25 juil. 2025

Cargo bikes for shopping: Swiss rules, loads and CO2

Two shopping runs a week, five kilometres there and back, fifty weeks a year: that adds up to 47 kg of CO2 if you make them in a new car meeting the federal target of 93.6 g per kilometre. That is the scale of the emissions a cargo bike replaces on those shopping trips.

The figure is modest next to the 14 926 km an average Swiss resident covers each year, a quarter of it abroad. Small shopping runs are still among the easiest car journeys to replace. The saving grows if the same bike also covers school, recycling and other local trips.

Since 1 July 2025, Swiss law has also created a vehicle category that matches precisely what we are talking about here. It changes what you are allowed to ride, and on what terms.

What Swiss law calls a cargo bike

A cargo bike without a motor is a cycle under the Road Traffic Act, like any other bicycle. As soon as electric assistance is involved, it moves into the moped category, and article 18 of the ordinance on technical requirements for road vehicles (OETV) distinguishes several types.

Category	Max power	Assistance speed	Max total weight	What follows
Cycle without motor	none	not applicable	not applicable	No licence, no plate
Light moped	0.50 kW	25 km/h seated, 20 km/h standing	250 kg	No licence required
Fast moped	1.00 kW	45 km/h	200 kg	Category M licence, helmet compulsory
Heavy moped	2.00 kW	25 km/h	450 kg	Multi-track, category created 1.7.2025

Letter e of article 18, introduced by the amendment of 13 December 2024 in force since 1 July 2025, defines heavy mopeds as multi-track vehicles with electric propulsion active up to a maximum of 25 km/h, with a total weight not exceeding 450 kg and total motor power not exceeding 2.00 kW. That is the box heavy electric trikes for carrying people or goods now fall into.

On licensing, the ordinance on admission to road traffic (OAC) is explicit: special category M covers mopeds, its minimum age is 14, and article 5 paragraph 2 letter d exempts people riding a light moped from holding a licence at all. In practice, an electric cargo bike limited to 25 km/h and 0.50 kW can be ridden without a licence from age 14; a fast model assisted to 45 km/h requires the M licence.

Helmets: who has to wear one, and when

Article 3b of the ordinance on road traffic rules (OCR) requires moped riders to wear a helmet, and also requires them to make sure that any children under twelve they carry wear one. That second obligation is the one families most often miss: it binds the adult at the handlebars, not the child.

Paragraph 2 sets out exemptions. Letter g, as in force since 1 July 2025, exempts people riding a moped with electric propulsion active up to a maximum of 25 km/h. Letter e exempts those whose vehicle cannot exceed 20 km/h by construction.

The practical outcome fits in two lines. On an electric cargo bike limited to 25 km/h, a helmet is not compulsory for the adult, but it is for any child under twelve being carried. On a fast 45 km/h model it is compulsory for everyone, and paragraph 3 specifies that a bicycle helmet meeting SN EN 1078 is sufficient on a moped.

The Swiss Council for Accident Prevention recommends a helmet in every case, including on heavy electric cargo bikes limited to 25 km/h. It advises models with rotational force damping such as MIPS, ODS or WaveCell, and points to helmets meeting the NTA 8776 standard for fast e-bikes, reinforced at the temples with a shell reaching lower at the back of the head.

Two further obligations are worth knowing. All e-bikes have had to ride with lights on, day and night, since 1 April 2022. And if your model exceeds the light moped thresholds, it needs a moped plate.

What a shopping trip actually replaces

Since 1 January 2025, under the WLTP procedure, the Swiss Federal Office of Energy sets a target of 93.6 g of CO2 per kilometre for passenger cars registered for the first time in Switzerland, and 153.9 g for light commercial vehicles. Taking the first figure, which is generous since it describes a recent new vehicle, gives usable orders of magnitude.

