BENTONVILLE, Ark. (BRAIN) — Claudia Wasko, the longtime leader of Bosch’s e-bike motor program in the Americas and a pioneer in the U.S. e-bike market, is retiring from the German company.
But don’t count out the energetic Wasko, who said though she is leaving after 34 years with Bosch, she isn’t retiring. She isn’t even thrilled with BRAIN’s go-to epithet for anyone who has been in the industry more than about five years.
“Some people call me a veteran. I don’t know if I like that term,” she told BRAIN. “I just felt it was the right moment to turn the page and open a new chapter, explore new passions and directions. I don't feel like retirement yet. But I will take all my experiences from my Bosch years and channel that into the next chapter. That's still in an exploratory phase.”
Wasko is going to kick off the exploration with the Big Sugar gravel race in Arkansas this weekend, which follows the PeopleForBikes Shift'25 event she's attending in Bentonville this week. She’s also signed up for a half Ironman triathlon in Oregon.
“The ride is my favorite. I’m not an epic swimmer. I do like the run. But at the moment I’m doing a lot of gravel riding,” she said.
Career retrospective
Wasko has spent almost half her career at Bosch focused on e-bikes. Before that she worked in various Bosch business divisions in Germany in the auto sector, including in sales and marketing.
“One of my proudest moments was in 2009, when I was able to be part of the very beginning of Bosch’s e-bike story. I was one of the initial project leads and our task was preparing the decision paper for the upper management board. We essentially were trying to determine whether Bosch should enter the EV market at all.
“Despite the challenging circumstances, the board decided to move forward and I think it’s probably fair to say they never regretted it. That early decision turned into a global success story that’s made a meaningful contribution to sustainable mobility. That really has been incredibly rewarding,” she said.
As a privately held company, Bosch doesn’t share sales numbers, but Wasko noted that after launching at the 2010 Eurobike show with one motor and one battery that came in two colors, Bosch now offers more drive unit systems than she can count, for every type of bike. Globally Bosch supplies nearly 100 brands with motors, including more than 40 in the U.S.
After helping launch Bosch’s e-bike effort in Europe, Wasko worked on setting up a footprint in the U.S. She came to California in 2014 to scout locations for a North American headquarters.
“California was the obvious location for the business unit for several reasons,” she said, including the climate and the state’s reputation as a style setter.
She initially didn’t plan to stay.
“For me personally in the beginning it was not on my radar … but I was scouting locations and I went running in the morning and I saw all the cyclists riding in Carlsbad, and I thought that would fit into my lifestyle. And I thought, after being a co-founder of the e-bike project in 2009, this would be another chance to start from scratch again,” she remembered.
Wasko planned to stay in California for three years, but after that she wanted to continue her work here, especially on e-bike advocacy and regulations in the U.S., so Bosch extended her contract. Eventually she decided she wanted to be in the U.S. for good and got her green card in 2018 and then this January became a U.S. citizen.
On the business side, Bosch put a focus on service and education for retailers — a counter-intuitive move because as an OE supplier, Bosch sells to bike brands, not retailers.
“In 2010, when the e-bike business unit was just started I introduced the concept of a dedicated technical representative. The role was to directly support bicycle dealers carrying Bosch-equipped e-bikes. No other company offered anything comparable. So even though we didn’t sell directly to the retailers, we still invested in building a relationship with them and supporting them. And that decision really paid off, and our reputation for quality with the dealers remains an important part of our success."
Wasko is also proud of her work in e-bike advocacy. As co-chair of PeopleForBikes’ e-bike subcommittee she had a role in pushing most U.S. states to adopt a three-class e-bike system, and later in developing a strategy for battery and rider safety and standards.
Wasko will remain with Bosch until the end of the year, when Dave Howard, currently the general manager of Bosch’s Asian e-bike business, will take over as head of the North American office.
On-going challenges
In recent years the U.S. e-bike industry first dealt with a rise in lithium-ion battery fires, a crisis that has eased somewhat thanks to local and industry regulations, education, and standards adoption. More recently, national and local media reports are suddenly full of stories about kids recklessly riding out-of-class e-motos, which reflects poorly on the adoption of legal e-bikes.
Wasko said there actually are two concerns when it comes to high-powered electric two-wheelers. First, some brands are offering e-bikes that are within the three-class system and within the federal limit for e-bikes power (750 watts) but maximize torque and power due to the federal limit's language, which she said is ambiguous. A second concern is e-motos, also called out-of-class machines, which are often described as e-bikes even though, legally, they are electric motorcycles.
On the first issue, PeopleForBikes and others initially hoped that the CPSC could better define the power limit that separates e-bikes from e-motos, but under the current administration that’s become unlikely. Advocates now are looking to states to pick up that work.
“We see a huge, huge risk here because those bikes are moving away from the character of a bicycle and what muscle power on an acoustic bike can do, and we see more and more accidents on those vehicles,” she said.
The German industry has voted to adopt a more stringent and better-defined power limit of 750 watts of continuous mechanical power. The German rule also limits the ratio of human power to electric assist. Wasko said something similar is needed in the U.S.
On the e-moto issue, Wasko said education is needed to let the public and the media know that these machines are not e-bikes.
“You see a lot of confusion in the media. They write about e-bikes and then you see the picture and you know immediately: This is not an e-bike, this is an out-of-class vehicle. So we need to educate, not only the media but also the public and parents.”
