France is now offering a €4k e-bike subsidy to people who trade in their car
ebiketips.road.cc
ebiketips.road.cc
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
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.
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.
[0]https://www.costco.com/jetson-bolt-pro-folding-electric-bike...
I bet you'd get less resellers, but you'd definitely still get a lot of them.
If "France is now offering a €4k e-bike subsidy" is 96% the cash they got from selling their car, then it's a strange turn of phrase. It's more like "the secondhand car market is offering a €4k everything-subsidy if you give up your car"!
That bike looks like one of those mini circus bikes that clowns ride
This was probably made targeting some specific category that isn't the one you're thinking.
Better give some money to people who don't need it than make some overly complicated plan that requires a specialist to access and only targets some friends.
I personally agree with that. But then it always ending up hurting the politicians that came up with that policy because medias will broadcast 24-7 examples of the few people that received it that did not deserve it. Even 2 years after COVID stimulus, McConnel keeps repeating that people are still so rich from receiving thousands and thousands of dollars and that was responsible for 2022 labor shortage... (for $2000 distributed now more than a year ago)
They never say how it made people able to avoid joining black market jobs or crime. They just show restaurant owners crying because they can't find (greatly underpaid) workers.
A lot of these programs are made to sound good on campaign platforms but don’t do much at all IRL
Finding a way to subsidize conversion kits + local shops to do it would be a good way to actually help poor people https://www.autoevolution.com/news/skarper-s-revolutionary-e...
This is certainly true. Not sure if the one we had in Norway a few years ago can be classified as 'lame'. But it did more harm than good I think, as electric bikes became associated with a government subsidy for the rich. Most of the money went directly to the richest areas in Oslo (which are the richest areas in Norway probably). The subsidy gave buyers of electric bikes 5.000 NOK (~$500), but bikes were hard to come by and very expensive at the time (2016), so only the rich got on waiting lists for bikes and swooped up all the subsidies.
Source (in Norwegian):
https://www.aftenposten.no/oslo/i/O3Vl/el-sykkelsubsidier-gi...
What needs to be done is:
(1) End subsidies for electric cars, and give them for e-bikes instead. With the 4k on a 70k you're barely making a dent, and you can use it instead to give e.g. 5× 800€ subsidies on 1000-1500€ e-bikes.
(2) Lump sum instead of percentage. say 800€ on a 1000€ bike or 800€ on a 5000€ bike.
(3) Give the money directly on the purchase instead of returning it later. This latter mode essentially blocks out people who don't have the money upfront. With solar panels this is especially grating: in my country you can get 85% subsidy on solar panels, which is just ludicrously efficient (I installed mine for ~500€ 6 months ago and they have nearly paid themselves back). But for that to work you need to have >5k€ lying around that you don't mind only being paid back in the end of the year! That excludes ~80-90% of people, according to statistics.
Or lease the car and let the car company take it for you.
If it was an above the line credit, I would have highly considered it.
Otherwise you just accumulate credit that you may never use. Or you create new electricity use which defeats the purpose (but great if you actually sub pre-existing fuel consumption, if you have it). I wonder if nano-markets emerge where you invite your neighbourhood to charge their stuff at your home or run extension cords around…
Better to have a feed in tariff where you’re encouraging to conserve and produce.
Per https://ttlc.intuit.com/community/tax-credits-deductions/dis...
The purchasers of the plug-in Pacifica are not usually going to be in that demographic. I couldn't get to the $7500, so the Sienna wins.
Instead of subsidizing e-bikes, install bike infrastructure. Because bike infrastructure helps literally all people on bikes, including e-bikes. Because lets be honest, for most things you would use a bike for, normal bikes work perfectly fine and they are available to the very poor.
And such infrastructure would likely also improve live of pedestrians.
The US builds roads far to wide anyway, and thanks to all the work in Europe we know how to build good bike infrastructure. A new federal code for roads, bikes and pedestrian. This could also massively improve road safety in general.
We’ve had some Canadian content requirements, but it ends up being the mounting equipment and wiring. We haven’t developed capacity to put together our own core inverter components or panels themselves: too cheap to assemble overseas.