Round trip	Per outing	2 outings/week, 50 weeks
2 km	187 g	19 kg/year
3 km	281 g	28 kg/year
5 km	468 g	47 kg/year
8 km	749 g	75 kg/year
10 km	936 g	94 kg/year

Forty-seven kilograms of CO2 a year does not transform a personal carbon footprint. The cargo bike has a manufacturing footprint, as does its battery, and charging electricity also causes emissions.

On the other hand, the 2021 mobility and transport microcensus run by the Federal Statistical Office among 55 000 people measures an average daily distance of 30.0 km per person within Switzerland, 69 % of it by car, meaning 20.7 km a day. Against that total, the question is not how long the shopping trip is but how many car trips a household stops making. A cargo bike that also covers the school run, the recycling centre, the swimming pool and the Saturday visit changes an entire routine rather than one journey.

One physiological figure frames the order of magnitude differently: a 2026 study in Experimental Physiology measured that metabolic CO2 output during a bicycle commute is roughly twelve times lower than that of a petrol car over the same route.

The time it actually costs

This is the most common and most legitimate objection, and there is a direct measurement of it.

A randomised crossover trial published in 2023 in Frontiers in Sports and Active Living had eleven participants cover the same 4.5 km route three ways: on an e-bike loaded with 30 kg, on an e-bike unloaded, and by car. The measured times were 11.8 minutes with cargo, 11.1 minutes unloaded and 8.8 minutes by car. The gap between the loaded bike and the car is therefore 3.0 minutes over 4.5 km, or about 0.67 minutes per kilometre.

On a 5 km round trip, expect three to four minutes more than by car. This comparison deliberately ignores the hunt for a parking space, which runs the other way and whose scale depends entirely on your neighbourhood.

The trial also measured intensity: riding with 30 kg of cargo was not significantly more intense than riding unloaded, but was significantly more intense than driving, at 4.9 MET. Put differently, the load is paid for in journey time rather than perceived effort, because the assistance absorbs the difference.

The real effort, measured in the field

Received wisdom says electric assistance removes the effort. The measurements say otherwise.

A 2025 study in the same journal fitted 19 people with a portable oxygen analyser during their usual commutes, on their own e-bikes. Mean oxygen consumption was 20.8 mL/kg/min, or 5.9 MET, and 44 to 48 % of commute duration was classified as vigorous intensity. Terrain matters: 4.6 to 4.8 MET downhill, 5.5 to 5.9 MET on the flat and 7.0 to 7.5 MET uphill.

Concretely, for a 70 kg person, a 15-minute trip represents about 86 kcal at 4.9 MET and 103 kcal at 5.9 MET; thirty minutes represent 172 and 206 respectively.

The World Health Organization recommends 150 minutes of moderate activity a week. Two twenty-minute shopping trips add up to forty minutes, or 27 % of that target, without spending a minute of leisure time on it. That is the main appeal of active transport: it does not compete with your free time.

On longer-term benefits, the Swedish SCAPIS study published in 2026 in the British Journal of Sports Medicine examined 23 722 randomly recruited people aged 50 to 64 across six regions using coronary CT angiography. After adjusting for age, sex, education, occupational and leisure physical activity, sleep, diet and smoking, active commuting was associated with lower odds of coronary stenosis compared with car commuting (OR 0.87; 95 % CI 0.80 to 0.94), with a slightly stronger association for cycling (OR 0.86; 95 % CI 0.78 to 0.95) than for walking. No association appeared with carotid plaques (OR 0.97; 95 % CI 0.90 to 1.03). This is a cross-sectional study: it establishes an association, not causation.

How much a shopping load really weighs

Cargo bike guides talk about managing the load without ever naming a kilogram. Here is a weekly vegetarian shop for two people, weighed item by item.

