Italy opened the booking platform for its 2026 commercial-vehicle Ecobonus at midday on 29 July 2026. By early afternoon there was nothing left. The share reserved exclusively for electric and hydrogen vans was fully committed in roughly 20 minutes; the entire tranche went in about 50 minutes.
What was on the table
The scheme comes from the DPCM of 10 June 2026, which sets aside €180 million for category N1 and N2 vehicles bought between the decree's entry into force and 31 March 2030. Forty per cent of each year's allocation is reserved for electric and hydrogen vehicles.
This year's tranche was €40 million, split accordingly:
| Pot | Amount | Who could claim it | Time to exhaustion |
|---|---|---|---|
| Electric and hydrogen ring-fence | €16m | BEV and FCEV only | ~20 minutes |
| Open pot | €24m | Any fuel type | — |
| Total | €40m | — | ~50 minutes |
Grants run from €2,000 to €20,000 depending on the vehicle's mass, its fuel type and whether an old vehicle is scrapped. The €20,000 maximum applies to electric and hydrogen vans traded in against a scrapped vehicle.
The eligibility rules are narrow. Applicants must be small or medium enterprises carrying goods on their own account or for third parties, buying or leasing a new factory-built N1 (up to 3.5 tonnes) or N2 (up to 7.2 tonnes) vehicle registered in Italy. Electric vehicles qualify without scrapping anything, and the grant rises if a same-category vehicle up to Euro 4 is scrapped. For combustion and hybrid vans, scrappage is mandatory.
The argument over the other €24 million
The interesting dispute is not that the money ran out — click-day schemes routinely do — but over what the remaining €24 million was for. Because that pot was open to every fuel type, electric applicants competed for it too, and by all accounts took a large share.
Motus-E, the Italian electric-mobility association, has argued that the split was never meant to cap electric uptake: the 40% quota, it says, was not a ceiling but effectively a minimum guarantee. Whether the €24 million was formally designated for electric vehicles in the regulatory documents is the point now being contested, and it determines how the final numbers get reported.
The platform, run by Invitalia, rejected applications outright once the funds were depleted, so dealers found out in real time.
What it says about European van demand
An incentive that clears in under an hour is not evidence of a well-sized programme. It is evidence of a queue. Italian operators had been waiting on this decree since June, and the electric ring-fence emptying two and a half times faster than the open pot tells you where the pent-up demand sits.
That matters beyond Italy. Light commercial vehicles are the segment where European electrification has lagged passenger cars most stubbornly, even as electric truck and bus registrations climbed across the EU in the first half of 2026. The Italian result suggests the constraint on electric vans is price rather than appetite — a €16 million pot found its buyers in 20 minutes.
A retrofit bonus, converting existing vehicles rather than replacing them, remains open. For everyone else, the next meaningful date is the 2027 tranche.