France: up to €2,500 in incentives if you scrap your car and buy an e-bike.

In France, buying an electric bike or a cargo bike will be even easier and more accessible to citizens.

The deputies of the Assembly, in fact, voted in favor of an amendment, which could soon become the new law, which rewards those who replace their car with an incentive, for a maximum of €2,500, to be used for the purchase of e-bikes or cargo bikes.

The legislation, supported by the Minister for French Ecological Transition Barbara Pompili, has already been approved by the Parliament and strongly supported by the Fédération Française des Usagers De La Bicyclette which has organised a major lobbying effort to ensure that citizens have the opportunity not only to change their polluting car for one with reduced emissions, but also to give up ownership of it by adopting a more active, zero-emission method of transport such as the e-bike.

“For the first time it is recognized that the solution is not to make cars greener, but simply to reduce their number”, said Olivier Schneider of the French national association of bicycle users, FUB.

The Cycling Industries Europe warmly welcomed the initiative and urged European governments to follow in the French footsteps.

“We are seeing a welcome increase in independent incentives for purchasing bicycles, but the French Assembly has made it clear that e-bikes and cargo bikes must be supported as vehicle replacements. Every government must recognise that it is the European cycling industries that are leading the world in the shift to electric mobility,” said Kevin Mayne, CEO of Cycling Industries Europe, who then congratulated FUB on the work done, “The impact of FUB’s sponsorship is the perfect example of what our members tell me: sponsorship funding is the best return on investment of any dollar spent.”

France, like many other countries, is experiencing the most prosperous period of bicycle sales: e-bikes have led the market growth with a large increase in both volume and value, exceeding 500,000 units with 514,672 e-bikes sold, recording an increase of 29% and representing 56% of the market value.

Incentives for scrapping cars in favor of e-bikes and cargo bikes are also present in other European countries but with lower amounts: €2,500 is a more than attractive incentive given that it often represents the starting price for a quality e-bike.

It's Italy?

In our country, there are few cities that have currently experimented with forms of incentives for the purchase of e-bikes, but we are still far from incentives like the French model.

Let's hope, after all the boom in sales and incentives to create ad-hoc infrastructure, that rewards are also established for those who decide to abandon the car in favor of e-bikes and environmentally sustainable means.