Item	Weight
Drinks (6 L)	6.0 kg
Potatoes	2.0 kg
Fresh vegetables	1.5 kg
Fruit	1.0 kg
Dried pulses and grains	2.0 kg
Bread	1.0 kg
Tins and jars	1.5 kg
Miscellaneous	1.0 kg
Total	16.0 kg

A standard front-loader advertises a payload of 80 to 100 kg excluding the rider. This shop therefore takes up 16 to 20 % of it. Total weight in running order, with a 35 to 50 kg bike, a 70 kg rider and this load, comes to between 121 and 136 kg, well under the 450 kg total weight that caps the heavy moped category.

Two practical consequences. First, capacity is almost never the limiting factor for food shopping: volume runs out long before weight, and a front-loader box swallows without complaint the six litres of drinks that make up half the tonnage. Second, distribution matters more than mass: a low, centred load handles well, while a high load makes the bike unstable when stopped and when setting off, which is when most falls happen.

A note on drinks, since they dominate the load: they are the six kilograms easiest to eliminate, by drinking tap water, which settles the weight question and the packaging question at once.

Safety: the figures and what they imply

The Swiss Council for Accident Prevention counts 130 000 e-bikes sold in Switzerland in 2025, and 610 people seriously or fatally injured on an e-bike that same year. Accidents are rising along with the fleet.

The mechanism the Council identifies comes down to two points. For the same effort, an e-bike travels considerably faster than a conventional bicycle, which lengthens braking distance and shortens the time available to react. And because an e-bike looks like an ordinary bicycle, other road users systematically underestimate its speed.

A loaded cargo bike adds a layer of its own: a total mass above 120 kg lengthens stopping distance further, and the inertia shows up most in slow manoeuvres.

The Council’s concrete recommendations are unspectacular and effective. Signal clearly by hand before turning. Ride in the middle of the lane on a roundabout rather than being squeezed against the edge. Keep enough distance from parked vehicles, because of doors. Avoid the blind spots of large vehicles, and position yourself behind a vehicle with its indicator on rather than beside it. Ride with lights on, which is compulsory anyway. The Council also recommends ABS, which prevents front wheel lock-up under hard braking.

On injury severity, a 2026 study in the European Journal of Trauma and Emergency Surgery compared 261 patients admitted to a trauma bay, 37 on e-bikes and 224 on conventional bicycles. It found no statistically significant difference in injury severity score, physiological burden or hospital resource use; conventional cyclists in fact showed a higher proportion of severe pelvis and limb injuries (14.3 % against 5.4 %, p = 0.045). The sample is small and single-centre, but the result tempers the idea that e-bikes are inherently more dangerous.

Choosing well: what matters, in order

Format before anything else. A front-loader, with its box between the front wheel and the handlebars, rides like a long bicycle: nimble when moving, a little disconcerting at low speed to begin with. A trike, with two wheels at the front, stands up on its own when stopped, which changes everything when loading bags or settling children, but it is wide and threads through gaps less well. A longtail, extended at the rear, stays closest to a normal bicycle and is easiest to park, with less volume.

The assistance question. Without a motor, a loaded cargo bike stays usable on flat ground and becomes hard work as soon as it climbs. With assistance, the constraint shifts to charging and the battery. In Switzerland, where few towns are genuinely flat, assistance is the default choice for family use.

Parking, to be settled before buying. This is the point that sinks most projects. A cargo bike does not fit in a standard bike store, does not go into a building lift, and does not lock to just any stand. Measure the space you have before choosing a model, not after.

A trial in real conditions. Many Swiss towns and associations offer day rentals or lending schemes. A trial with a real load, on your usual route, tells you more than any spec sheet.

Adapting to different profiles

For a family with young children, a trike or a box front-loader solves the combined children-plus-shopping problem, and makes the under-twelve helmet rule a daily reality. Check that the number of homologated seats matches your actual need.

For a single person in town, a longtail is plenty and parks far more easily. The 16 kg of a weekly shop fit in double panniers, no box needed.

For rural or hilly use, the question becomes range and elevation gain. Assistance capped at 25 km/h stays comfortable up to distances of around five to ten kilometres; beyond that, an honest comparison with public transport or a shared car is worth making.