Batteries are going to get better regardless and even if they don't, the current state of the art is by far good enough for 99.9% of practical uses for e-bikes.
Ultimately the question is: did the electric bike program meet its goals? If one of the goals was to improve access to transportation for the poor, it sounds like it fell short. If the primary goal was to reduce the use of cars, it may have still been a success. (That said, I do question the commitment of those who had the money but choose not to until there was a subsidy.)
And you are out a car?
The dutch manage to do it (minus the elderly). Why is it so strange that a 40 year old dad and a 7 year old kid bike to work/school respectively?
But yes, suburbs make a car required for most people outside of Europe, but we have to start somewhere.
The most annoying PITA stuff are:
- theft. I worry a lot and have to fix the e-cargo on a fixed point everywhere. It's not always easy to find a good parking spot. But we got a long motorbike chain and you get used to it. Get insured though.
- flat tire, in the middle of nowhere... You gotta be prepared and either have a spare 'flat' tube or do the quick repair on the wheel, cause the back wheel is hell (for me) to handle. After a bad experience, now we have the kit (xiaomi portable compressor for <50eur, some spare tubes, some gluestuff, and the right strategy) always handy.
What possible reason do they have for that? All it does is encourage people to buy a more expensive bike.
I'm any case 4k is huge as most ebikes are cheaper than that... I suspect this is just to generate headline with a big number...
It's limited to one per person anyways, it's not like the mafia was going to buy 500k cheap cars and get 500k brand new free electric bikes.
Virtue signalling and a half disguised way of increasing sales and consumerism
If they really cared about climate they'd find proper ways (more/cheaper public transport, state sponsored bicycle sharing, &c.). This is "green capitalism", just slap an "electric" sticker on it and continue with the good old ways
It's not the same use case and in congested places like central Paris people who need a motor have scooters.
Feedback stats on these schemes are important but rarely conducted or published in a transparent way as the government obviously has a vested interest in claiming that they work great.
I am sure some people will use the scheme but probably because they were thinking of getting an ebike anyway and a replacing their car for a new one...
It's the usual and main issue with those schemes: they are political decisions and don't always make practical or economical sense.
Kicking the poors while they're down and/or pulling the rug out from under people who are just barely doing better is not a sustainable way of decarbonizing society and it seems like every decarbonizing policy does just that. We can get away with a few such policies but when they're all like that it doesn't work.
Instead of renting an uber&co bikes (companies which use public infrastructure yet pay virtually no local tax) you'd rent state owned bikes, parked on official bike parkings. It could be part of your existing public transportation package &c.
It really doesn't take a genius to see how the current mayhem could be improved on so many levels
This is the next step when you already have that.
A $2000 ebike will cost you $1200. A $4000 ebike will cost you $2400. A $6000 ebike will cost you $3600.
No. All it does is the 2000€ bike is now sold for 3000€.
Two wheeled also wins when there’s little space or the track is bad. What’s better really depends on your cycling proficiency, your intended use case and the road network you’ll likely use. And whatever you do, test-ride a few different ones to figure out what works for you. Avoid buying something off the internet without ever trying. (Things are different if you’re buying your second, third,…)
And if you have four wheels, people stop considering you a bike.
See video "The Car-Replacement Bicycle (the bakfiets)"
* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQhzEnWCgHA
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_bike#Long_John_bicycle
This makes modern 3-wheelers much more agile. They still have certain disadvantages- they’re wide and bulky, you’ll have trouble avoiding potholes etc., but they’re nowhere as bad as those boxes with wheels (tough you can still buy those - their upside is their low price)
Drivers licenses are a lifetime thing: no need to renew every X years, because it’s not your photo ID.
Another thing they do well (from a US/Canadian point of view) is identify their people.
It’s all national: very little is state by state or city by city.
Need a birth certificate or police report? Just sign in with your national ID and they’re in your mailbox in under a week.
None of this North American garbage where you need to provide fingerprints or further details because you share a birth date with a criminal or have the same name as someone else born somewhere else on the same day.
And when claiming a tax credit, that should make it straight forward, because it will be difficult to make the claim multiple times by varying your demographics.
