, on any road or bikeway, regardless of the posted limit, and a rider needs a valid driver’s license or instruction permit. The scooter must also have a working brake, and it can’t be parked on its side or blocking a pedestrian path. [Notably, these statewide sidewalk and speed rules apply to scooters specifically, while the e-bike statutes leave sidewalk riding to local ordinance rather than fixing it by state law.]
• Your HOA can regulate e-bikes and e-scooters on streets and common areas it actually owns. When a street, path, or parking area is HOA-owned common area, your HOA may adopt reasonable operating rules under Civil Code 4350, provided the CC&Rs, bylaws, or articles authorize rulemaking and the rule meets the statute’s reasonableness standard. On property the HOA owns, a sensible speed limit on a shared path, a no-riding zone in certain areas (such as sidewalks or near a clubhouse entrance), or a restriction on where batteries may be charged generally falls within that authority. The limit is reasonableness, so a rule that effectively bans a lawful device outright, or sets an arbitrary standard untethered to any valid purpose remains vulnerable to challenge even on HOA-owned property. [You can read about your HOA’s rulemaking authority in my Fact Sheet, “HOA Rules in California: Legal Authority and Rulemaking Limits.”  Or if you prefer, you can watch an episode of my HOA HELL podcast where Sam and I covered the same topic]:

• On public streets running through your community, your HOA’s authority is sharply limited. Not every street inside an HOA is HOA property. When a city or county owns the street, it remains public property even though it runs through the development, and the HOA cannot regulate it as if it were common area simply because of where it sits. Municipal ordinances govern public streets, and local law enforcement enforces them, so an HOA generally cannot use its governing documents to control how e-bikes and e-scooters are ridden on a public street.
  • While your HOA can’t enforce e-bike or e-scooter rules against the general public, it can regulate residents on a public street if it has municipal authorization. An HOA’s power over a public street exists only if the city or county has granted it, through an ordinance, agreement, or permit program, and even then the HOA cannot enforce its rules against members of the public using that street. [If you’d like to read more about the public-versus-private street distinction, check out my Fact Sheet “Can a California HOA Tow Your Car or Ban Street Parking?”]
• Lithium-battery fires are a serious and growing risk, and more and more HOAs are moving to restrict charging and storage. E-bike and e-scooter batteries have been known to fail catastrophically, igniting fast-spreading, hard-to-extinguish fires, and that danger is sharpest in condominium and townhome buildings where units share walls and exits. In response, a growing number of HOAs have begun prohibiting battery charging inside units or in shared spaces such as hallways, laundry rooms, and clubhouses. These restrictions generally rest on the HOA’s authority over its common areas and on health-and-safety grounds. The most protective step you can take is to buy a certified e-bike and battery and follow the manufacturer’s charging instructions because an uncertified or damaged battery is the core of the risk the HOA is reacting to.
• Your HOA can fine you for e-bike and e-scooter violations, but only within AB 130’s limits. An HOA may impose monetary penalties for violations of its lawful rules, but AB 130 capped most HOA fines at $100 per violation. Under Civil Code 5850, an HOA can only exceed that $100 fine cap in the case of a violation that may cause an adverse health or safety impact, and only after it makes a written finding specifying that impact in an open meeting. E-bike and e-scooter safety can present a genuine health-and-safety issue, so the higher fine is potentially available, but only if the HOA first satisfies Civil Code 5850’s prerequisites rather than simply attaching a safety label to the fine.
  • The Clovis newsletter that prompted this Fact Sheet shows how an HOA can run past those limits by skipping AB 130’s prerequisites. The HOA in Clovis announced a flat $200 per-occurrence “safety fine” for e-bike and e-scooter violations, and in the absence of the open meeting finding discussed above, that HOA appears to have exceeded both its own published health-and-safety fine schedule and the $100 fine cap contained in Civil Code 5850. In short, even where a real safety concern exists, an HOA like the one in Clovis, can’t skip those steps and jump straight to a higher fine. [If you’d like to learn about AB 130’s health and safety fine cap exception, read my  Fact Sheet “What Qualifies as a Health and Safety Violation Under California’s $100 HOA Fine Cap?”]
• Here’s how to tell whether your HOA’s e-bike or e-scooter rule is actually enforceable. Start by identifying your device precisely, its class if it’s an e-bike, or its status as a motorized scooter because that classification determines what state law requires of you. Then test the HOA’s rule against the two questions that actually decide enforceability, whether the governing documents authorize the HOA to make the rule, and whether the rule is reasonable under Civil Code 4350. A reasonable, authorized rule is generally enforceable even if it’s stricter than the state’s scheme, while a rule that effectively bans a lawful device or imposes an arbitrary requirement is far weaker. Check whether the street or area in question is HOA-owned or public because the HOA’s authority is strongest on property it owns and limited on public streets, and if your HOA claims authority over a public street, ask it to identify the municipal ordinance, agreement, or permit program that grants it. Finally, if the HOA has fined you above $100, confirm whether it made the written health-and-safety finding Civil Code 5850 requires because a higher fine without that finding is unenforceable.
• If you have questions about your HOA’s e-bike or e-scooter rules, call the HOA attorneys at MBK Chapman. These rules are new, and the underlying state laws will probably continue to evolve over the next several years as e-bikes and e-scooters become more and more popular. Because the line between a reasonable HOA rule and an overreaching one isn’t always obvious, if you’re trying to understand whether a rule or fine is enforceable, or more specifically, whether your HOA’s e-bike and e-scooter rules are enforceable, call us. The HOA attorneys at MBK Chapman are experts at helping homeowners like you determine what the Vehicle Code requires, what the Davis-Stirling Act allows, and where the two interact.