For professional delivery use, the new heavy moped category opens up load capacities the light moped category ruled out, with the corresponding obligations.

For someone with limited physical capacity, assistance brings journeys that would otherwise be out of reach down to a moderate effort, while maintaining, according to the measurements cited above, an intensity that counts as physical activity.

The mistakes that keep coming back

Assuming a helmet is never compulsory. It is for the adult on a fast 45 km/h model, and it is for any child under twelve being carried, whatever the vehicle’s speed.

Buying before solving parking. A cargo bike you cannot store conveniently ends up unused.

Loading high. Stability depends on the height of the centre of gravity far more than on total mass.

Underestimating braking distance. With 120 kg in motion, a wet road surface and two seconds of reaction time, stopping distance bears no relation to that of a city bike.

Treating 47 kg of annual CO2 as a sufficient argument. A cargo bike is better justified by the time saved on parking, the physical activity built into the day and the running cost than by a carbon balance that should not be oversold.

Limits of the available figures

The avoided emissions are calculated with the federal target of 93.6 g per kilometre, which describes the average sought for new cars rather than the fleet on the road, which is older and dirtier. They account for neither the manufacture of the cargo bike, nor its battery, nor the charging electricity, whose carbon intensity depends on the grid mix.

The effort and time measurements come from small trials: eleven participants for the 2023 crossover trial, nineteen for the 2025 field measurement. They cover electrically assisted bicycles in general rather than loaded cargo bikes specifically, except for the first.

The SCAPIS study is cross-sectional: it shows an association between active commuting and less atherosclerosis, not a cause and effect relationship.

The Council’s accident figures cover all e-bikes, with no published breakdown by vehicle type. No Swiss statistics specific to cargo bikes are published.

Finally, the 80 to 100 kg payloads quoted are market orders of magnitude, not a standard: the figure that applies is the one your manufacturer states for your model.

Frequently asked questions

Do you need a licence for an electric cargo bike? No for a light moped, meaning assistance capped at 25 km/h and 0.50 kW, ridden from age 14. Yes, the special category M licence, for a fast model assisted to 45 km/h.

Is a helmet compulsory? For the adult, only on fast models. For children under twelve being carried, always. The accident prevention council recommends one in every case.

What changed on 1 July 2025? Article 18 OETV gained a new letter e creating heavy mopeds: multi-track vehicles, assistance up to 25 km/h, power up to 2.00 kW, total weight up to 450 kg.

How much shopping can you carry? A weekly vegetarian shop for two people weighs about 16 kg, or 16 to 20 % of a standard front-loader’s payload. Volume runs out before weight does.

Is it really slower than a car? About 0.67 minutes more per kilometre according to the available crossover trial, so three to four minutes on a 5 km round trip, before counting the search for a parking space.

Does it count as physical activity? Yes. Field measurement on real commutes gives 5.9 MET on average, with 44 to 48 % of the time at vigorous intensity. Two twenty-minute trips cover 27 % of the WHO weekly recommendation.

Is a cargo bike without assistance realistic? On flat ground and with moderate loads, yes, and it does away with the battery. As soon as there is a gradient and a 20 kg load, it becomes demanding.

Do you need a plate and insurance? An electric cargo bike exceeding the light moped thresholds falls under the rules applying to mopeds, plate included. Check your model’s exact classification with the seller or your cantonal road traffic office.

Going further

A cargo bike makes most sense when it serves considered shopping. Our guide to reducing the water footprint of your diet quantifies the other side of the environmental question, often heavier than transport. Buying what is actually in season shortens journeys: see adapting meals to the seasons and our local and seasonal party buffet.

On organisation, making fewer trips means storing and planning better. Our pages on storing fruit, vegetables and pulses, on batch cooking legumes and on organising a zero waste pantry directly cut the number of outings. For containers and packaging, see zero waste cooking. And if cycling becomes your main physical activity, our page on hydration for vegetarian athletes gives the relevant markers.