costco has a folding ebike that's under 400$[0].

[0]https://www.costco.com/jetson-bolt-pro-folding-electric-bike...

But a 40% subsidy on a $400 bike is only worth $160, not the €4k headline figure.

If you give everyone a no questions asked 100% subsidy, you're gonna have a lot of people reselling bikes that the government paid for.

They'd have to resell them abroad though, the local market would be pretty much saturated, no?

It's not difficult to get from Paris to Barcelona and back, with or without a bike.

If I need to offload an ebike from Paris, I could think of closer countries that would value them higher!

Why would you buy a bike from a reseller for $0 + profit when you can get one the with a government subsidy for $0?

Isn't that true of any subsidy? If 40% of my bike is subsidized, I only need to buy and resell that bike for greater than 60% of the purchase price.

I bet you'd get less resellers, but you'd definitely still get a lot of them.

That is true with any amount of subsidy. And yes, and people can use e.g. welfare payments to buy cigarrettes and booze. That is in itself not an argument against welfare payments.

Yeah but you also have cash from selling your car.

But you get cash from selling your car even without the government subsidy,

If "France is now offering a €4k e-bike subsidy" is 96% the cash they got from selling their car, then it's a strange turn of phrase. It's more like "the secondhand car market is offering a €4k everything-subsidy if you give up your car"!

Total aside...

That bike looks like one of those mini circus bikes that clowns ride

Probably the ones least able to afford petrol though?