In Great Britain an e-bike you can treat as a bicycle is called an EAPC, an electrically assisted pedal cycle. The sheet is on GOV.UK, from the Department for Transport and the DVSA. I read it on 22 September 2026. If they have edited it since, their page wins. I am not your lawyer. The bike Pedals that can actually propel it. A motor with a maximum continuous rated power of 250 watts or less. Electrical assistance that cuts off at 15.5 mph, which is 25 km/h. If it meets that, it does not need to be registered, taxed or insured as a motor vehicle, and the rider does not need a driving licence. They do need to be 14 or over. It still needs proper brakes, and the labelling the rules ask for: power, and the speed where the motor stops helping. The construction standard they point retailers at is BS EN 15194. That is the same family of sticker as EN 15194. Your job at the counter is the label, the declaration of conformity, and instructions the guest can take with them. Verbal only is a bad idea. You will not remember what you said, and the guest who borrowed it for a friend never heard you. The bikes that are not bicycles GOV.UK is direct about this. A mode that lets the motor keep pushing past 15.5 mph, often sold as off-road mode, means they do not regard it as an EAPC. It is a motor vehicle. Registration, insurance, tax, a licence, and a motorcycle helmet. A throttle, the twist-and-go, is the other trap. Assistance from the throttle without pedalling is only allowed at walking pace, about 3.7 mph, unless the bike is an older exception or it has the right type approval. There was a consultation about allowing 500 watts and a throttle all the way to 15.5 mph. The Department for Transport did not take those changes forward. As of that outcome, the 250 watt and 15.5 mph rules are still the rules. Check the GOV.UK page before you buy a fleet on the back of a forum post. Forums go faster than the law, and they are often wrong. Northern Ireland is not this sheet. Great Britain is England, Scotland and Wales. If you hire in Belfast, read the Northern Ireland rules separately. I have not covered them here. What you tell the guest Where your local council allows the bike, that a helmet is a good idea even when it is not the motorcycle kind, and that the assist will stop at 15.5 mph so they are not surprised on a hill. Put the bits that are about your hire, the battery, the area, the time it is due back, in your own terms. The fields are listed. The sentences are yours, or your solicitor's. A de-restricted bike does not go out as a hire bicycle. Not on a busy Saturday, and not because the guest asked for "the fast one."