Tax returns are bloody simple if you’re a non-billionaire: log in and verify that, yes, the information that the government already has about your income and housing situation is correct and click Accept. Done.
More Difficult to cheat on your rental property taxes since every property needs to be declared as an own-use or income property, with further details required for the latter.
https://www.5280.com/2022/07/everything-you-need-to-know-abo...
And be careful with such subsidies: when they created the 600eur subvention for e-cargo in Paris I observed a (maybe uncorrelated) substantial increase in price of e-cargos...
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).
That restriction means you cannot drive the vehicle in those zones during some periods or when there is a pollution event.
Also why is this thread getting flagged?
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.
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/
If you can do without, more power to you, but most people need cars. Not ebikes, not scooters, none of that electric hip stuff. They need cars.
You could run an actual public transport network there. But outside the cities and some light rail, it doesn't really exist - there's just a few bus lines that run every hour or so. Why? Because people have cars. When they tried to set up a bus line for that 5km to the light rail (which runs every 15 minutes, until late night), nobody would take it. People took the cars because they were used to it and didn't want to rely on public transport - especially since that was explicitly branded as "trial" - why change habits? And now, that bus no longer runs and people have to take the car.
Public transport thrives of network effects, but these are hard to establish. I believe it can be done, but only if you have an actual plan and the will to pull it through. It's a marathon, not a sprint as they always say.
If you're getting into regions where public transport is really hard to provide, then you're very quickly away from "most people need cars", because these regions may be large, but very few people actually live there. Let them use cars. Go for the large chunk that should not need cars.
Switzerland is somewhat exceptional with even small villages being connected by very regular trains, but its very possible.
And this is not some place where there are lots of other larger villages around.
My city is 70k people and its perfectly fine without a car or bike. Around this city, there are many smaller towns from 20k to 5k. In almost all of them its mostly feasible to live in without a car.
Before I moved out of my parents house, I lived in a 5k village about 25min by car outside of a 70k city. My parents have literally a herd of cows next to their property. And I live there just fine without a car.
The idea that you somehow need to be Paris density to have decent public transport is just not true.
And that was before E-Bike was even an option. I used to take the normal bike for all activities in the village and that was fine too. With a modern E-Bike, it would be very easy.
There are plenty of places in the US where this isn't true, and the number is growing.
There are far, far more cities below 200k and in those its very hard from what I understand. Even some large cities with 500k people have really bad public transport and bad bike infrastructure.
And to live a car free live, you need to live reasonably close to the center where housing is very expensive. From what I understand, the places that are best to live for walk-ability are usually the most expensive.
The summers are more or less solved with e-bikes: you spend less energy paddling, while still profiting from airflow. I hear France has a subsidy for them. Unless you're in Spain or Southern Italy I guess, or there's a heatwave going on.
I commute on a bike (at least, if I'm not going out after work) in London. I have a foldable Brompton bike fitted with an e-bike conversion kit from Swytch. I can ride in the middle of summer (ok, maybe not in those 40C days we just had) and arrive with no sweat. And if it rains, no matter, I stop, fold up my bike and jump on the Tube, or a bus.
I don't think so. Imagine: two people, each with a job not in cycling distance, and they have two kids at two schools in opposite directions. What do?
It's easy if you get lucky with locations of places you need to go to each day, or (more often) you have enough money to buy your way there, or if you have enough money to buy a place on good public transport routes, but as with most people if you don't, then cars are still the most affordable way to do it.
We structured society to depend on cars. That was largely a mistake, and one that can be solved.
Also, your (valid!) point that a horse is "wildly more inefficient than a car", how does a car stack up to an ebike, in daily use, in total lifecycle (including disposal), and in land usage?
You sweat only from thinking about moving out of the shade.
Electric bicycle are poor alternative to e-motorbikes, and even the wind at 120 km/h does little help regarding warm weather.
For the most part people walked or more recently used a train or trolley. Now we have bicycles and it turns out if you don't spend trillions designing your towns and cities for the benefit of the auto industry you can get where you're going on a bike or train faster than if you do and use a car because you don't have to spread everything out.
