California (Finally) Launches E-Bike Program
After years of delays, setbacks, and a general lack of transparency, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) will launch its e-bike incentive program next week.
The first e-bike incentive application window opens on December 18th at 6 p.m. PST.
The California E-Bike Incentive Project “provides up to $2,000 of point-of-sale incentives to support the purchase of a new electric bicycle” and is funded by CARB, whose “mission is to promote and protect public health, welfare, and ecological resources through effective reduction of air pollutants while recognizing and considering effects on the economy.”
About 1,500 e-bike vouchers will be released to “income-eligible” California residents, and future vouchers will be made available in the coming months.
In parts of the US that have already enacted e-bike incentives — Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, Raleigh, and Tampa, among others — demand has been sky-high, and California’s 1,500 vouchers will likely go within minutes.
“We know that e-bike incentive programs are popular and work: they get people out of their cars and onto e-bikes, and that’s a win for all Californians,” SAFE Founder and Executive Director Damian Kevitt said. “It’s a shame, however, that whether it’s implementing speed cameras that save lives or adopting e-bike incentive programs to reduce carbon emissions, California has been so far behind the pack. I’m hopeful we can see some real momentum to a larger e-bike incentive program in the future, similar to how much is spent to subsidize EVs. ”
A Long and Winding Road
Melanie Curry at StreetsblogCal has been chronicling the ongoing saga since 2021 when $10 million was first budgeted for a statewide e-bike incentive program.
The state received “three starkly different applications” for the project, ultimately choosing a San Diego organization known as Rider Safety Visibility (RSV)/Pedal Ahead, despite the group’s application differing substantially from what the state seemed to want.
“Rider Safety Visibility turned in an application that implied it would recreate the program it was running in San Diego, but that program was not at all like the state's plan,” Curry writes. “The Pedal Ahead program run by RSV is a ‘loan-to-own’ program wherein income-qualified people are given e-bikes, which they could keep after a certain period of time as long as they fulfilled certain requirements, like riding at least 35 miles a week and bringing them in regularly to be checked (and to have their mileage checked on Strava units included on the bike).”
More straightforwardly, the statewide plan would simply give money to people to buy their own e-bikes.
Despite the differences between the RSV/Pedal Ahead application and the state’s incentive plan, CARB selected the former as the administrator of the $10 million program.
Pedal Ahead (as they are known at the bottom of the program’s website) was announced as the program’s administrator in August 2022 — a full month after the program was set to begin.
At the time, there was concern about Pedal Ahead’s ability to administer a program so different from their existing program in San Diego — in addition to what looked a lot like cronyism to some.
“When CARB announced that they had chosen Pedal Ahead as administrator for the program in 2022, advocates were quietly but frantically worried that a big mistake had been made,” Curry writes. “Rumors swirled about Pedal Ahead's founder, Ed Clancy, and questions were raised about his personal connections to former CARB board member Nathan Fletcher, who helped Clancy launch his organization, Rider Safety Visibility (RSV), of which Pedal Ahead is a part.”
Though they may have been the first to lodge complaints, bike advocates are not the only parties concerned about Pedal Ahead’s $10 million contract. According to reporting from the San Diego Tribune, Clancy is currently “the subject of at least three investigations,” including a criminal probe conducted by the California Department of Justice and a probe started by CARB itself.
Additionally, the San Diego Association of Governments terminated its relationship with Clancy and Pedal Ahead earlier this year, removing the organization from administering the city’s e-bike incentive program — the very same local program that helped Pedal Ahead obtain the statewide $10 million contract.
After all, CARB chose Pedal Ahead because of its experience with e-bikes in San Diego. How did Pedal Ahead get that experience? Through funding from the aforementioned Nathan Fletcher, who announced the creation of Pedal Ahead in 2020 and helped secure the org’s initial funding through “a San Diego County Community Enhancement Program grant distributed by Fletcher’s office.”
Fletcher was on the CARB board from 2019 to 2022. His tenure ended in 2023 after he was accused of sexual assault, harassment, and battery by an employee from Metropolitan Transit Systems (Fletcher was the chair of the MTS board). Fletcher also resigned his seat on the San Diego County Board of Supervisors and ended his campaign for state senate.
(Although he’s ended his state-senate campaign, Fletcher has elected to use campaign donations to fund his legal defense; Fletcher’s law firm — Fisher & Phillips, LLC — has so far billed Fletcher’s campaign more than $500,000 to defend him.)
Discounted E-Bikes Are Here: Who Can Participate?
So, more than two years after Pedal Ahead was announced as administrator and amid all the allegations, investigations, and concerns, the California e-bike incentive program is finally coming.
Here are the nitty-gritty details: CARB will begin accepting applications at 6 p.m. PST on Wednesday, Dec. 18, and will process them in the order they’re received until the 1,500 vouchers are exhausted.
To qualify, applicants must be at least 18 years old and have incomes of 300% of the federal poverty line or less. For example, a one-person household cannot make more than $45,180, and a four-person household no more than $93,600.
Applicants must verify their residency and income and complete an online video safety course for the voucher, which can be used to put up to $2,000 toward one of the approved e-bikes from one of the approved retailers. CARB and Pedal Ahead encourage applicants to read the Implementation Manual and to have relevant documents ready to submit once applications go live next week.
After all the delays, probes, and mismanagement, here’s hoping that the actual rollout of the e-bike incentive program goes smoothly.