How To Derestrict An Electric Bike [Engineer’s Perspective]

What is electric bike derestriction?

If you’ve been living under a rock, let’s get you up to date: all of the most popular pedal-assist (Class 1 pedelec with 250W nominal sustained power) electric bikes have to come from the factory with a restricted speed limit that depends on your region. 

In the EU, UK, Australia and most of the world that limit is 25 km/h or 15.5 mph, while in the USA it’s 20 mph (32 km/h). If you haven’t yet ridden an electric bike with this speed limit, lucky you. I remember when this was just a mental concept that I heard of and didn’t yet experience. 

However, when I got my first Specialized Turbo Levo back in 2019. I vividly remember the experience of throwing in 4-5 pedal strokes and the bike suddenly cutting the power. Continuing to pedal was like pedaling through quick sand. It was horrible and I wanted it gone ASAP. 

Derestriction is how we make this happen i.e. it is the removal of the legislation-imposed virtual speed ceiling. Sometimes this is called electric bike tuning. There’s no tuning involved. Tuning, at least in the car world, means modifications to get more performance i.e. raising power by changing parameters in the ECU of the motor. 

Almost none of the electric bike derestriction methods do this. Those that do should only be used after your warranty is out and with the full understanding of what’s being done. Let me be very clear: derestriction means ONLY removing the regional speed limit, it DOES NOT mean your bike will have any more power than it already does nor will it accelerate faster. 

It just means it will continue to assist you where it had previously cut your power as you reached the regional speed limit. We will explain the common fallacy about derestriction “ruining” your motor a bit later.

Why are electric bikes restricted in the first place?!

Good question. The facts are these: electric bike speed limits (we’re talking regular Class 1 pedelecs here) are there for a simple reason – you, the people, are too lazy to deal with insurance & paperwork needed to make something faster road-legal. 

Can you imagine how many electric bikes would be sold if there was a complication of having the thing insured and registered, having to have front and rear lights on it, and always wearing a helmet (NOT that you shouldn’t – you ABSOLUTELY should)! 

But it’d be mandatory and subject to a monetary fine if they catch you without one)? Yeah, a hell of a lot less than if there’s none of that involved. You buy one, sit on it and pedal away. After all, as da Vinci said a couple of years ago – “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

Should you derestrict your electric bike?

Yes, and you should buy my shit to do it! Next question. 😀 Just kidding… Here’s a very simple algorithm to help you answer the question of “Should you derestrict your electric bike”:

When you ride your electric bike, do you ever run into the aforementioned speed limit and how annoying is this for you?

This will basically answer your question. There’s no need for any complications such as “in which assistance mode are you, which terrain/surface are you riding on, what are your gear ratios, what’s the resistance of your tires, how heavy is your bike, bla bla bla”. 

The simple question is: is the imposed speed limit a nuisance to you? If the answer is yes – get your electric bike derestricted. Another piece of food for thought – having a derestricted electric bike doesn’t mean you have to go faster than the speed limit. It means you can if you need to or want to when you need to or want to. 

Too many of my customers still misunderstand this concept and ask questions like “but can I just have the speed limit a little bit higher?” – God Damnit, man – you are the speed limit. If the bike is derestricted it’s you who is in complete control of how fast you want to go. It’s almost as if people forget they can simply stop pedaling, or pedal with less effort, or use a lower mode of assistance or God forbid – use the brakes. 

Derestricted electric bike = same bike as before but it just keeps assisting above the speed limit if you keep pedaling. Hopefully, this is now clear even to those sitting in the back row. 😀 If you should derestrict your electric bike should be a question of personal preference or a “choice”.

But Alex, what about the laws?

This is a hot topic (but it shouldn’t be). First, let’s get some facts straight:

1. Derestriction is NOT illegal.
2. Riding a derestricted electric bike on public roads IS illegal. #butonlyiftheycatchyouhaha
3. If you derestrict your electric bike, you also take responsibility for any consequences of this action (loss of warranty, accident liability, fines and punishments).

Every company or individual that makes and/or sells a derestriction device for your electric bike will advertise it as “for use ONLY on private land”, myself included. That is because we don’t want the liability involved with you being a cognitively unsophisticated person and blaming our product for your bad decisions and their consequences. 

I’m a big believer in personal responsibility. If you screw up, be a man (or a woman.. or they/them or an Apache attack helicopter) and suffer the consequences. If you get your electric bike derestricted, don’t ride it like a moron and all should be good. 

