OLYMPIA – The Washington State Department of Transportation is relaunching the state’s WE-Bike e-bike rebate program on March 30 to help even more travelers get rolling with active transportation.
You’re not wrong about that, but it’s just unfortunate that the subsidy isn’t large enough to actually make the up-front price for the LBS bike cheaper than the mail-order bike. If people were already struggling to afford something like a Rad or Lectric before, a subsidy for a bike that, at the end of the day, still ends up costing more than that doesn’t actually help them.
I agree the $300 level doesn’t land quite as hard with LBS compared to mail-order bikes. This is seen in the earlier program’s data:
“84 percent of applicants awarded $1,200 towards an e-bike purchase redeemed them, while just 24 percent of the applicants awarded a $300 rebate redeemed theirs. Expenditures on rebates during this pilot were $2.58 million out of an available $4.2 million.”
Still, a 24% voucher conversion rate isn’t nothing! And it did lift ebike sales, even if the voucher didn’t apply:
“The UW also found rebate offers substantially increased e-bike purchases: 92 percent of purchases in the income-qualified group and 70 percent in the non-income-qualified group were induced by the rebate, leading to an estimated 2,490 induced purchases overall. These results demonstrate that rebates are an effective tool for sparking new e-bike sales, particularly among lower-income households where larger incentives are needed.”
You’re not wrong about that, but it’s just unfortunate that the subsidy isn’t large enough to actually make the up-front price for the LBS bike cheaper than the mail-order bike. If people were already struggling to afford something like a Rad or Lectric before, a subsidy for a bike that, at the end of the day, still ends up costing more than that doesn’t actually help them.
I agree the $300 level doesn’t land quite as hard with LBS compared to mail-order bikes. This is seen in the earlier program’s data:
“84 percent of applicants awarded $1,200 towards an e-bike purchase redeemed them, while just 24 percent of the applicants awarded a $300 rebate redeemed theirs. Expenditures on rebates during this pilot were $2.58 million out of an available $4.2 million.”
Still, a 24% voucher conversion rate isn’t nothing! And it did lift ebike sales, even if the voucher didn’t apply:
“The UW also found rebate offers substantially increased e-bike purchases: 92 percent of purchases in the income-qualified group and 70 percent in the non-income-qualified group were induced by the rebate, leading to an estimated 2,490 induced purchases overall. These results demonstrate that rebates are an effective tool for sparking new e-bike sales, particularly among lower-income households where larger incentives are needed.”
I’d consider that a successful program!