Commercial vehicle incentives 2026-2027: what's left after the 29 July sell-out

“Are there incentives for vans?” In Italy in 2026, the honest answer is: there were, and the main window closed within a few hours. On 29 July 2026 the Ministry of Enterprises (MIMIT) opened the low-emission commercial vehicle grants for SMEs on the Ecobonus platform (the measure funded by the DPCM Automotive, a prime ministerial decree) and the €40 million set aside for 2026 was gone the same day. Anyone who wasn’t ready that morning, with the order lined up and the dealer in position, was left out.

This guide does two things: it sets out what actually happened and what remains today for fleets that need to renew, because something does remain. And it draws a more useful lesson from 29 July than “get to the next window faster”: a fleet renewal shouldn’t be planned around a click-day lottery. It should be planned around total cost of ownership.

⚠️ Amounts, deadlines and fund availability change constantly and depend on implementing decrees. The figures below are verified against official sources (links at the end) as of the update date, but should always be re-checked on the portal before signing an order. This guide helps you get your bearings; it doesn’t replace the text of the call.

What happened on 29 July 2026

The DPCM Automotive of 10 June 2026 programmed the Automotive Fund through 2030. The line item that concerns fleets (€180 million for N1 and N2 commercial vehicles bought by SMEs that carry goods, either for hire or on their own account) was made operational by MIMIT director’s decree no. 56604 of 27 July, which opened bookings on the Ecobonus platform (run by Invitalia) on 29 July at 12:00.

Here’s the point that causes the most confusion: the “Commercial Vehicle Ecobonus” and the “DPCM Automotive for N1/N2 vehicles” are not two different measures. They are the same thing. The €40 million in the 2026 tranche (€16 million of it reserved for electric and hydrogen) was disbursed through the Ecobonus portal. And it ran out within a few hours, in the ministry’s own words; the ANSA news agency put it at under an hour. Grants ranged from €2,000 to €20,000 depending on the vehicle’s gross weight, its powertrain and whether an old vehicle was scrapped, in weight bands that stop at 7.2 tonnes. The top amount went to the heaviest electric vans with scrapping; for a diesel the ceiling was €10,000. Eligibility covered SMEs moving goods for hire or on their own account, which in Italian law means a wholesaler or distributor delivering its own products with its own vans qualifies alongside a haulier. Many SMEs didn’t manage to complete the booking in time.

Through the same window, on 29 July, a grant for LPG/CNG retrofits also opened (€4 million for 2026): €400 for an LPG conversion and €800 for CNG. It only applies to passenger cars (category M1) type-approved Euro 3 or later, even when a company owns them. For an N1 van or a truck it isn’t an option.

What’s still open today

If you have a renewal to make now, the N1/N2 commercial channel for 2026 is closed, but you’re not without tools:

• Nuova Sabatini. The most solid lever right now, and it works on a different plane: it doesn’t cut the price, it cuts the cost of financing. Refinanced with €650 million for 2026-2027, it covers part of the interest on the loan or lease you use to buy the vehicle, commercial vehicles used in the business included, as long as they are brand new. Watch out for straight renewals: the ministry’s FAQs treat swapping an old vehicle for an equivalent newer one as a mere replacement, which doesn’t qualify. The window is open, first-come-first-served until funds run out. We cover it in the guide to Nuova Sabatini for commercial vehicles.
• Regional calls: many Italian regions run their own commercial-vehicle renewal schemes, often stackable within their own limits. They change constantly: we map them in the guide to regional commercial-vehicle grants.

If you invest in Southern Italy, which forms a single special economic zone (the ZES Unica), you will also hear about its tax credit, now extended to 2028; the next window opens on 31 March 2027. It covers warehouses and plant but, on the prevailing reading, not vehicles, so it doesn’t replace the Sabatini for your fleet. The details are in ZES Unica tax credit for logistics.

Hire-and-reward hauliers with Euro V or VI trucks of 7.5 tonnes and above could also claim a tax credit on the 2026 diesel price rise. It does not help with buying vehicles, and the March-August credit has to be used by 31 December 2026. How it works and what to do now is covered in Italy’s diesel tax credit for hauliers.

What’s coming (and when)

The DPCM is a multi-year programme: 2026 was only the first tranche. If you can plan a renewal a few months ahead, this is the calendar to watch:

• N1/N2 commercial, 2027 tranche: of the €180 million total for 2026-2030, €40 million is programmed for 2027 (and the same for 2028 and 2029), with 40% reserved each year for electric and hydrogen. The DPCM sets the same rules: SMEs carrying goods for hire or on their own account, vehicles up to 7.2 tonnes. This is the next real window for the measure, but the director’s decree that sets the date hasn’t been issued; in 2026 it came out two days before the opening. There is currently no announced refinancing for 2026: anyone who missed out is looking at 2027.
• Trucks run by hauliers: a Ministry of Transport decree of 11 December 2025 earmarked €590 million for 2027-2031 to renew the fleets of road-haulage companies, €100 million of it in 2027. As of 3 November the measure setting out applications and amounts hasn’t been published. Companies that carry their own goods in vehicles above 7.2 tonnes currently have no national renewal grant: the Sabatini and regional calls are what’s left.
• Social car rental for private individuals (€50 million, ISEE household income indicator below €30,000): a new car on a rental of at least 36 months, with an old car up to Euro 4 scrapped, run by the Italian Automobile Club (ACI). The application portal is still being set up. It doesn’t concern businesses.
• Home charging points (€68 million through 2030): the window for 2026 installations opened on 22 September and closed early on 27 October, once the funds ran out. Only private individuals and condominiums could apply, so it’s no use to a business.
• Electric or hybrid motorcycles, scooters and quadricycles (€90 million in all, €25 million a year from 2027 to 2029 and €15 million in 2030): start date 1 January 2027.