The point is you have the freedom to choose how fast you ride your bike. If you’re in a pedestrian-dense area, slow down, show respect, and assume people have dogs or children that swerve as if they’re avoiding a sniper. If you’re on the road sharing it with cars, trucks and motorcycles – it’s a hell of a lot safer to be riding close to their speeds than it is to be crawling around being honked at and passed by everybody. 

Practice some common sense and everything will be fine. In the immortal words of Ben Franklin: “Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” It might just be me, but I don’t like being told what to do, especially when it’s packaged in the “safety of others” argument. 

I’m not some crazy anti-establishment idiot, in fact, I’ve never had a problem with the law or the police other than a speeding ticket (or several). It should be noted I live in a third-world country where electric bikes aren’t that common and the police basically can’t even tell an electric bike apart from a regular bike (most of the time). 

However, if you live in a first-world-nanny state with some fascist tendencies and they’ve voted in laws that open you up to extremely high fines and having your electric bike confiscated if you’re found riding derestricted – it’s your problem i.e. your responsibility.

People (especially online) like to use big words such as liability. Yes, if you run over a person on a public road, you are liable. But you’re liable either fucking way, restricted or derestricted. If it’s your fault, you deal with the consequences. 

This is what courts and judges are for. I don’t believe anyone has voted in a law that says “if you’re on a derestricted electric bike, then it’s YOUR fault NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENED”. If they have, move to a different country ‘cause yours is gone to hell or don’t have your electric bike derestricted. “It’s your choice.” – Marco Pierre White.

Insurance, on the other hand, is a private company. If you have an insurance policy on your electric bike, it’s your responsibility to research what are the potential consequences of having your electric bike derestricted. I am aware that some people in the UK add their electric bikes to their house insurance because they’re not registrable vehicles. What happens if you hit someone with your derestricted electric bike that’s tied to your house via a piece of paper – I can’t even imagine, but I don’t have to – you have to.

Trail access and the USA

As for the shared trail access argument where you will hear groups say “YOU ARE ERODING THE TRAILS WITH YOUR ELECTRIC BIKES” – again, it’s bullshit legislature written by people who have never ridden an electric bike in their life (still talking about regular pedelecs here, NOT the throttle electric bikes with significant power). 

The quickest way to sort this bureaucracy problem out would be to have all the pencil pushers participating in the law-making go ride electric bikes for a weekend. Then they’d quickly figure out things like “oh, it’s got fat tires, more contact area, lower contact pressure, I can’t really go above the speed limit uphill anyway, where’s the MAD power every Karen out there has been screaming about” etc. etc. 

I’ve also built and maintained several mtb trails in my 10 years of mountain biking. The erosion argument falls flat on its ass compared to what nature will do to trails. Rain and natural erosion, fallen trees and dislocated rocks are a larger problem than electric bikes will ever be. 

If a national park or a trail center is interested in preserving their trails, the first thing they should do is forbid riding in the wet or for a day or two after rain. That’s when the gutters will appear and trails will get destroyed. I digress.

e-scooters tangent

Since we’re digressing, let’s mention e-scooters. I don’t know about your city or town, but mine has been overrun with goddamn electric scooters. However, they are NOT the problem. Technology is rarely the problem, rather it’s the users who are the problem. 

People who have no business walking without supervision are now riding around on scooters at 20+ km/h and they’re not riding on the road with other vehicles such as cars, motorcycles and regular scooters (I mean like a Vespa, not like a non-e-scooter for children in bike parks to break their goddamn ankles with). 

They’re riding on sidewalks, in city centers, pedestrian only zones etc. I get it, it’s self-preservation. Scooter is too slow for the road, but it’s TOO FAST for a sidewalk for a STUPID PERSON who will not take into account people stepping out of restaurants, shops, doors etc. The high center of gravity coupled with these speeds results in a lot of accidents and damage. 

Moreover, it’s the rental e-scooters that are a particular pest. People leave them everywhere, companies don’t gather them quickly enough, since they’re not your personal property there’s a tendency of people to treat them like garbage etc. 

