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France is now offering a €4k e-bike subsidy to people who trade in their car
- gniv 4y agoIt's a very restrictive subsidy. The details (in French): https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/actualites/A15906 https://www.service-public.fr/particuliers/actualites/A15906
- Timshel 4y agoFor those not fluent in french : You need to trade-in a car or a van you own since at least a year and it needs to be from before 2006 or 2011 if it's a diesel. Then 40% cap is 1500€ for everyone and if you are way below minimum wage it's up to 3000€. An additional 1000€ might be available depending where you live (low emission zone which include at the moment 10 of the biggest cities and more to come).
- Fradow 4y agoIt's worth noting that 2006 and 2011 for diesel are not random numbers: they match Crit'Air 3. Incidentally, any vehicle on Crit'Air 3 will become restricted in about a year (July 1th 2023) in low-emission zones (most big cities). That restriction means you cannot drive the vehicle in those zones during some periods or when there is a pollution event.
- mywittyname 4y agoThis is good context to have.
- throw827474737 4y agoNeed more of these!
- amin 4y agoA step in the right direction. But why’s the subsidy only for electronic bikes and not also regular bicycles?
- mynewaccish 4y agoprobably because regular bicycles are cheap already
- bmj 4y agoThis is a fair point, but why not offer a subsidy for non-electric cargo bikes (or long tails)?
- deebosong 4y ago"Trade in your 2005 Accord, 188k miles, for an S-Works Aethos Dura-Ace Di2 with Roval Rapide C38's."
- upofadown 4y agoThe sort of regular bike you would want to depend on to reliably get you to work is not going to be very cheap.
- flipbrad 4y agoFrance has access to shops called Decathlon, who provide extremely good value for money pedal bikes and some pretty solid aftersales service for them as well.
- Gigachad 4y agoFor $300 I can buy a very solid single speed bike that will last ages.
- addicted 4y agoI’ve had a $200 used bike taking me to work every day for almost 10 years now. $150 in maintenance every year (I like to give it in to the bike shop once a year for maintenance, otherwise basic upkeep with a monthly 30 min tuneup has been just fine) and about $500 in total repairs and replacements over the years means I’m spending about $220/year adjusted over its lifespan. I’d challenge someone to find a transport option where you’d spend that little in 2 months.
- mynewaccish 4y agoWe need more such subsidies rather than subsidizing expensive luxury cars like Tesla. Also why is this thread getting flagged?
- robertlagrant 4y agoPeople need cars to do things. Bikes are great (I live somewhere more expensive partly so I can cycle to work) but they don't replace the incredible general utility of a car. It's possible with a very different lifestyle, a lot of a luck or a very decent income to structure your life in a way that allows zero car usage, but for most people a better car is the best option.
- ScarZy 4y agoThis is a design choice by urban planners for the past 60 years. This has statistically lead to detrimental aspects of every day living, and additionally cars are often not an attainable mode of transport for the poor, and the poor are often living in areas that have to deal with the by-product of pollution. The incidental-exercise aspects that are positively impacting mental health health and obesity. We need to build better places for people, not cars, and this is something that's been ingrained over legislation from the automotive industry for the past century. Cars are part of the puzzle, and shared cars could be exceptional. They are not sustainable to produce or operate and never will be. One company of interest for me at least is Culdesac: https://culdesac.com/ https://culdesac.com/
- batiudrami 4y agoIt's quite possible in many cities for a family to have one car rather than the accepted standard of two, however. You don't need to give up both cars.
- techtalkacc 4y agoNot if you have decent public transportation. This is probably a novel concept in America, but in most other parts of the developed world a decent public transportation allows one to live car-free. I use my car so rarely that I am considering selling it.
- brabel 4y agoDo they just scrap the cars they trade in? Isn't that a huge waste of material or do they re-use much of it? Is the benefit from taking a car off the streets greater than the pollution caused by throwing away a large amount of plastic/metal/toxic stuff?
- lm28469 4y agoIt depends on the car, in the short/mid term the least polluting vehicle is the one you already own. But I feel like people won't trade a newish (ie less polluting car) for a e bike. They probably will trade in shitboxes which barely pass inspection, in that case it probably is a good move. That being said electric bikes aren't the greenest thing out there, I've heard people boast about being ecological because they bought an ebike to replace their regular bike, or bought an EV to replace public transport + bike, in both case it's a net negative pollution wise.
