Grants for electric cargo bikes for an Île-de-France company

The word “grant” covers two realities that official pages rarely tell apart: the grant paid to the private individual who buys their bike, and the grant paid to the employer who equips its business. The first is plentiful and well documented, the second is rare. Before writing any subsidy into a financing plan, two questions have to be settled, in this order. Is a legal entity among the beneficiaries listed in the award regulations? And, if it is, do those regulations require the company to own the bike?

The second question is decisive as soon as the fleet is financed under a crédit-bail. Crédit-bail, within the meaning of article L. 313-7 of the code monétaire et financier, differs from a plain rental in the purchase option granted to the lessee: throughout the term of the contract the company uses the equipment without owning it, and ownership stays with the finance house until the option is exercised, if it ever is. Aid regulations that subsidise a “purchase” and exclude rental therefore shut the door on this arrangement, however solid the application.

Every scheme examined below is dated and tied to its official source, listed in the appendix. The scope of this research covers the State, the Région Île-de-France (the Île-de-France regional authority), Île-de-France Mobilités, the Ville de Paris (the City of Paris), the Métropole du Grand Paris and ADEME (the French environment and energy agency). It covers neither the eight départements franciliens (the county-level authorities of the Île-de-France region) taken one by one, nor the intercommunalités (inter-municipal authorities) and établissements publics territoriaux (territorial public authorities): no conclusion of absence can therefore be drawn about them.

Of the schemes identified in the course of this research, the Ville de Paris is the one that pays the highest unit amount to a legal entity. Its page devoted to mobility grants, updated on 29 June 2026, provides, for the purchase of a cargo bike or a cargo tricycle, with or without electric assistance, a grant of 50% of the purchase price excluding VAT, capped at 1,200 euros, with a maximum of one grant per entity. The purchase must be later than 22 October 2024.

The beneficiaries are companies with fewer than fifty employees registered with the registre du commerce et des sociétés de Paris (the Paris trade and companies register), sole traders and members of the liberal professions domiciled in Paris, and charitable associations recognised as being of public utility that hold premises in Paris. The bike must be new, carry a unique identifier entered in the fichier national unique des cycles identifiés (the French national register of identified cycles), comply with standard EN 15194 where it is pedal-assisted, and not be fitted with a lead-acid battery. The handling of applications concerning refurbished bikes is currently suspended, following AFNOR's decision to discontinue the V3R label.

The point that bears directly on a financed fleet is drafted without ambiguity. The Ville writes that vehicles taken “under a location avec option d'achat (leasing or crédit-bail) are not eligible” (our translation), and covers in the same sentence vehicles that are simply rented. Crédit-bail is therefore named expressly among the excluded arrangements, and the same exclusion is repeated for the Ville's other business grants. A Paris company that finances its cargo bikes under a crédit-bail contract cannot claim these 1,200 euros.

On timing, the Ville states that “grants are paid within about 4 months of receipt of the email accepting your application” (our translation). As with Île-de-France Mobilités, payment depends on the budget envelope being available and is in no way automatic.

The first is the bonus vélo (the French national bike purchase grant). Décret n° 2024-1084 of 29 November 2024 on grants for the purchase or rental of low-emission vehicles repealed articles D. 251-1-1 to D. 251-1-4 of the code de l'énergie, which carried that grant. The repeal took effect the day after the décret was published in the Journal officiel, and the former rules were kept only for vehicles ordered before that date, provided that invoicing, or payment of the first rental instalment, took place by 14 February 2025 at the latest, an exception expressly extended to cycles. The national bonus vélo no longer exists.

The second is the prime à la conversion (the French scrappage grant), abolished by the same décret, which repeals articles D. 251-4 to D. 251-4-4 of the code de l'énergie. It is therefore no more available than the first, either to a private individual or to a company.