That’s why some cities are outlawing them and I understand why. However, as a technology – it’s goddamn amazing. I’m a let’s say a 35-ish year old mechanical engineer who used to take a bus or a tram to school. If I tried to ride my bike I’d face one of 3 problems: 

1. I’d sweat my ass off getting to where I was going (mainly because I can’t take it easy and race everywhere)
2. There’d be nowhere “safe” to leave the bike
3. They got stolen all the time

Now, I can start an app on my phone, rent a little electric scooter for 1 EUR and not sweat my ass off, not be stuck in traffic and not risk having my multiple-thousands-of-money fancy e-mtb being stolen while I wait in the post office or a bakery. 

I am, however, a non-retard (most of the time). I have the experience and the sanity to go slow when needed and fast when and where I can. Many people do not, but my idea of having a minimum-IQ-threshold requirement for getting a driver’s license is not really catching fire like I hoped it would.

Different methods of electric bike derestriction

Me being a firm believer in making informed choices as best choices – I will now go through a selection of derestriction methods and devices followed by some common misconceptions that can be found online so that you can make a more informed decision about derestricting your electric bike.

Before we delve into the derestriction devices, I would like to take a moment to explain how nearly all pedelec electric bikes measure speed. 

Speed measurement almost exclusively happens at the rear wheel using a speed sensor and a magnet fitted on the braking side of the rear hub. 

For every rotation of the rear wheel, as the fixed magnet passes in front of the speed sensor, a reed switch inside the sensor is activated and a signal is sent via the speed sensor cable to the motor. 

The motor knows the value of the rear wheel circumference and forwards this information to the front display (if there is one) where a bit of simple math results with a speed readout (number of signals multiplied by the wheel circumference divided by a time period gets you speed in whichever unit of measure you’d like).

Nearly all derestriction devices on the market achieve the removal of the speed limit the same way: they make your electric bike motor believe it’s still going below the speed limit thus ensuring the motor continues to provide assistance. Where they differ is in the method used to achieve this goal, which in turn makes them better or worse, safer or riskier.

Derestriction devices can be split into two main categories: mechanical devices & electronic devices.

1. Mechanical derestriction devices

Mechanical derestriction devices, such as PLANET3, use a system of planetary gears fitted to the rear wheel to replace the stock magnet. 

The magic of the PLANET3 is in the patented orientation of the planetary parts which replace the fixed magnet (which turned 1:1 with the rear wheel) by a planet that now carries a magnet but whose rotation is 3x slower than the rotation of the rear wheel. 

This makes your electric bike motor think the bike is going 3x slower than it actually is, thus increasing the speed limit by a factor of 3. 

At 25 km/h of real world speed the motor will think it’s going around 8 km/h, thus enabling you to never run into the speed limit because you will sooner run out of motor power, leg power and cadence (gear ratios) than you will reach 75 km/h on a Class 1 pedelec electric bike. 

There are other designs out there, but they are limited by this mechanical ratio to around half of what PLANET3 provides.

Limitations of the mechanical derestriction devices

Anything that sounds too good to be true, usually is. Even with a design as neat as the PLANET3, there are some limitations: electric bike frame, brake rotor and hub compatibility being the main one, and manufacturer’s efforts to fight derestriction following close in second place. 

What do we mean about compatibility? Basically, there are designs out there that simply don’t allow for a mechanical device to be fitted to the rear wheel. 

There could simply be a lack of space between the brake rotor and the frame to fit a device that requires around 7 mm of axial spacing. 

Geometry of the rear hub is another factor – the hub end cap needs to be able to carry the ring gear (cover) of the device. This necessitates a hub end cap profile with a simple straight geometry that we can use for press-fitting components. 

Why would the manufacturers care about derestriction and put in efforts to try and stop it, I hear you ask… quietly. Well, due to regulation. Fact of the matter is, it doesn’t only specify that you need to deliver a product with a speed limit, but that you have to continuously fight against methods of derestriction. 

Now, some manufacturers take this a lot further than others and this is reflected in the popularity of their drivetrain systems i.e. sales figures of electric bikes with different drivetrains. But how could they fight against a mechanical derestriction device if the bike’s electrical systems can’t possibly know it’s present on the bike? Well, the answer is – creatively. 

Shimano was the first and absolutely the biggest bastard in this regard. Even before PLANET3 was invented, they had implemented countermeasures in their firmware against gear ratio manipulation. 

The first time I tested a PLANET3 on a Shimano powered electric bike at the Lago di Garda bike festival in Italy more than 5 years ago now (Oct 2024 at the time of this being written), they already had measures in place that made PLANET3 incompatible with any electric bike that featured a Di2 rear derailleur. 

