Written by Dr. Noel Cass

On 25^th February 2025, the government announced further financial support for EVs – but only if they’re fully motorised. £120m has been made available as “support to help drivers, businesses, fleets and cabbies make the switch to cleaner vehicles” – £2.5-5k support for vans, £4k for a black cab, and £500 for electric motorbikes. There is still no support for buying an electric-assist bike, though. Why is this? 

One answer is that the government may not feel that e-bikes reduce carbon emissions in the same way as a straightforward swap of a fossil-fuelled vehicle for an electric one; they may assume that e-bikes and e-cargo bikes only replace foot, bike, and bus use. However, our project lending e-cargo bikes to people in Leeds, Oxford and Brighton found that each trial household used the bike to travel an average of 36-42km per household per week, and that 55% of those kms (18-19km per week per household) replaced car use. That represents about 3.8kg of carbon saving a week¹, or 197.6kg a year. The Cycle 2 Work Alliance state that “a commuter who switches from car to bike for an 8km commute saves 750kg of CO₂ emissions annually”, but e-cargo bikes can help stretch these benefits beyond the commute. Our most prolific users often used the passenger-carrying capabilities of the bike to tie commutes to school-runs – two of the most car-dependent regular trips in everyday lives.  

When asked about how policymakers and the industry might increase e-cargo bike ownership and use, ELEVATE research participants stressed that there should be government financial help with the cost of purchasing. Although they were wealthier, on average, than the households in their neighbourhoods, and 65% said that they were more likely to buy an e-cargo bike after their experience of borrowing one for a month, 67% stated cost was a very important in making that decision. One pointed out that CTW needs to work better for those on lower income, because salary sacrifice as a tax relief provides greater benefits for those on higher pay. Others suggested: a general tax-free allowance for purchase; a ‘get rid of your second car’ grant; a ‘get rid of your only car’ grant; generally making e-cargo bikes cheaper than a car and removing VAT. 

We also found out that people were interested in other ways of getting access to e-cargo bikes, rather than necessarily buying them outright – might this be another route for people to take to replace some of those car miles? Based on existing innovative schemes, such ‘routes to access’ might include back-to-base hire schemes, bike libraries, ‘try before you buy’, government-funded trials private rental/leasing. There are also organisations and bike shops looking into longer-term leasing arrangements and financial arrangements, which might work similarly to options enabling people to spread the costs of car ownership.  

Given that e-cargo bikes, in particular, are able to replace more car use than simple A-to-B commutes, because they enable school runs and shopping to be combined, surely it would make sense for the government to extend financial support for these approaches , given that they can reduce carbon emissions more than their fully-powered cousins, with all the well-known additional benefits of physical and mental health? 

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