- lm28469 4y ago> Straightforward grants that do not hinge on scrapping a motor vehicle have also been raised from €200 to €300 and up to €300 for lower income households and people with disabilities. Emphasis on "lower income", the cap is 13k euros per year, which is under the annual min wage if you work full time. If you earn above that you get nothing at all Also, all the options (lump sums and trade-ins) are capped to 40% of the price of the bike. So you'd have to trade your car for a 6000+ euros electric bike to get the full 3000 euros
- dmix 4y agoI’ve lost count of how many times good sounding government programs turn out to be lame once you read the fine print. I really can’t see many people fitting either of those categories, unless they were already going to get rid of their car. And I’m a big fan of e-bikes. Most e-bikes cost around $2-3k so it’s basically a $1k subsidy where you pay the other $1k for a bike.
- cheschire 4y agoWhy is it lame that they had a specific group of disadvantaged people they were trying to target? When governments make blanket payouts (i.e. what the US did during COVID) people complain about the money going to people who don't need it. In this case they had a very specific group, intent, and budget. Isn't this what "small" government is supposed to do? And the bikes they're trying to encourage people to buy probably aren't the high end ones, or even the mid-range bikes. I'm guessing someone did some research at some point.
- sokoloff 4y agoWow. I'm shocked that e-bikes are expensive enough for a subsidy of that size. I'd have expected e-bikes to run $750-$2000 (dollar and Euro are close to parity).
- londons_explore 4y agoGovernment subsidies push the price of those goods up. You can bet all ebike shops in france are rewriting signs right now to tack an extra few thousand euros onto the price of everything they sell...
- dfadsadsf 4y agoGov subsidies push non trade-able goods prices up. Ebike is closer to global commodity than something like housing or education. French market is not big enough to move global prices either way. Short term price spike is possible but barrier to entry to import Chinese bikes are low so market will adjust quickly (unless law mandate that you have to buy bicycle made in France)
- sokoloff 4y agoEven if the law merely mandates you buy a bike from a French retailer, I'd expect to see a substantial part of the subsidy captured by the retailer. We see the same here in HVAC upgrade programs. To get the rebate, you have to have a state-licensed installation company do the install. When the rebates are increased, prices go up. When the rebate schemes end, there's a big push at the end of the program to get the install done while the rebates are in effect; once the schemes end, prices drop a bit [still end up higher than with-rebate, but by nothing like the full value of the rebate].
- cpach 4y agoCargo bikes such as Livelo/Bullitt/Bakfiets etc. usually start at ~€4000 or so.
- dfadsadsf 4y ago$750 e-bikes are not suitable as daily commuter bike - they use cheapest and generally unreliable components if you put miles on bicycle. They are ok for occasional weekend ride with kids but not much beyond that. (essentially quality wise they are equivalent to $100 Walmart bike) Low end bike suitable for commute is more like $1000-$1200. $2000 is mid range that stops requiring monthly tuning and use some brand name components.
- londons_explore 4y agoAnd just like that, the price of all ebikes increases by €4k...
- _heimdall 4y agoSounds like Cash fro Clunkers all over again. If it ends up the same, expect used car prices in France to be much higher for the next few yesrs! Scrapping cars that are still running isn't the answer here, neither is drastically increasing the use of lithium batteries without a plan for disposing of them later.
- Isinlor 4y agoEU has regulations for electric waste disposal: https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/waste-and-recycling/waste-electrical-and-electronic-equipment-weee_en https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/waste-and-recycling/... Electric appliances manufacturers are responsible for their disposal and recycling. Here is overview from Netherlands: https://weee.nl/en/news/e-bikes-are-electrical-equipment https://weee.nl/en/news/e-bikes-are-electrical-equipment
- elicash 4y agoCash for Clunkers wasn’t a bad program. It wasn’t amazing or anything-you could design something else to have far greater impact, but it was still a positive.
- Tade0 4y agoIn mostly nuclear-powered France it makes sense - both from an environmental and energy security standpoint to replace a large vehicle relying on imported fuels with one that has a 1.5kg li-ion battery.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago> neither is drastically increasing the use of lithium batteries without a plan for disposing of them later. The amount of battery in an ebike is miniscule compared to an EV. On the same order as the utility battery in a car. You could give everyone in europe an ebike and use less battery than is in EVs in california.