If the bike had a mechanical derailleur everything worked pretty nicely until you didn’t slow down too much. If your speed dropped below what was “possible” in the cadence vs. speed map of the motor for the 1^st gear of the cassette – you’d get an error even with a mechanical derailleur electric bike. 

How did they do that? Basically, they program into the motor the values of the front chainring size and the ratio of the rear cassette (say 500% for a 10-50T cassette) and if you spend any time outside this allowed range, the motor knows something is up. 

This was probably meant to prevent users from putting on too small or too large of a front chainring which would affect the cadence of the motor, but it was an effective measure against a mechanical derestriction device nonetheless. 

A scenario is simple: imagine you’re pedaling uphill and moving rather slowly (say 6 km/h) in first gear, if you have a PLANET3 fitted the bike would think you’re moving at 2 km/h at the same cadence and that’s simply too far outside the range of “normal expected” speed for that cadence. 

It would be possible if you had a 150T largest cog on the rear cassette, but you don’t.. Even if you did, Shimano wouldn’t let you have it because they didn’t develop their system for that range. So, what did we do? We added another planet inside the PLANET3 device at 180° opposite the first planet. Two magnets inside the device meant that the interval between passes in front of the speed sensor was halved. 

Ratio went from 3:1 to 1,5:1 and Shimano didn’t really mind at the time. In fact, ratios up to 1,675:1 worked perfectly fine if you had a mechanical rear derailleur. This meant a 67,5% bump in speed for any Shimano powered electric bike fitted with a dual planet PLANET3 device. This was short lived. 

As soon as Shimano found out what was going on, they started restricting the range of the allowed speed vs. cadence until the ratio that didn’t cause errors was just 1,3:1 i.e. a 30% bump in speed. 

At that time I simply stopped developing PLANET3s for bikes fitted with Shimano systems because let’s be realistic – a 30% bump in speed wasn’t satisfactory. Some users were happy with this and didn’t want to mess with any electronics, but those PLANET3s were sold by request only.

Bosch, for example, when CX Gen4 motors came out went so far as to make their derestriction detection algorithm so sensitive that people with absolutely no derestriction devices were getting errors. 

However, in the case of Bosch these errors weren’t a simple turn-off-turn-on to clear errors. Bosch introduced “Limp mode” which meant they’d reduce the power of your motor to some negligible number until you pedaled 90 min with everything returned to stock to get your bike out of limp mode. 

Having a second or third limp mode error meant a loss of warranty on your motor. PLANET3 at that time was tested for Bosch with a ratio of 1,4:1 and even though it looked promising, after 400-600 miles the dreaded limp mode error would appear. 

There were some users who never got a limp mode error due to their use case scenario where they would not ever move so slowly to be outside the possible cadence vs. speed map, but these cases were very rare and we couldn’t in good conscience sell a product that risked someone’s warranty if we knew about the problem.

Giant electric bikes originally worked with the 3:1 ratio PLANET3 in all but very tall gears (1^st and 2^nd) but over time this allowed ratio dropped to 1,7:1 and finally to 1,5:1 where it stayed until this day. 

During 2024 Giant also went down the cunty route of Bosch and made their motors lock up with an error 6A if derestriction was detected which meant a costly unlock at the main dealer which ran users around 150-300 EUR/$. 

For now, I have no information about any user of the PLANET3 with a dual planet setup (1,5:1 ratio) that has triggered this 6A error. There was one person who did get an error but he admittedly set up his device with a single planet and rode it for 2 days like this. Be warned: dual planet setup is mandatory for nearly every electric bike manufacturer except Specialized (for now).

Specialized is kinda the “King” of easy-to-derestrict category, or at least they used to be. A short history lesson in Specialized derestriction goes something like this..

With the first generation Turbo Levo and Turbo Kenevo, there was an application for your phone called “LightBlue” which could change the value of the rear wheel circumference in the TCU/motor down to 800mm via Bluetooth. 

It wasn’t that easy to use because it changed the value in HEX code, but it was popular and easy enough if you had any technical inclinations. What did this do? The minimum value of the rear wheel circumference allowed by Specialized in their Turbo Studio (dealer application) was 2000mm. 

Keep in mind, we are talking about a value programmed into the motor – not the actual size of the rear wheel. So, if your rear wheel was 29” with a real circumference of 2350mm but the motor was set to 2000mm – this meant you could actually go sliiiightly faster than the speed limit. 