The PNRR micro-enterprise measure is closed

The channel funded by the PNRR, Italy’s post-Covid recovery plan, for road-haulage micro-enterprises (up to 30% of the price, capped at €20,000 per vehicle, electric N1/N2, micro-enterprises in functional urban areas) closed on 30 June 2026, with no reopenings or refinancing. If you missed it, the channels to look at are the ones in the previous section: Nuova Sabatini today, and the 2027 commercial tranche tomorrow.

The picture at a glance

The measures aren’t necessarily stackable on the same vehicle: each call sets its own rules. Nuova Sabatini can be combined with other aid on the same costs as long as the total stays within the maximum aid intensity, but not with the Transport Ministry’s investment grants for hauliers. We cover this in the guide to stacking incentives and the de minimis rule.

Eight table rows don’t tell you which one is yours. With the free tool you can check which commercial vehicle incentive fits your fleet: 5 questions on company size, powertrain and location, and you know which row to focus on.

Before you buy the extra vehicle

A grant or a subsidised loan lowers what a vehicle costs you, but neither tells you whether you need it. When routes are built by hand, part of the fleet covers kilometres that better planning would remove, and the extra van you’re about to put forward may be one of them. The route optimisation self-assessment scores you in 8 questions on problem complexity, process headroom and data readiness, and it says so when the answer is no. If it’s yes, the route savings calculator estimates in 60 seconds the range of kilometres, hours and euros at stake, before you size the order.

How to be ready for the next window

The 2026 tranche rewarded whoever was ready on the morning of 29 July, not whoever decided after the announcement. This holds for 2027 and for any first-come-first-served call: the work that counts is done before the window opens.

• Take a snapshot of the fleet: for each vehicle, record age, Euro class, annual mileage, last year’s maintenance cost and days off the road. This is the data that tells you which vehicles to put forward for replacement, the question to answer before “how much will I get”.
• Check the requirements against your real profile: headcount, turnover, location, own-account or for-hire, vehicle weight. They determine which measure you can actually access.
• Prepare the scrapping paperwork where required: registration document, first-registration date, Euro class, how long you’ve owned the vehicle to be scrapped.
• Line up the dealer in advance: bookings go through the seller’s platform. On a click-day, the difference between in and out is the minutes it takes for the application to be ready to submit.

To arrive ready we’ve built an operational guide with a checklist that lines up requirements, documents and timings.

If you need electric vans for a public tender, the calendar is set by the tender specifications, not by the grant window. In Milano Ristorazione’s 2024 tender for school-meal transport, they had to be on the road within a year, and sooner if you offered that for points. Our guide to bidding for a meal-transport tender explains how to build a bid that doesn’t depend on the incentive.

The incentive lowers the price. TCO decides whether it’s worth it

29 July is the clearest proof of a principle that incentive articles almost never address: a first-come grant is a lottery, not a plan. You can arrive ready and still be left out. The one lever you genuinely control is a different one: the vehicle’s total cost of ownership.

The grant cuts the purchase price, but the purchase price is only 30-40% of a vehicle’s real cost over its 7-10 year life. The other items (fuel or energy, maintenance, insurance, tolls, downtime, cost of capital) weigh more, and change radically between diesel, electric and gas. A generous incentive on the wrong vehicle for your routes is still a bad deal, and a vehicle with a low TCO per km is worth it even without a grant. The right choice is made on total cost of ownership, not on the discount: we cover it in detail in the guide to fleet TCO and how to calculate it.

Outside the vehicle’s TCO sits the heaviest item of all, the person driving it. For an employed driver in Italy the full hourly cost in the 2026 ministry tables ranges from €25.92 to €35.34, and it changes with the licence the vehicle requires.

This is doubly true for the electric-vs-conventional choice, where the incentive is higher but the payback depends entirely on your route mix: before deciding, look at the 5 fleet data points that tell you if you’re ready for electric and, if you run a mixed fleet, how to manage a mixed diesel-electric fleet through the transition. Having these numbers to hand—which requires a fleet tracking and management platform that surfaces them per vehicle—is what turns an incentive, when one comes, into a rational renewal decision rather than a scramble at the window. And if the renewal changes the make-up of the fleet, it’s the natural moment to rethink how you plan your routes too: delivery route optimisation software turns new vehicles into fewer kilometres and lower costs from day one.

The bottom line

In 2026 the main window for commercial vehicles (the N1/N2 Ecobonus funded by the DPCM Automotive) opened and closed within a few hours, on 29 July. Still active today are Nuova Sabatini on the financing side and regional calls; the next real window for commercial vehicles up to 7.2 tonnes, own-account and for-hire alike, is the 2027 tranche. The PNRR micro-enterprise channel is closed.

The right move is to reach the next window with your fleet data already in order and a renewal decision already made on total cost of ownership, so that the grant, if you get it, is a bonus and not the premise of the decision. Talk to our team: a year of operational data is enough to map which vehicles are genuinely worth replacing.

Frequently asked questions