- mywittyname 4y agoThis is billshit non-sense that won't die. C4C scrapped 700,000 used vehicles. The USA sold 16,000,000 vehicles in 2007 and had ~250,000,000 registered vehicles. What caused used car prices to spike was the fact that new car sales fell from 15 million a year, to 10 million a year, then took five years to recover. That's a net loss of 25 million new cars, or about 10% of the total number of registered vehicles. 25,000,000 >> 700,000 https://www.statista.com/statistics/199983/us-vehicle-sales-since-1951/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/199983/us-vehicle-sales-... C4C scrapped a literal rounding error number of vehicles.
- icare_1er 4y agohalf of those will get stolen within 6 months, like any other bikes, and none of that will be investigated.
- Gigachad 4y agoThe good news is at least one ebike maker is making their bikes compatible with the Apple Find My network and another is using their own GPS tracking system. I’d expect in the future we could see something like the phone account lock system to just completely disable stolen ebikes like we have seen for phones.
- mxuribe 4y agoIf you know the 2 brands, would you mind sharing their names? That's a great feature, so i'm genuinely curious. Thanks!
- icare_1er 4y agoIf that was the case there wouldn't be tens of iphones stolen every day from every big city in the west. And indeed the "Find my Iphone" feature is quite nice, but i know for a fact that even with CCTV footage of the thief, plus the location of the iPhone ping shown to the police on the same day, they will not investigate and close the case.
- silon42 4y agoI did my own Bafang conversion... I could afford 3 ... but then I need to go back to the car.
- lkbm 4y agoI've been biking in Austin TX for 11 years now, and the only time my bike was stolen was when I left it unlocked at my house for several months. I'll grant that I've been fortunate and bikes do get stolen far too often (especially, I suspect, e-bikes), but I don't think we have anywhere near a 100% annual theft rate. I'd estimate under 30%. Could be that France is especially bad, though. My intuition is build almost entirely on the experiences of my friends and I here in Austin.
- mquandalle 4y agoThere are also a lot of local grants offered by city councils, departements and regions, and they differ in their income conditions. I created a calculator that reference them all : https://mesaidesvelo.fr https://mesaidesvelo.fr (in french)
- someweirdperson 4y agoConspiracy theory, or (un?)intended consequences: The cars that will be traded in will be in such bad condition that otherwise they would be exported. Fewer exported cheap cars increase the demand for small cheap cars from other sources. The main product of the french automotive industry is small cheap cars. This subsidy isn't purely about more bikes, and getting cars off the road, but also - indirectly - to the advantage of the french automotive industry.
- cromka 4y agoI don't think you got your math right: previously one old car would be replaced by one new. The old one would (in your example) find another, presumably poorer local-market owner. With this subsidy, an old car get replaced with an e-bike. It is then scraped or, as you say, exported, so a poorer consumer either saves up and buys a new car, or doesn't. So in both examples you have either same number of new cars sold, or a deficit. Your theory doesn't hold up. In real life, with subsidies like this, you end up with bigger number of used cars on the market, which also happen to be on average younger than up until this point, because a subsidy like this promotes giving up cars that would otherwise be held by their owners for longer. They also flood the market somewhat, so the price of a used car goes down. A poorer customer in market for a used car now has a better choice of cheaper and younger cars, so unlikely they'd be saving to buy a new car, benefiting car manufacturers. In real-real life, there's too many variables and your conspiracy theory just doesn't make sense. EDIT: oh, I now see that you meant that this would increase demand on the markets where used cars were traditionally exported to. Well, that makes sense, but a program like this is unlikely to make a big dent in a used car market abroad, collectively, especially that it is meant to take very old cars off the road, and emerging markets can afford newer cars already? And in particular it wouldn't benefit French manufacturers only.
- qwerty456127 4y agoWhat if I buy a very bad old used car nobody wants for €100, can I bring it and get a €4k e-bike in France?
- gniv 4y agoYou need to have owned the car for a year.
- qwerty456127 4y agoWhat if I buy it now and come in a year?
- Tade0 4y agoYou'll pay more in insurance.
