“For the first time it is recognised that the solution is not to make cars greener, but simply to reduce their number,” said Olivier Schneider of the French Federation of Bicycle Users (FUB) after €2,500 e-bike incentives for the scrappage of old cars passed a preliminary vote in parliament this week.

Reuters reports that the measure is an amendment to a draft climate bill that is currently passing through parliament.

The FUB says that if the scheme is adopted, France would become the first country in the world to offer people the chance to trade in a petrol or diesel vehicle for an e-bike.

Maybe there’s some fine detail in the FUB claim that we’re missing, but as far as we can tell, this is incorrect.

In November, we reported how Lithuania was extending a scheme that allows people to get €1,000 for an old car to put towards an e-bike.

At that point, the country had paid out 95 per cent of the €8m it originally allocated in May 2020 and a further €3m was being made available. It’s possible to get an e-scooter with the money too and it seems like that’s where most of the money has gone.

In a similar move, Transport Scotland’s LEZ Mobility Fund will provide households within 20km of Scotland’s planned low emission zones with a grant of £2,000 to take polluting vehicles off the roads with e-bike incentives of up to £500 also made available for each adult in the household.