EN 15194 is the European standard for an electrically power assisted cycle. If you hire e-bikes, it is the reason a bike is allowed on the road as a bicycle, or is not. I am not your lawyer, and this is not the standard itself. The standard is a paid document. What a shop can check without buying it is the label on the bike, and the declaration of conformity that came with it. Checked against the published scope of EN 15194:2017+A1:2023 on 22 September 2026. If a newer version is on the bike, believe the label and your supplier, not this page. What the standard is describing A bike with pedals. A motor with a maximum continuous rated power of 250 watts, which is 0.25 kW. The assist fades and then cuts out as the bike reaches 25 km/h, or sooner if the rider stops pedalling. The electrical system it covers goes up to 48 volts DC. That is a pedelec. People say e-bike for the same machine. The word on the box is less useful than the numbers. The standard is written for private use and for commercial use. It says it does not cover bikes hired from an unattended station, the kind where nobody hands the bike over. A shop with a person at the counter is a different thing from a dock on a street corner. Do not read that exception as "hire shops are outside the rules." Read it as "the standard was not written for unattended docks." Your local road rules still apply to every bike you send out. Those rules are the other posts: Great Britain, Queensland, California, Germany, the Netherlands. What you actually look at A compliance label. Continuous rated power. The speed where assist cuts off. A declaration of conformity from the maker or the importer. Instructions the guest can read, including the battery and the charger, not a verbal tour of the buttons that dies when your Saturday staff changes. If the motor can do more than 250 watts and someone has limited it in an app, a lot of places still treat that as the bigger motor. Queensland says this in plain words: a software lock does not make it a 250 watt bike. The same idea shows up in the standard as an anti-tampering requirement. If a guest, or a previous owner, unlocked an "off road" mode that keeps assisting past 25 km/h, you do not have the bike you think you have. Take it off the hire fleet until the supplier tells you otherwise, in writing. What this page will not do It will not tell you a bike is legal in your town. Europe, Britain, Australia and the US do not share one road law. A bike that is a bicycle in Berlin can be a class 2 or a class 3 in California, or illegal on a Queensland path, because the watt limit and the throttle rules are different. Start with the sticker. Then read the page for the place you hire in. The day you send them on is a separate job from the sticker. What goes on a tour is that job. The sticker decides whether the bike should leave the shop at all.