Denver's Popular E-Bike Rebate Program Returns Today

Today, July 11, is a very special day, and not just because everyone can get a free Slurpee from 7-Eleven. After a two-month pause owing to high demand, Denver's e-bike rebate program will return at 8 a.m.

"We’re really excited to be reopening this very popular program. We were blown away by the initial enthusiasm," says Winna MacLaren, the manager of communication and engagement for the Denver Office of Climate Action, Sustainability and Resiliency, which introduced the three-year program, budgeted at $3 million a year, on Earth Day.

CASR now has 2,000 new e-bike rebates ready to go. Half of them are earmarked for income-qualified residents: people enrolled in some type of welfare assistance, such as food stamps, or those who have a household income below 80 percent of the area median income ($62,600 for a one-person household and $71,550 for a two-person household). While any Denver resident can apply for a $400 rebate on an e-bike purchase from a participating shop, an income-qualified individual can get a $1,200 rebate. And anyone can get an additional $500 rebate on an e-cargo bike, which is equipped for larger purchases and shopping trips. The rebates are taken off the purchase price; the city pays the shops directly.

After the program went live on April 22, 3,250 people applied for rebates within just a few weeks. CASR paused the program on May 11, since it didn't want to exhaust the year's budget all at once. In addition to e-bikes, it's also providing rebates for heat pumps, electric vehicle-charging stations and other energy-saving equipment for Denver homes

The e-bike vouchers expire after sixty days, though, and by July 8, only 961 people had redeemed their e-bike vouchers — making room in the budget for another round of rebates. Of those initial purchases, 623 used regular vouchers, while 338 were income-qualified vouchers. And 30 percent of all redeemed vouchers included the add-on for e-cargo bikes.

Given the high rate of unredeemed rebates during the first round, MacLaren is advising people not to apply for the program until they're ready to buy. "What we don’t want is all of those rebates sitting out in the wild for sixty days. Those are rebates that somebody might be able to use that somebody isn’t using," she says.

And there will be other chances: CASR plans four additional rebate releases on August 1, September 6, October 3 and November 7, as well as another large release on December 5, in time for the holiday season.

CASR designed the e-bike rebate program to get more people biking around Denver instead of driving cars — to benefit the climate, reduce road congestion and help with overall public health. The rebate offers a "nudge" in consumer thinking to help establish a "market transformation," MacLaren notes.

The e-bike program is the most high-profile project yet from CASR, which the City of Denver chartered in July 2020; both Mayor Michael Hancock and Denver City Council had pushed for a new city agency designed to help fight climate change. In November 2020, Denver voters approved a .25 percent sales tax increase that should generate up to $40 million a year in funding for the office.