If the limit was 25 km/h your motor would think this limit was reached when you were actually moving along at 29,4 km/h because of the difference in the value of the rear wheel. Basically, you got a nearly 18% bump in speed if your dealer was nice enough to set your rear wheel size to the minimum value of 2000mm in their software. 

The speed readout was inaccurate, but you got a bump in speed if you wanted one. As you can imagine, when the value of the rear wheel was set to 800mm the bump in speed was 2,9x higher and your bike would read 3x less speed and 3x less distance. 

This is very similar to the PLANET3 with a 3:1 ratio but achieved in a different way. LightBlue would change the wheel size in the software, while PLANET3 wouldn’t mess with the value of the wheel size – it would just “slow the wheel down” three times. 

Even though this doesn’t sound too different, it’s a very important distinction that we’ll come back to. At this time, Specialized was very willing to turn a blind eye to LightBlue because their electric bikes were selling out like hot cakes. 

Keeping your warranty on the motor just meant you had to be smart enough to use LightBlue to reset the wheel size value to default before you took your bike to the shop for any warranty work. 

When connected to the dealer app, there were no visible signs anything was ever touched and it remained like that for the next couple of years. When I got my 2019 Turbo Levo Gen2, LightBlue no longer worked because Specialized was forced to patch this loophole in their firmware because they got sued by Bosch and Shimano (this is a common theme that will repeat itself multiple times). 

There was actually no derestriction method on the market for the new generation of Turbo Levo at this time while chipmakers were trying to catch up.

As 2021 rolled around, PLANET3 was working nicely on all Specialized electric bikes without a care in the world. Soon, that would change – or so I thought at the time.

A customer from California had bought a brand new 2021 S-Works Levo and as the bike came out of the box and was turned on for the first time, it threw 17 errors to the TCU and the Mission Control app. 

Keep in mind, it hadn’t yet been ridden at all and PLANET3 wasn’t even installed. This was a freak electrical event that went away after the first power up. However, the customer sent me all the screenshots from the app and one of them scared me to death.

Basically, I worried that Specialized was going the route of Shimano, Bosch and others and that PLANET3 would no longer work as it did up until that point. This turned out to be somewhat baseless because PLANET3 still works wonderfully on almost all Specialized electric bikes in 2024, but it did prompt me to start thinking of the future, which makes a nice segue into electronic derestriction devices. 

2. Electronic derestriction devices

There are a LOT of electronic dongles on the market that help you derestrict your electric bike. Without getting too technical, let’s split them into a couple of categories based on how they achieve their objective.

Category 0 – The simple but no longer functional

You know the saying “old ways are the best”? Well, the oldest trick in the electric bike derestriction book is the one where you put the speed sensor in front of the crank arm and stick a magnet on the crank arm in front of it. 

This oldie but goldie trick used to give you 3x increase in speed! How? Math. In your “top gear” your gear ratio is likely to be around 3:1 (let’s assume a 34T front chainring and an 11T smallest cog on the cassette), which means the rear wheel is spinning 3x faster than your pedals. At the speed of 25 km/h this means around 180 rpm on the rear wheel at the cadence of 60 rpm (motor). 

If you switch your magnet and sensor configuration to the crank arm instead of the rear wheel, it will be reading 3x lower speed – voilà. You should NOT ATTEMPT this trick on ANY bike younger than 2018. Why? Because manufacturers realized this was going on and wrote a very simple detection algorithm to detect this:

IF your rear wheel speed = your cadence THEN you’ve put a magnet on the crank AND here’s an error for ya, bastard.

Depending on the manufacturer, this can range from an error that will simply clear itself after you restart your bike all the way up to losing your warranty and paying up to 300 EUR to have you sent for unlocking.

Category 1 – The rather “primitive”

If the electronic derestriction device is fitted only between the speed sensor and the motor, that means it can only interrupt the communication between the speed sensor and the motor. How do you recognize these devices? 

They will only have one or two cables coming from the chip. The version with a single cable will basically be a replacement for your speed sensor cable with a block of electronics thrown in the middle somewhere, while the version with two cables will have one male and one female connector at the end of each cable, respectively.

The basic premise is you unplug the original speed sensor connector from the motor, plug in the one coming from the chip and you plug in the original into the female on coming from the chip. 

