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It only took a few minutes Tuesday for Denver to run out of e-bike vouchers. The city said 850 rebates were claimed in that time.
DENVER — Denver’s e-bike rebate program is back.
The latest round of applications opened Tuesday at 11 a.m. Within just seven minutes, the city said, 850 rebates were claimed.
With the rebates, all Denver residents can get $300 off the cost of an e-bike or up to $500 off an e-cargo bike.
Residents who qualify for the income-qualified rebate can save $1,200 or up to $1,400 on the sale of an e-cargo bike.
More than 3,000 Denverites applied for rebates within the first three weeks of the program’s launch in April 2022. The city then retooled the application process, making a limited number of rebates available each month.
Since the beginning of the program, Denver said 7,347 e-bike vouchers have been redeemed. Among those:
- 3,287 were claimed by income-qualified participants
- 47% are e-cargo bikes and 53% are standard e-bikes
- 17 were adaptive e-bikes, an option added in 2023
The city said 233 vouchers were redeemed through a new partnership, started this year, between the city and 52 community-based organizations working to get rebates to people who face a barrier to accessing the city’s online portal.
“What we’ve noticed this year is about 90% of our bike sales have incorporated one of the rebates,” said MacKenzie Hardt, owner of Hardt Family Cyclery in Aurora.
Hardt’s shop specializes in e-cargo bikes, a niche corner of the market. He said his customers are often replacing a car with a bike, rather than just adding another bike to their inventory.
“Most of sales are for families wanting out get out of the car for school pick up and drop off, not have to do grocery shopping in a car as well, being able to replace those 5 mile or less trips by bike,” he said. “We’re seeing, on average year to year, about 68% of customers have sold a car to buy their bike. That’s one more car completely off the road.”
Citing a 2022 report, the city of Denver said e-bikes from this program displace 4.1 million vehicle miles, eliminate 1,447 tons of greenhouse gas emissions every year and save Denver residents $1 million in fuel and maintenance costs.
Hardt said the business impact has been interesting. Most of his customers are purchasing a bike with a voucher from this program, but the business ebbs and flows around the timing of the voucher release. So there are very busy weeks, and there are very dry weeks.
“You get really busy every two months. Really heavy points with high sales and high traffic in shop. And really low points between them. So it’s been tough on small business owners with the design of this year’s release dates,” he said. “A lot of shop owners agree with me that it’s been tough to see it go straight through the roof then straight through the floor every other month.”
But customer interest remains strong. Looking to the future, Hardt said he’d like to see the city release more rebates each month and see more financing options for e-bikes, similar to financing options for vehicles.
“It’s a drop in the bucket of what we need if we want to hit our climate goals, if we want to hit our Vision Zero goals for pedestrian safety as well,” he said. “So this helps in all those things, but it’s only just getting started.”
Denverites who are interested in e-bikes but not yet ready to claim a rebate voucher can sign up for notifications before each round of rebates becomes available.
To help limit the number of unredeemed vouchers and ensure rebates are available for those ready to buy, the city encourages anyone who might be interested in an e-bike to visit a participating bike shop, ask questions and test out a few models before applying for a voucher.
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