Cargo e-bikes carrying 100s of kilos? There's a new safety standard for that!

Cargo e-bikes carrying 100s of kilos? There is a new security commonplace for that!

Cargo e-bikes are rapidly changing into convenient solutions for moving goods around cities, however the heavily-loaded bikes haven’t beforehand been the topic of particular security requirements. Now a brand new German commonplace has been established and Tern’s widespread GSD and HSD cargo e-bikes are the primary to fulfill and exceed the usual.

Regardless of their reputation in Europe and far of the world, cargo bikes haven’t beforehand been included in worldwide security requirements designed for different types of bikes, akin to these for metropolis driving, trekking, mountain, and racing bikes.

In addition they aren’t included within the EN 15194 commonplace for electrical bicycles.

However now a brand new security commonplace is searching for to right that.

The German commonplace comes with a brilliant simple to recollect title of “DIN 79010:2020-02 Cycles – Transportation bikes and cargo bikes” and hopes to be adopted extra broadly throughout Europe after first taking impact earlier this 12 months in Germany.

The usual is designed for cargo bicycles and covers each electrical and non-electric cargo bikes at varied weight rankings.

The assessments within the German commonplace are designed to push bikes previous their load rankings in plenty of methods to make sure that they’ll face up to peak hundreds past their rated maximums.

The usual options 10 distinctive body stress assessments. The identical body have to be used for every consecutive check – no body swaps allowed. Which means the identical body should go all 10 assessments, and ensures that any injury brought on by one check would carry over into the remaining assessments.

Every of the person 10 assessments is carried out with hundreds a lot larger than the producer’s rated most load. The precise quantity of load scales proportionally to the producer’s declare.

For instance, throughout the Tern GSD’s testing, a number of the assessments on body and fork used hundreds that had been greater than 300% larger than specified within the European EN 14764 commonplace for metropolis/trekking bikes.

Each the Tern GSD and HSD handed the brand new German commonplace check as much as their claimed most a great deal of 200 kg (440 lb) for the GSD and 170 kg (374 lb) for the HSD, which suggests they meet and exceed the German cargo bike commonplace.

Because the Director of EFBE Prüftechnik and one of many important authors of the brand new commonplace, Marcus Schröder, defined in a press release supplied to Electrek:

“We see quite a lot of cargo bikes on the market that clearly wouldn’t go extra intensive testing, and that’s fairly worrying. Having well-defined testing requirements will not be solely vital to make sure riders have the peace of thoughts they want when carrying their children on the bike, but in addition to push producers to comply with what ought to be primary security necessities. We’re glad to see corporations like Tern utilizing lab-testing to determine weaknesses of their designs.”

Tern’s Workforce Captain Josh Hon (Seen beneath giving me a experience round on his Tern GSD at Interbike Reno 2018) additional expanded on the significance of distinctive testing for heavily-loaded cargo bikes:

“Bicycle design is altering rapidly and whenever you add passengers and cargo and electrical motors, the forces at play escalate rapidly. It’s actually vital that security and testing requirements evolve to cowl these new sorts of bicycles. In fairly a number of instances, there hasn’t been a related testing commonplace for a part we’ve needed to check and we’re actually pleased to have EFBE as a accomplice to assist us design the testing requirements to make sure security for our clients.”

Each the Tern GSD and HSD are designed for hauling giant hundreds, regardless of their quite compact look.

We’ve examined each, however spent further time on the more affordably priced HSD at Eurobike last year. The HSD begins simply north of US$3,000, whereas the upper spec’d GSD, which additionally contains a heavier load ranking, will run you round a thousand bucks further.

Try our full review of the HSD, and see our first experience video of the bike beneath.