This way, the chip is getting the real speed sensor signals and can lie to the motor with the fake ones. Most of these devices will work in the following manner: they will provide true speed and distance up until 80% of the speed limit (say 20-23 km/h) and from then on they will simply show 20-23 km/h constantly. 

This way the motor is kept in the dark about your real speed and since it still believes it is under the speed limit, it continues to assist.

As with anything, there are pros and cons. Main pro is probably the simplicity, less stuff going on means less stuff can go wrong. However, in our opinion the cons outweigh the pros. 

If the derestriction device isn’t connected between the motor and the display, then it doesn’t know the other half of the information, mainly the cadence of the motor i.e. the speed at which you are turning your pedals – it only knows the speed of the rear wheel. 

As such, it is limited in the ability to provide the motor with the values of speed it might expect based on its cadence. This isn’t really that big of a problem at low speeds because the device will simply forward the original signals, while on the other hand, the faster you go it will continue to lie to the motor that you’re going at a constant speed of 80-90% of the speed limit which then becomes a bigger problem. 

Think about this for a second: say you’re pedaling at a constant speed of 25 km/h (the speed limit) in 9^th gear, this means you are turning your pedals at a constant cadence of let’s say 50 rpm (this depends on your chainring size, 9^th gear sprocket size, size of the rear wheel). Now, if I ask you to stay in 9^th gear and increase speed to 30 km/h, how will you do that? 

Of course, you will pedal faster. Your cadence will increase by 20% because the gear ratio is fixed so long as you’re in 9^th gear. The only solution is to pedal at 60 rpm instead of 50 rpm. Now, let’s assume you are the motor of your electric bike and you’re monitoring the situation with regards to speed and cadence because the engineer wrote you an algorithm to detect when you’re outside the range of normal or expected speed vs. cadence. 

If you fit a derestriction device from the “primitive” category (well, to be honest – even some from the advanced category will do this!), once you start to approach the speed limit the device will simply start telling the motor it’s traveling at a constant speed of 22 km/h so that it continues to assist. 

However, as you keep accelerating your cadence will continue to change – it can for a couple of reasons: you’re going faster now OR you’ve shifted another gear. No matter which one it is, it is NON-PHYSICAL or better to say impossible, for the rear wheel to be moving at a constant speed while at the same time cadence continues to change. 

Yes, bikes have multiple gears, but each of these gears is a fixed ratio. This would only be possible if the electric bike had a continuously variable transmission (CVT) like some mopeds/scooters do. This is where primitive devices usually fall dead in the water because they don’t connect to the motor and don’t have access to the cadence information. 

If they did, they could lie to the motor in a more advanced way and keep the speed vs. cadence within a possible range and non-constant. Some of you will surely say: “But, Alex.. I’ve had my primitive device for a year and I’ve had no problems!” and I understand and I agree. 

However, things that worked in the past will most likely not work in the future. The magnet-on-the-crank-arm trick from Category 0 worked for the early generations of almost every electric bike drivetrain out there. If you try this now, depending on the manufacturer, you will most likely not get further than 50 km without locking your motor with a speed manipulation error of some sort.

Category 2 – The Advanced

Derestriction devices from this category will connect to both the motor and the speed sensor, thus giving them some advantages over the primitive ones – main one being the ability to display correct speed and distance data on the handlebar/frame display. 

Devices from this category can be recognized by having at least 4 cables coming out of the chip. The way they work is by interrupting the communication between the speed sensor and the motor and the motor and the display. 

This way the chip is getting accurate speed sensor information about the real speed that the bike is doing and this information can be forwarded straight to the display thus keeping the accurate information displayed. 

Meanwhile, the motor is being fed false information regarding the speed of the bike (generally this will be a speed value below the speed limit so that the motor keeps assisting). Obviously, this will result in a mismatch between the distance traveled by the display and the motor. 

There are several ways that derestriction devices deal with this mismatch and it will vary from manufacturer to manufacture. Some handle it more cleverly than others, while some handle it in a worrying manner. 

Most of the time, you – the user, have no idea what is going on in the background which is what the manufacturers of these devices prefer. They will call it a “balancing function” or present some magic black-box algorithm that handles everything and you shouldn’t have a care in the world. 

Well, you should have a care in the world and they should be more transparent about how this is handled because it makes some devices waaay more detectable than others. I won’t name any names, but I did buy all the competitor products and data-logged all of them on several bikes with different drivetrains during the research and development phase of the new PLANET3-E chip. 

