Torks wins the Prix Viteos at the Décarbone ta boîte competition
Torks wins the Prix Viteos at the Décarbone ta boîte competition
The Neuchâtel-based e-bike subscription startup wins the audience award at the 3rd edition of the competition in Neuchâtel.
Neuchâtel, 16 March 2026 — Torks won the first Prix Viteos at the final of the Décarbone ta boîte competition on 13 March 2026 in Neuchâtel. This audience award, a new addition to the 3rd edition, is funded by Viteos, the competition's sustainability partner. The Junior Chamber International (JCI) of Neuchâtel organises this competition to reward the most effective and replicable CO₂ emission reduction projects.
Torks offers an all-inclusive e-bike subscription at CHF 79 per month: bike, theft insurance, home maintenance.
Timothée Duran, founder and CEO of Torks, during his pitch at the Décarbone ta boîte competition in Neuchâtel.
Decarbonisation professionals cast their vote
The Prix Viteos was not awarded by the jury. Attendees of the Décarbone ta boîte event voted: business leaders, engineers, sustainability managers, elected officials, researchers. Professionals who came to hear Raphaël Domjan speak about extractivism and the energy transition, or Dr Sascha Nick from EPFL present his work on decarbonisation. People who understand orders of magnitude, who read carbon footprint reports, who make investment decisions on these topics.
That audience chose e-bikes by subscription.
Transport accounts for 33.6% of greenhouse gas emissions in Switzerland. It is the only sector whose emissions have not decreased since 1990 (FOEN). Each participant in the Torks Active Mobility Challenge avoids an average of 617 kg of CO₂ per year — one third of the individual carbon budget compatible with 1.5 °C. The professionals in Neuchâtel saw these figures. They voted accordingly.
The Active Mobility Challenge in La Chaux-de-Fonds
The project presented at the competition is based on the Active Mobility Challenge, organised in September 2025 with the City of La Chaux-de-Fonds. 66 participants committed to not using their car for one month. Torks provided 9 e-bikes from its fleet.
Three conditions must be met for car drivers to adopt cycling. The scientific literature documents them consistently.
Infrastructure. Building cycle lanes is a necessary condition for modal shift, but not sufficient on its own (Song, Preston & Ogilvie, Transportation Research Part A, 2017). La Chaux-de-Fonds has invested in new cycling infrastructure in recent years, along Avenue Léopold-Robert. Mobility data collected by Torks shows that users take these routes.
Trial. A Swiss programme exchanging car keys for e-bikes for two weeks reduced participants' habitual association with driving. The effect persisted one year after the trial, including among those who had not purchased a bike (Moser, Blumer & Hille, Environmental Research Letters, 2018). The IPCC cites trial programmes as a lever for modal shift in the Transport chapter of its 6th Assessment Report (AR6, WGIII, Jaramillo et al., 2022).
Removing remaining barriers. Purchase cost, fear of theft, maintenance burden. The Torks subscription eliminates all three: CHF 79/month, theft insurance included, home maintenance.
The Challenge combines these three levers in a single operation.
Results
The data covers the challenge period (September 2025) and the following months, through December 2025.
1,066 km of car journeys were avoided, equivalent to 700 car trips removed from Avenue Léopold-Robert. With the habit change triggered by the Challenge, each participant saves 617 kg of CO2 per year. This calculation was validated by the competition's technical jury.
Distance travelled per user remained stable in the following months. Cyclists from the challenge behave like existing cyclists measured by cantonal counters: the winter drop is a seasonal effect, not abandonment.
Timothée Duran, founder and CEO of Torks, during his pitch at the Décarbone ta boîte competition in Neuchâtel.
Next steps
Torks is organising the second edition of the Active Mobility Challenge in La Chaux-de-Fonds in June 2026, together with ATE, transN and the City. More participants, an extended duration.
A similar concept is being prepared in Tramelan, as part of discussions with the Parc Chasseral network of municipalities.
About Torks
Torks is a Swiss startup founded in August 2025 in Neuchâtel. All-inclusive e-bike subscription: bike, theft insurance, home maintenance, CHF 79 per month. Full vertical integration: proprietary bikes, fleet management software and mobility data platform.
About the Décarbone ta boîte competition
Décarbone ta boîte is a competition organised by JCI Neuchâtel. It rewards companies, startups and organisations that reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The 3rd edition took place on 13 March 2026 in Neuchâtel, with prizes totalling CHF 20,000. The Prix Viteos audience award went to Torks.
Press contact Torks — [email protected]
Sources:
- FOEN, Swiss Greenhouse Gas Inventory
- Song, Y., Preston, J. & Ogilvie, D. (2017). New walking and cycling infrastructure and modal shift in the UK. Transportation Research Part A, 95, 320–333.
- Moser, C., Blumer, Y. & Hille, S.L. (2018). E-bike trials' potential to promote sustained changes in car owners' mobility habits. Environmental Research Letters, 13, 044025.
- IPCC, AR6, WGIII, Chapter 10: Transport (Jaramillo et al., 2022)
- Mobitool / FOEN, Life-cycle emission factors
- TransN, Financial Report 2023
- ARE, External costs and benefits of transport in Switzerland, 2023