I live in the suburbs of a HCOL city in the US. My wife and I could absolutely afford two cars. We have one. I don't think we could go down to zero cars any time soon, but the transition to one car was a lot easier than we thought it would be.
Of course I have no idea the specifics of where you live, but I think many suburbs could make this possible within 5-10 years by:
-zoning an area to be the suburb's "downtown", i.e. a few blocks of small apartment buildings with ground floor retail including a grocery store and restaurants
-building high-quality bike lanes to get to the new downtown
-subsidizing a service like car2go to make it easy to access cars on-demand when you need to go somewhere farther
Check out this tweet series for many examples: https://twitter.com/search?q=turns%20into%20(from%3Amnolangr...
The dates there are just when the street view photos were taken. All of those smaller apartment buildings can be built in under a year, and 1-3 years for a highrise.
Some people need cars to do some things. For many of them it's easier and cheaper to use taxis and rentals than to own a car. As more people give up car ownership it becomes easier for others to follow.
With wfh, it's normal that I leave walking distance twice every week. Taxis, uber, or a rental car for a trip would definitely be cheaper.
- electric cargo bikes can replace cars for a lot of use cases (bringing children to school, etc)
- when you need to transport heavy load like furniture, you can rent a car or a van
- trains and/or car rental for longer trips
- bikes for short distances with lighter loads
I know a few people (low to medium incomes) in rural areas that are doing this and they are not activists or anything.
It would probably be possible to get away with a bike around here if you lived near everything you needed and really planned things out as far as getting places early in the summer and having an emergency plan if something happened and you were stuck somewhere in the freezing cold. At least you have some time in a vehicle cab before the temperature drops dangerously low.
There's definitely places where an ebike can replace a car. There's a lot of places where it would really limit your ability to get anywhere outside of walking distance.
Too hot, well, people are riding bikes in India. I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one.
Too far? That's an urban design problem. Nobody is suggesting rural people change their cars for bikes, although I do know some people who are loving their ebikes for property inspection...
It's also a scale problem. Inhabitants of dense, large cities like Paris or New York are famously considered generally rude, and I don't suppose there's anything special about those places other than density that would cause this.
Also real estate in dense cities is disproportionately more expensive.
Unclear why people believe this, but it's absolutely not true. Spend a day watching people walk to work in Manhattan vs people sitting still on the freeway in LA and it's clear who's happier and friendly. Road rage is real, and cars make people miserable.
Even taking your claim as true, you’ve confused unhappiness with rudeness in placing it here, without that conflation it's a non-sequitur.
That's not a law of nature. It's a result of deliberate choices made by city governments to restrict the supply of housing over the last few decades. Also the fact that it's so expensive and people keep moving there shows that it's an attractive way to live.
Is it even possible to build new housing when the population density is already at 20k people per square kilometre, like in the cities mentioned?
> Also the fact that it's so expensive and people keep moving there shows that it's an attractive way to live.
Did you consider that not everyone has a choice in the matter and the alternative is often unemployment? There's a trend towards urbanization because people move to where the jobs are. That alone doesn't make any place more livable.
Absolutely. The most expensive parts of Manhattan have tons of 3-4 story townhomes that would become 12+ stories practically overnight if the zoning allowed it. Not to mention all the single-family detached homes near subway, PATH, and LIRR stations nearby.
> There's a trend towards urbanization because people move to where the jobs are.
Look at how many people stayed in or moved into NYC after their jobs became fully remote in the last 2 years. It's a lot.
In Berlin these are refereed to as Kiez for example.
Very large cities don't really have a city center as such, or at least not for most people. And you can have reasonably priced apartments or townhouses in a well connected Kiez that has everything you need to live.
> Did you consider that not everyone has a choice in the matter and the alternative is often unemployment?
And about far more often its the case that people would prefer to live in the city but are forced to live some-where on the far edge and then having to buy a car to drive into the city.
This is what the real problem with the kind of low-density city surrounded by sprawl. The actual city centers are tiny to non existent and lots of cars.
