Good morning,
Without there being any cases to cite where this issue has been examined, I would assume that the presence of the battery on your person would be regarded as the same as its presence on the bike with the motor switched off.
My reason being; Imagine someone riding an e-motorbike under EAPC exemptions on a public road who is pulled over, he then removes the battery and puts it in his rucksack and says "This is not an e-motorbike as there is no battery."
The timing of this may be difficult, but if the police car/bike pulls up in front of the ebike not impossible.
If "the battery is in my rucksack" was an allowable defence then in order to prove that an offence had been commited then proof that the battery was in place would also be needed. It seems quite reasonable to see that this could not be proven without acceptable video footage.
Bye
Ian
And good morning to you too, Sir.
Buy yourself a copy of Blackstones, and read up on the definitions of
mechanically propelled vehicle and
motor vehicle. This is all covered by primary legislation, thus there is no requirement for case law to define the matter.
These illegal ebikes are both,
motor vehicle and
mechanically propelled vehicle but most pertinently they are
motor vehicles, for which the vehicle is supposed to be registered and the rider properly licensed, insured, etc. The fact of a rider using it on a road or public place de facto makes it a motor vehicle, ie,
a mechanically propelled vehicle adapted or intended for use on a road or other public place. Depending on weight and performance such a device is legally classed as a moped or notorcycle,
Think of it this way. If you removed the engine and transmission from your car and propelled it along with your feet Fred Flintstone style your are still liable for insurance, MOT, and would have to be licenced, and would still get stuck on for exactly the same offences as if the engine were propelling it along.
Strip your car down to a bare shell and park it at the roadside you would still be required to insure and MOT it (and tax it, but that's another matter.) It remains a
motor vehicle.
Therefore, the example you cite would provide no defence - the removal of the battery does not render it any less a motor vehicle than a car with the fuel tank removed.
And so it is with these illegal ebikes - simply removing the battery does not make them suddenly legal. It is still a
motor vehicle.
However, there is a quirk at play here. Because they are unregistered the authorities don't know about it (unless the rider has been caught) so if the rider removed all trace of the
mechanisms of mechanical propulsion (battery, holder, wiring, controller, switches, etc) then unlike the example of a car they could then get away with riding it as a normal bicycle, albeit only because law enforcement is ignorance the fact that it was ever a motor vehicle because it had never been registered. What the law never knows won't hurt you, but just not being caught doesn't make it actually legal.
But that aside, the principle stands -
once a motor vehicle, always a motor vehicle, and simply removing a part of the motorised bit does not alter that legal designation. Removing bits of it, even removing the wheels, doesn't make it any less a motor vehicle in the eyes of the law - the only means of negating a motor vehicles status is for it to be scrapped beyond use by an accredited vehicle dismantler and the DVLA informed. That the rider of a dodgy ebike probably hasn't bothered to register it is neither here nor there - the only
legal means by which it can then cease to be a motor vehicle is for it to be forfeited and destroyed in an approved manner, which is what the dibble do.
