No expected return date yet for Minnesota’s e-bike rebate application program

After crashing on Wednesday, the website for Minnesota’s e-bike rebate program remains paused and there is no expected return date at this time.

The website, which was available to up to 10,000 Minnesotans, aimed to promote more environmentally friendly travel by reducing the cost of an e-bike. However, the site crashed within minutes of opening, allowing fewer than 80 applications to be accepted before the Minnesota Department of Revenue (MDR) had to shut down the program.

Anyone who was able to send in an application will be contacted by the state when their submission is successfully completed.

“Despite anticipated high demand, our external vendors were unable to support the capacity needed for the launch of the e-bike rebate program,” MDR wrote in a press release on Thursday. “We continue to work with our partners to ensure the relaunch of this program is successful, and we will implement additional measures to ensure a positive experience.”

MDR said they, along with the application developer Turnberry Solutions and the host platform service provider Salesforce, are continuing to work on the technical issues and bring the application back.

However, MDR officials say they have no expected resume date for applications but would “provide ample notice of the date and time of the relaunch” through their normal channels.

Part of the high traffic was due to the “first come, first served” basis the rebate system operated on. MDR said this method was chosen due to legislation passed in 2023 requiring it to operate in this way.

MDR said an update on the rebate applications would be provided early next week and apologized for the inconvenience caused to rebate applicants.