Eh, I moved from a rural farming town to inner London. People in dense cities aren't rude, they're busy. If anything, city people are much more willing to help out, they just won't make a deal out of it. This twitter thread basically sums it up: https://twitter.com/jordonaut/status/1352363163686068226
Those that can afford it, quickly upgrade to motorbikes.
I rode bycicle for a couple of times in Norway and Switzerland during snowy Winters, no thanks.
I jumped of joy when I could get a green plates car, and wasn't an happy fellow when it broke down a couple of months later.
And this is a bit of a theme: anywhere close to a school - even close enough to cycle - costs more to live in. It's fine if you have a good job and can cycle the kids to school and then cycle back and work from home, or you've got enough money to buy somewhere near work and school (because you were fortunate enough to work and live on the same side of the same city) but this will not be the case for huge numbers of people. Huge numbers of people don't have that luxury.
Why do you need very decent income for that?
I haven’t had a car for a decade. I rent a vehicle once or twice a year when I need to transport things. Economically it’s a lot cheaper than owning a car.
Like, its perfectly reasonable in many places to live without a car. In fact, its the opposite of what you suggest, its possible LESS INCOME then having to own a car.
Compare the total cost of living and transportation when living a car centric lifestyle, compare to a bike/public transport one. I personally don't even use a bike, walking and public transport are perfectly fine in most even small (50k) European cities.
Now of course, sadly in many places in the US, living and work is often so far separated and so badly connected that the car is the only viable option. But that is exactly what needs to change.
And as soon as kids are old enough to ride bicycles or public transport themselves you live situation changes and you can very likely get rid of your car.
And if you actually look into places like Netherlands you will see that lots of people don't have cars even with small kids. The 'Soccor mom with SUV' cliche in the US, is replaced in the Netherlands by the 'Bicycle mom' who brings here kids in on bicycles.
Certainly, but I think it still sets up a certain tendency which gives car usage a headstart.
> And if you actually look into places like Netherlands you will see that lots of people don't have cars even with small kids. The 'Soccor mom with SUV' cliche in the US, is replaced in the Netherlands by the 'Bicycle mom' who brings here kids in on bicycles.
Absolutely, I'm not arguing that. I was mainly responding to the point that the behaviours and needs of parents with small kids supposedly don't matter because at any moment in time there aren't that many of them around.
That's why I can use my tax deductible commuter benefits for parking fees at work but not for bike costs. Or why the new "Electric Vehicle" tax credit in the climate/inflation bill can't be used to buy ebikes, only cars. Even though an e-bike is significantly better for the environment than a new Tesla.
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].
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.
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.
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.
(My grandpa switched his 2001 year crappy Mazda for two new electric biclycles.)
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.
https://environment.ec.europa.eu/topics/waste-and-recycling/...
Electric appliances manufacturers are responsible for their disposal and recycling.
Here is overview from Netherlands:
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.
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-...
C4C scrapped a literal rounding error number of vehicles.
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.
Cars are a complement.
And regarding two wheels transport, I still don't see why one should get an electric bicycle versus an e-motorbike.
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.
(There are stats about other transportation modes too.)
Where I’m at my 10 mile commute on a bike path is both faster and safer than via car or emoto.
Emotorcycles also (usually & rightly) require higher levels of certification to ride because they are more dangerous to the riders and other road users.
You can easily carry 3 kids or one adult as a passenger on an e-cargo bike. Or even better, each of the 4 people can ride their own bike and the total cost is still less than one car.
> one doesn't get wet
Fenders
> or freezing cold
Jacket
> goods can be easily transported
Most things people need in daily life can be easily carried by bike.
$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.
In places with a decent bicycling culture you can get one second hand for a hundred euros or so.
I get that it’s supposed to get cars off the road, but the assistance without trade-in is way lower and IIRC just for very low incomes (under 15000 euros or so) for the national subsidy.
That means if you need bulk transport you get little to no help on a cargo ebike (which tend to be on the expensive side especially as they’re not ultra common yet), unless you first buy a junker to trade in.
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.
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...
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].
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.
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.
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.
But I do agree, this is way higher than basically anywhere in the world except a few metros which are crime hotspots.