- jonasdegendt 4y agoNot entirely relevant since I'm in Belgium and not France, but it's a similar type of scheme with similar intent, get cars off of the road, and I think it deserves some attention. As for some context, in Belgium we have a high tax burden on wages and one of the ways this was historically cushioned was by allowing companies to offer certain extra benefits to employees at a big tax advantage. One of these things was salary cars and it has resulted in an absolute explosion of subsidized cars among white collar workers. There's about 650000 of these cars on the road, and that's in a country of 11 million people. About a year ago the government came up with a scheme that allows people to turn in their salary cars and receive the same tax advantaged amount in the form of a monthly mobility budget that can be spent on alternative forms of transportation. I have a little handy app that allows me to get rent scooters, do car sharing, get reimbursed a rental car. It's cumulative in the sense that whatever hasn't been spent by the end of the month, just rolls over into the next months balance. Last but not least, like the French scheme, it's allows for the purchases of e-bikes, bikes, electric motorcycles, scooters etc. The French scheme seems a bit too binary in comparison.
- mxuribe 4y agoA mobility budget is a great idea!
- Gordonjcp 4y agoI already have a bike. I don't understand how an e-bike could replace my car.
- namdnay 4y agodepends where you live, but if the infrastructure around you is decent, an e-cargo-bike can do 99% of what a car can do, and you can use short-term rentals for the rest
- Gordonjcp 4y agoOkay how does an e-cargo-bike carry 400kg of parts, tools, and equipment, and go up mountains? Are they any good at pulling trailers, maybe 3500kg or so?
- namdnay 4y agoI think the objective of measures like this is to encourage use of ebikes for individual/family use, especially in urban or suburban settings (which means 80% of the population), not professional use in rural or mountain environments.
- isbvhodnvemrwvn 4y agoPeople who carry this shit are in an extreme minority.
- pjmlp 4y agoAll these initiatives keep missing the point why people have a car in first place. 4 people can share a ride, one doesn't get wet or freezing cold, goods can be easily transported,.... Bycicles are a complement, not a replacement.
- unglaublich 4y ago80% of rides is a single person commuting and standing in traffic jams during normal, mild days. Cars are a complement.
- pjmlp 4y agoWith radio, air conditioning, seated on a comfy seat,... And regarding two wheels transport, I still don't see why one should get an electric bicycle versus an e-motorbike.
- rtlfe 4y ago> With radio, air conditioning, seated on a comfy seat,... Last year 40,000 people died in car crashes in just the US. Cars are one of the top contributors to climate change and air pollution. The space they take up prevents people who want to walk from being able to. But yeah, that's all worth it so you can listen to the radio.
- pjmlp 4y agoHow many bycicle accidents, with deep injuries?
- debesyla 4y agohttps://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/813118 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/... says that in 2020 it was 0.269 deaths per 100k of population -> so around 890 total deaths in that year. (There are stats about other transportation modes too.)
- debesyla 4y agoSame was offered in Lithuania the previous year: replacing the car with newer one (https://www.apva.lt/kvietimas-maziau-tarsiam-automobiliui-isigyti/ https://www.apva.lt/kvietimas-maziau-tarsiam-automobiliui-is...) and replacing the car with e-bike/scooter (https://www.apva.lt/uz-1000-euru-kompensacija-sunaikinus-tarsu-automobili-bus-galima-isigyti-ir-el-motoroleri-arba-el-motocikla/ https://www.apva.lt/uz-1000-euru-kompensacija-sunaikinus-tar...). It was fairly successful campaing, AFAIK. (My grandpa switched his 2001 year crappy Mazda for two new electric biclycles.)
- pasdechance 4y agoThe fine print says it all, and it is restrictive. But, as someone who has lived in France for about 16 years, I have certainly met people that meet the requirements. Do they want to have an e-bike? Maybe. I could see someone trading their vehicle and taking advantage of this but probably get another vehicle within the year. There are plenty of e-bike options in France though, and individual cities also offer interesting refunds. Also, something else we think about a lot in France is the annual cost: A car costs about €6,000/year (financing, insurance, repairs, tolls, fuel, etc.)[1]. [1] https://pro.mobicoop.fr/cout-utilisation-voiture/ https://pro.mobicoop.fr/cout-utilisation-voiture/
- radu_floricica 4y agoI'd rather have a flat 4k subsidy for an electric car - and watch manufacturers give away 4k cars.