Their magic algorithms varied from “lying to the motor with a constant speed of 21 km/h” which we already established is non-physical so long as the cadence is not constant, all the way to “not doing anything about the mismatch for up to 8 minutes after the bike was stopped and only then starting to deal with the mismatch very slowly”. 

It’s no wonder these products had a wide array of problems that their users reported, greatest hits of which included limp mode errors and a few cases of a chip being moved from an older, high mileage bike to a new bike with zero mileage – and the chip writing in a value of several thousand kilometers to the brand-new bike and nothing could be done about it. 

These manufacturers still sell their products which are highly recommended and the mere mention of these cases is very hard to find because the Facebook groups on derestriction are being censored regularly because they’re being used as private advertising grounds for sellers of derestriction devices. 

It’s up to you as the user to do your research to the best of your abilities and not only listen to the positive feedback.

Category 3 – The Next Generation

Obviously, I made up these categories in a self-serving attempt to classify my new product as the most-advanced, cutting-edge thingamajig. I don’t really regret it for a simple reason – it’s the truth. 

I’ve tried to take into account every flaw that I noticed with the competitors’ products and on top of that dreamed up some features that I considered useful and which should be featured on a product that wanted to stand above all others. 

In my attempt to make you believe I’m still standing on solid ground; I will do two things: I will admit my solution is not alone in this category & I will list some pros and cons of these solutions when compared to products from Category 2.

The main advantage of PLANET3-E is that the software (firmware) on the chip is updatable via Bluetooth. There are other devices on the market that have Bluetooth capabilities but this is either a gimmicky feature that is mostly used for telemetry purposes i.e. to display various data in the accompanying app; or in the case of actual update capability it’s of limited use because the product works by changing a single parameter (such as wheel circumference) and it cannot be updated with new capabilities because its hardware design is not capable of this. 

Most of this data is visible on your electric bike display anyway and in apps that accompany the electric bike drivetrain system, so I don’t really see a purpose for this other than to pump more money out from users for unnecessary features. 

After all, we’re talking about a derestriction device which has a single purpose – to remove the speed limit. Why would a derestriction device require an app for recording trips and showing you how much time you spent in each assistance mode? 

I will admit, some of the features would come in handy if they weren’t already available through native apps that accompany the drivetrain system; such as – locking the motor. 

However, these Category 2 derestriction devices that have Bluetooth capability don’t offer a meaningful way to update the firmware on the derestriction chip itself in the case an electric bike manufacturer releases a firmware update that would render the device obsolete. PLANET3-E does exactly the opposite – there is no ability to save or view your last ride, but there is every ability to make sure the derestriction device continues to do its job. 

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If an electric bike manufacturer simply switches around the IDs of a communication channel for speed and cadence and you make the mistake of updating your bike to the most recent firmware (which is the modus operandi of every bike shop out there – as soon as you come in, electric bike gets all the software updates and you almost have no say in the matter) – your current derestriction device would stop working and the bike would error out. 

If you have a PLANET3-E, the same thing will happen BUT in a matter of hours, or at the latest – days, there will be a firmware update which will solve the problem and you will simply click a button in the app and the Bluetooth chip on the PLANET3-E will successfully push a new firmware update onto the main chip.

No need to buy a 3.0, 4.0 or N.0 version of the same product over and over again. Another advantage of this ability to update the actual derestriction device is that it can be continuously developed. 

Think about it: other manufacturers are in a bit of a rush; you might even say a race to beat each other to market with the release of a new product for a new drivetrain. However, that means they have limited time to take into account, let alone test all possible scenarios or hear back from the users are problems are encountered when you introduce more testers. 

It will always be a game of trade-offs where you will end up with the “best they could do at the time with the time available to develop and test”. Once they release a product, their marketing doesn’t really allow them to say their solution is sub-optimal. 

You should go and read the marketing copy for a 3.0 version of a product and 4.0 version of a product. They sound almost identical. You are left wondering why there is even a 4.0 if the 3.0 is so great. News flash: it’s because 3.0 isn’t that great and they fixed a lot of stuff in 4.0 because they had more time for testing, but they can’t really alienate a large percentage of their user base who are still on 3.0 version. 

It’s a game of “how do we market and sell a new thing while at the same time maintaining the stance that whoever has the old thing has made the right decision”. I don’t need to deal with this mockery at all. 

