Rules & rights · DE
Germany's e-scooter type approvals on paper: what the KBA's national eKFV list covers
Germany requires e-scooters (Elektrokleinstfahrzeuge, eKFV) to carry a national type approval. The Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt in Flensburg publishes the register of those approvals online, entry by entry, with approval numbers, dates, trade descriptions and manufacturers. Here is how the list is organised and what each entry tells you.
On video
E-scooters, e-bikes on sidewalks a statewide issue: GiannouliasABC 7 Chicago · opens the player
The recording belongs to ABC 7 Chicago and plays from YouTube; opening it lets YouTube see the request. Watch on YouTube.
If a small electric scooter is sold or shared in Germany, it needs a national type approval — an Allgemeine Betriebserlaubnis (ABE) — under the country's eKFV rules for Personal Light Electric Vehicles. The body that grants and records those approvals is the Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt (KBA), the Federal Motor Transport Authority, based in Flensburg. Its English-language page on Personal Light Electric Vehicles carries the register of national type approvals it has granted.
The register is a plain table. Each row pairs a National Type Approval number with the date of approval, the type, the trade description and the manufacturer. The earliest entries all carry the date 21.06.2019: N997 covering the ES 200G from Tier Mobility GmbH, N996 for the Voiager 1 from Voi Technology AB, and N998 for the Sparrow from IO Hawk Invest GmbH. From there the list runs forward through later entries, from LimeBike Germany GmbH's Lime-S 3.0 (P004, 25.06.2019) into subsequent years.
What a single entry contains
One entry is more than a model name. The trade description field can cover several nameplates sold under one approval — a useful habit of the register, because scooter brands often re-badge hardware. The N996 approval, for example, lists "Voiager 1" as the type and "VOI Voiager 1" as the trade description. Others sprawl further: P010 (15.07.2019) covers the "WUE10" type sold as EGRET TEN, EGRET TEN 36V, THE-URBAN #HMBRG and THE-URBAN xH1 under Walberg Urban Electrics GmbH, while P418 lists the IX250 from Sportstech Brands Holding GmbH.
Some rows are incomplete on their face. A recurring phrase in the trade description column is "zum Genehmigungszeitpunkt unbekannt" — unknown at the time of approval. It appears against Segway Europe B.V.'s MAX (P028, 14.08.2019), its ES1LD (P175, 06.08.2020) and its SNSC 2.3 (P166, 21.09.2020), among others. The approval number and date still stand; it is the market name that was not yet fixed when the approval was recorded.
Manufacturers behind the brand
The manufacturer column does not always name the company that appears on the deck. P235 (29.06.2021), covering the ES520A type sold as "Alpha X3 Pro powered by Cybersoul" and "ODYS Alpha X3 Pro powered by Cybersoul", names Axdia International GmbH with the manufacturer given as Xiaoben (Shanghai) Tech Co., Ltd. P388 (12.05.2023) for the EV85F names WeRoll Tech GmbH as the approval holder with ZHEJIANG KUANTU INDUSTRY AND TRADE CO., LTD as manufacturer. The register, in other words, records the chain, not just the badge.
How to read the list as a document
- The KBA page carries its own issue date — the version read for this piece is dated 10.09.2026 — so the register is a snapshot of what had been granted by then, not a live feed.
- Approval numbers form two series in the early entries: a plain "N" series (N996, N997, N998, N999) at the start in June 2019, then a "P" series with a running number (P002, P004, P010 and onward) that continues through the list.
- Dates are German-format day.month.year: 21.06.2019 is 21 June 2019.
- Duplicate rows exist in the source table — SoFlow B.V.'s SO1 PRO under P243 (19.05.2021) appears twice — so count approvals by number, not by row.
- The authority named at the foot of the page is "Kraftfahrt-Bundesamt, Flensburg".
To check any e-scooter yourself, open the KBA's Personal Light Electric Vehicles page, note the issue date at the head of the table, and search the approval number or the trade name in the list. Match the model against the type and trade description columns; if a scooter carries no entry there, the register read on that date shows no national type approval for it, and you can then ask the seller or operator which approval number it holds.