BEIJING — A squeal of brakes, the screech of ripping metal and a battery-powered, three-wheel scooter — top-heavy with parcels for delivery — tips over after hitting a car. The courier picks himself up as the driver jumps out of his car, shouting and pointing at his vehicle’s shattered headlights.

It is another skirmish in the smoldering class war being waged on the roads of Beijing.

The growing number of private car drivers is at odds with the millions of residents who ride two- and three-wheeled electric cycles. The conflict has stirred emotions about inequality in urban China, pitting wealthier drivers against the blue-collar workers who need the electric bikes to make a living.

“We’re just scapegoats,” Liu Xiaoyan, an electric bike courier, who watched the aftermath of the crash, said recently at an intersection in northeast Beijing. “They always say that electric bikes are the road killers, but the cars are the real killers.”

Electric bicycles have proliferated from a demand for deliveries of goods sold online. Beijing and several other Chinese cities have moved to rein in the bikes, with some considering outright bans.