E-bikes and e-scooters are governed first by the Vehicle Code, which sets the classes, speeds, ages, helmet rules, and certification standards that define these devices, and second by your HOA, whose authority reaches the common areas it owns and narrows on the public streets it doesn’t. Within its own property, your HOA can set reasonable, authorized rules, including stricter speed limits and battery-charging restrictions, and it can fine violations within the limits Civil Code 5850 and AB 130 impose. The enforceability of any given rule turns on reasonableness and proper authority, so the practical move is to identify your device, locate the rule’s source of authority, and ask whether it’s reasonable. When the answer isn’t clear, that’s the moment to get competent legal advice rather than guess.

Late Addition: Real-World Q&A From a Podcast Listener

The following represents a real-world Q&A between myself and a listener of my podcast, HOA HELL. She raised some good points, but also some arguments that I think many people share, and so I thought I would add the exchange to this Fact Sheet:

Question Posed

So if I could play devil’s advocate for a moment, this e-bike topic is a huge hot button in our community right now, but a little bit about our community is we are an older, rural community, no sidewalks, we have a gold course so a lot of golf cart traffic (not always street licensed) on our “Private Roads” streets.. Now we have a posted, community wide 25 mph speed limit that common sense dictates it doesn’t matter what you are driving or riding you don’t go over 25 mph, but we have definitely had parents in the community that have let their kids drive around the community with golf carts, and with other kids riding in the golf carts with them and unfortunately bad things have happened and people have gotten hurt, including some kids having been severely hurt but they didn’t come out with new rules for golf carts, you just have people that aren’t following the rules, so in my time growing up there was a huge skateboard culture, we always rode our bikes around and a lot of times would get in trouble for being reckless with the skateboard riding and the bike riding in commercial areas where people were walking and doing their business, people would get hurt, kids would get hurt so I guess my biggest question is why not just adding e-bike to your already existing rules and I agree with what you said if you want to put that age limit on top of it just to follow state law, but I don’t understand why we have to create a whole new set of rules because I guess I’m not getting how it’s any different if you’ve got reckless kids out riding their dirt bikes on our roads, or side by sides on our roads or in the case of our community golf carts on our roads by kids that shouldn’t maybe be on them but they are so I guess I’m just missing the situation of singling out e-bikes when if your kids are going to be reckless on something like the other items I’ve mentioned, there doesn’t seem to be the sky is falling attitude?? Because some parents were pretty hot in our community because the board and security were kind of suggesting that they wanted them banned and then when they got the backlash that they did now it’s kind of like trying to come to this compromise but I feel like in the case of our community they’ve just made it so much more complicated than it really needed to be… I mean one person even said well, and this was our head of security, I don’t want to have to knock on your door and tell you that somebody was backing out of their driveway and hit your kid on their e-bike, we’ll okay what’s the difference of somebody’s backing out of their driveway and hit the kid on their bicycle or hits a kid on their skateboard or hits a kid walking down the road?? I mean again having reasonable additions to the rules that already exist for e-bikes is understandable but the air in our community has been a little bit more like the board and security trying to govern people’s children and I guess I’m just a firm believer that that is the parents job and responsibility to govern their children and they’re the ones that ultimately need to be liable but I’d rather see kids out having fun and writing their skateboards and their bikes and their e-bikes if it’s so be then sitting in the house with the phone in front of their face…. And just for the record because I know I’ve brought this up to you before, I found out that our board held what they called an “executive session” with an agenda that had all of the items listed that are legally able to be covered under an executive session but the entire discussion that they had was only about how they wanted to handle the e-bike situation and then literally I think it was 3 days later out of town hall about the e-bike situation, so I’m not sure why they felt the need to have a separate executive session with an agenda that said absolutely nothing about them discussing e-bikes

My Response

I get what you’re saying, and I appreciate your position. But, I strongly disagree with your premise.