The third is the most bewildering, because it existed, disappeared, was recreated, then abolished again in a little over six months. It is fiche d'opération standardisée TRA-EQ-131, a standardised operation sheet under the certificats d'économies d'énergie scheme (French energy-saving certificates, known as CEE), the only one ever to have covered the cargo bike. An arrêté (ministerial order) of 19 February 2025 repealed the sheet entitled “Achat ou location, par une personne morale, de vélos-cargos neufs ou reconditionnés” (purchase or rental, by a legal entity, of new or refurbished cargo bikes, our translation). A sheet bearing the same code was recreated by an arrêté of 18 August 2025, applicable to operations begun on or after 1 September 2025 and valued at 83,000 kWh cumac per bike. An arrêté of 29 September 2025, published in the Journal officiel of 30 September 2025, repealed it in turn, requiring applicants to send the minister responsible for energy, within three calendar days, the list of operations already begun. The recreated sheet lasted a month.

The check was carried through to the end: no reinstating arrêté was identified, either among the arrêtés on certificats d'économies d'énergie published in 2026, or in the consolidated version of the arrêté of 22 December 2014 in force as at 27 July 2026. As at 27 July 2026, there is no valuation in certificats d'économies d'énergie for the purchase or the financing of a cargo bike by a legal entity.

Two schemes answer expressly. The Ville de Paris names crédit-bail among the arrangements excluded from its business grants. The Région Île-de-France does the same in its FAQ, treating crédit-bail and leasing as non-eligible rental. On these two funding windows the answer is therefore negative and there is no room for interpretation: ownership of the equipment is a condition of the grant.

One scheme does not answer. The award regulations for the Île-de-France Mobilités aide à la location do subsidise a rental, but they define it as a rental “between the Applicant and a private bicycle rental company” (our translation), and they say nothing about crédit-bail or location avec option d'achat. Neither exclusion nor admission. Whether a crédit-bail contract entered into with a finance house falls within that definition is not settled by the text, and it will not be settled by a page on a website. The only serious course is to put the question in writing to the office handling applications before committing to the order, and to keep the grant out of the figures until an answer has been obtained.

The general rule that emerges from these three readings is easy to remember. Funding windows built to subsidise a purchase require ownership and rule out crédit-bail. The only window built to subsidise rental use stays silent on this particular arrangement. A company that finances its fleet under a crédit-bail must therefore reason without any grant, and treat any subsidy obtained as an incidental gain.

The special case of the tax reduction for making a fleet available

Article 220 undecies A of the code général des impôts is not a subsidy but a tax reduction, and it follows a different logic: it rewards making a fleet of bicycles available free of charge to employees for their journeys between home and workplace. It therefore belongs to the company bike rather than to public grants, and it is on our page devoted to the company bike and the avantage en nature (benefit in kind under French payroll rules) that we set out its mechanism, its conditions and its expiry date.

Only one point deserves to be retained here, because it governs the financial arrangement just as much as the grants examined above: the eligibility of a fleet financed under a crédit-bail for this tax reduction is not established. We therefore do not present it as an acquired advantage.

Wander Fleet puts Île-de-France companies in touch with crédit-bail companies that may be willing to finance their electric cargo bikes. This activity corresponds to that of the indicateur referred to in point 2° of article R. 519-2 of the code monétaire et financier: the role is limited to passing the contact details of an interested person to a credit institution or a financing company. Wander is not registered with ORIAS and carries on no banking-transaction intermediation activity.

Three consequences follow, which we prefer to put in writing. Wander does not finance and does not lend: the financing is granted by a crédit-bail company, separate from Wander. Wander sends no costing to any given client: the monthly payment, the term, the guarantees, the residual value and acceptance of the application are matters for the finance house alone; the site's simulators, self-service and based on published, adjustable assumptions, are not a costing addressed to anyone. Wander claims no partnership: no financing contract has been signed to date, and any statement to the contrary would be inaccurate.

On grants, the position is the same. We document the state of the law and we tell you where to read the regulations. We do not file the applications on your behalf, we guarantee no award, and we build no sales argument on a subsidy whose award does not depend on us.