If the product physically works in a bike and there isn’t a hardware change that requires new physical connectors or a power supply or a completely different communication protocol – it can be developed and supported forever (or for as long as the electric bike manufacturer will continue to support their product through firmware updates). 

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If users report new findings and new problems, it’s welcomed with open arms, and a solution is worked on and found in the shortest possible time and tested across a larger population, in the end leading to a better product for everyone. I firmly believe that with the release of PLANET3-E, a new era of derestriction devices should begin – other manufacturers will simply have to go through the same development steps and offer these “Next Generation” derestriction devices with update capabilities. 

If you would like to find out more about PLANET3-E capabilities and features – please visit the blog section, read the release notes or visit the YouTube channel if you’re not into reading. 😀

You might be wondering what’s the aforementioned other solution in this TNG category? It’s a derestriction solution that doesn’t require a physical device. 

These solutions deal with the problem in the most elegant way – no need to install any chips or connect any connectors, take out any screws or remove any crank arms – install an app (either on your phone or your PC), connect directly to the bike (either via Bluetooth or via cable connection) and simply change the value of the speed limit. Voilà. 

Sounds easy enough! I must admit, I was slightly jealous when I found out how eMax Tuning & ST Unlocker deal with Shimano derestriction. Ultimate solution to the problem. No need to produce a physical device, instead – write some code, sell an app (or give the app for free) and charge a license fee. OMG. One might think to himself – that sounds super easy! 

What’s the downside? Well, the downside is the procedure to get everything to work. Depending on the firmware version of your Shimano motor, you might need to downgrade the firmware of the motor itself first. This requires a bit of computer literacy and dealing with multiple apps, DLL files, sometimes Command Prompt, and the requirement for a physical module capable of connecting to the electric bike motor. 

In most cases this is the Shimano SM-PCE02 interface for STEPS/Di2 which will cost you around 200-250 EUR/USD depending on your location. In theory, you only need this once, and so long as your electric bike is derestricted you shouldn’t need it again unless the bike shop updates your bike. 

Well, you might need it again to put everything back to factory defaults if you’re taking your electric bike in for a service or a warranty motor replacement. It seems there’s almost no manufacturer that doesn’t have one defect or another in their motors, and all of them require occasional warranty replacement of the motor.

Anyway, the cost of hardware to connect to the electric bike and use the elegant derestriction method isn’t negligible but it can also be shared by like-minded local owners of other Shimano electric bikes. 

You can also try to borrow it from a bike shop because they cannot officially do any of this for you, but they might be willing to lend you the hardware for an hour when you need it. This will depend on your relationship with your bike shop and their level of scumbaggery i.e. rule-following. 

Just to be clear, what I mean to say is – if they’re sticklers for rules and won’t help you out even though it costs them nothing and doesn’t expose them to risk with Shimano – scumbags. My personal opinion, not really shared by the other side of the fence – as you might imagine. 

Anyway, when everything is backtracked properly – nothing is left in the Shimano logs that would result in them being able to know you ever had the speed limit removed, and thus your warranty is safe.

I will admit that on my only personal Shimano electric bike in the past (Pivot Shuttle), I’ve used eMax tuning with great success and I’ve recommended it to plenty of PLANET3 customers who asked for my mechanical device for their Shimano equipped electric bike over the years. 

That being said, in the grand scheme of things (and in my opinion), Category 2 (and 3) derestriction devices in the form of plug & play chips like the PLANET3-E are a lot more user-friendly than this most elegant solution if the process is considered as a whole. 

Price wise, you’re almost in the same boat and complication and frustration wise, you come up on top. This is a personal opinion to be taken with a grain of salt. 

Neither of the two is “impossible”, but I’ve had a lot more people complain about the complications with Shimano derestriction than with any other drivetrain manufacturer and I’ve personally experienced both and I’ve never thought to myself that taking a few screws off and connecting a few connectors was beyond anyone’s capabilities, while I cannot honestly say the same about all the steps involved in making the Shimano magic work. 

Again, it’s not really hard but you do have to know your way around hidden files in an operating system, executing code in command prompt, renaming files including their extensions, following detailed instructions that on first glance look scarily complicated and critically thinking if things don’t work on the first attempt. 

If all of this sounds in your wheelhouse, it’s really hard to beat these Shimano derestriction solutions.