To begin with, you’re raising consistency as your central point, and your golf cart example has a kernel of truth. If the community had serious injuries from kids operating golf carts, including children getting hurt, and the board didn’t respond with golf-cart-specific rules, then treating e-bikes as a sudden crisis can look inconsistent on its face.

Even so, that’s where the comparison ends, as the numbers aren’t even in the same universe. The volume of golf carts moving through a typical HOA community doesn’t come close to the volume of e-bikes and e-scooters. Golf carts are expensive, they’re mostly owned and driven by adults, and there are a limited number of them on any given street at any given time. E-bikes and e-scooters, however, are cheap, they’re everywhere, and they’ve landed disproportionately in the hands of kids and teenagers. So even if a single golf cart and a single e-bike carried identical risk, which they don’t, the sheer numbers of e-bikes/e-scooters across California HOAs is significantly larger. A risk that shows up occasionally is a different management problem than a risk that’s on every street every afternoon, and the HOA board noticing that difference isn’t inconsistency, it’s a logical response to scale.

And the per-incident risk isn’t identical either, which is the heart of your broader argument, which I believe was that e-bikes aren’t meaningfully different from the skateboards, bikes, golf carts, and dirt bikes already on the roads. The machines are VERY DIFFERENT. A skateboard or a pedal bike is limited by the rider’s own body and tires out. Younger kids can’t generate as much speed as older kids, and all are limited by the fact that exertion is short-lived. Those factors don’t enter the picture in the case of e-bikes or e-scooters. A class 2 e-bike has a throttle and does 20 mph with no effort, a class 3 assists up to 28. Neither gets tired, and neither differentiates between a 12 year-old or 19-year-old rider. [And in any case, the law recognizes those differences, which is why the law already treats them as their own category, so an HOA that mirrors that distinction isn’t singling e-bikes out arbitrarily. It’s tracking a line the Legislature already drew.]

That speed difference also changes the odds of the exact accident head of security was worried about. Think about the driver backing out of a driveway. They glance, see the road is clear, and start backing. A kid on a skateboard or a pedal bike covers very little ground in those couple of seconds compared to a kid riding an e-bike or e-scooter. In the former case, a driver has more time to react, and any collision will necessarily involve less force based on the kid’s lower speed. On the other hand, a kid on an e-bike doing 20 or 28 mph can travel the length of several houses in that same time window, arriving in the danger zone after the driver has already committed to backing out and stopped looking. The faster the thing coming toward you, the less time anyone, the driver and the rider both, has to see, process, and react. So this isn’t the same collision risk as a bicycle or skateboard at all. The higher speed both makes the crash more likely and makes it worse when it happens.

On your point that governing kids’ behavior is the parents’ job, I agree, but only as far as it goes, but it doesn’t get the board off the hook. An HOA has its own independent duty to keep its common area roads reasonably safe, and it can face liability if it knows about a dangerous condition and does nothing. So even if parents bear the first responsibility, a board watching modified e-bikes hit high speeds on its private roads (or sidewalks) can’t simply defer to parents and walk away. Adopting reasonable, enforceable e-bike rules is part of how the HOA meets its own obligations. That’s not the board trying to raise your children, it’s the board managing its own legal exposure.

To be clear, your preferred fix, adding e-bikes to the existing speed and reckless-operation rules and layering in the state age limit, is a perfectly legitimate way to handle this. The flaw is just in the reasoning that e-bikes are qualitatively similar to skateboards. That’s where we disagree most dramatically.

On the executive session, your concern is well founded. The law limits closed sessions to the six issues that I’ve written about and broadcast extensively, and a general e-bike policy discussion isn’t any of those. An agenda listing only the permissible categories while the entire discussion was about e-bikes, followed by a public town hall on the same subject a few days later, suggests a closed session used for something that belonged in open session. If any decision or direction came out of that meeting, that’s a real Open Meeting Act problem worth raising with the board in writing.

FAQs

About Michael Kushner

Michael Kushner is a California attorney with over 30 years of experience representing homeowners in disputes with their HOAs. He is widely regarded as California’s leading homeowner-side HOA attorney, and has built one of the state’s most prominent law practices dedicated to holding HOAs accountable under the Davis-Stirling Act and California law.

In addition to his law firm’s work, Michael is a recognized lecturer, author, and the host of the hit HOA HELL podcast, where he provides homeowners living in HOA-governed communities with clear, practical strategies for dealing with bad HOAs. He’s also the author of the best-selling book, HOA HELL | California Homeowners’ Definitive Guide to Beating Bad HOAs, which has become a go-to resource for both homeowners seeking real-world solutions to their HOA disputes, as well as those good HOA board members who are interested in doing a good job.

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