Mobility budget: which electric car should you pick?

The mobility budget lets you take another car, but every euro spent on it is a euro that will not pay your rent or your rail season ticket. Since January 2026 that car has to be fully electric. So the real question is no longer which one is best, but which one leaves you the most room. Here are the Belgian numbers.

Mobility budget: which electric car should you pick in Belgium?

Pick the cheapest electric model that genuinely covers your journeys, not the most flattering one. On a median budget of €8,245 a year, a city car or small electric SUV at €440 to €470 a month still leaves €2,500 to €3,000 for pillar 2. A premium SUV takes the lot, and sometimes more.

The mobility budget is a federal scheme that lets an employee swap a company car, or the right to one, for an annual budget spread across three pillars: an electric car (pillar 1), sustainable transport and housing costs (pillar 2), and a cash balance (pillar 3). The amount equals the total annual cost of the car you hand back, what the sector calls the TCO (total cost of ownership).

Watch out for a common mix-up. The federal mobility budget, governed by the law of 17 March 2019, is not the same thing as an in-house "mobility budget" inside a cafeteria plan. The latter is a contractual arrangement between you and your employer, without the tax and social security regime of the former. If HR mentions a mobility budget, ask which of the two: the effect on your net pay is nothing alike.

In practice the reasoning runs in this order: I know my budget, I estimate the annual cost of the car I have in mind, and I look at what is left. Not the other way round.

Why does only a fully electric car qualify for pillar 1?

Because the rule changed on 1 January 2026. Since then, any car ordered or leased under pillar 1 must be fully zero-emission. Plug-in hybrids and low-emission combustion cars, previously accepted below certain CO₂ and pollutant thresholds, are out.

The test is the date the order form is signed or the lease contract concluded, not the delivery date. A colleague who signed in late 2025 for a plug-in hybrid delivered in March 2026 is still covered; you, signing today, are not. That distinction decides everything if your company has a long order book.

The rest of the framework has not moved. The car must be made available by the employer, like a standard company car, so buying your own with this budget is impossible. And you may only have one car while the mobility budget runs: the pillar 1 one.

The real cost of pillar 1, beyond the lease payment

What is charged to your budget is not the monthly lease payment but the car's total cost to the employer: lease, electricity, insurance, taxes, servicing and the solidarity contribution, minus the tax benefit. That is almost always more than the advertised rental.

The CO₂ solidarity contribution is the item most simulators forget. It is still owed to the ONSS on an electric car, at the legal minimum, set for 2026 at €42.34 per month for a vehicle acquired since 1 July 2023. That is roughly €508 a year leaving the budget before you have driven a kilometre.

LIZY publishes a worked example that shows the size of the gap: a Volkswagen ID.3 at €509 monthly lease comes out at a TCO of €539 per month once electricity (€181), taxes (€22) and the tax benefit (−€173) are folded in. Budget 5 to 10% on top of the rental to approach the amount actually charged. And bear in mind that the benefit in kind keeps showing up on your payslip: the pillar 1 car is still a company car.

How much does your electric car leave for pillars 2 and 3?

It depends entirely on the segment. On the Belgian median budget of €8,245 a year, the gap between an electric city car and a premium SUV is several thousand euros of rent, rail passes or bike leasing that you either fund or do not.

Below are the entry prices listed in the LIZY leasing catalogue in August 2026, excluding VAT, for recent used electric cars, with the approximate annual cost and what is left of an €8,245 budget.

The verdict is clear: below €470 a month there is enough left to fund rent or an SNCB (Belgian railways) season ticket for the whole family; above €620 pillar 2 becomes token. These figures apply to recent used cars on standard mileage. An equivalent new car costs more and shrinks the balance accordingly. A Kia EV4 in 150 kW Air trim, for instance, is listed at €619 a month with a stated TCO around €591, for 624 km of range: that is the kind of compromise that still works on a median budget.

What if my budget is close to the €3,233 floor?

Then pillar 1 stops making sense. At that level no electric lease fits: €3,233 a year is under €270 a month, all in. The budget will go to pillars 2 and 3, which is perfectly legal and often better value. A low budget simply signals that the car you handed back was a modest one.

What mobility budget can you expect in ?

Between €3,233 and €17,244 a year in 2026, those indexed amounts being the legal floor and ceiling. Your budget also cannot exceed one fifth of your gross annual pay. In practice, the median amount observed in Belgium was €8,245 a year in 2025.

The calculation starts from the total cost of the car you hand back. SD Worx gives a telling example: a car with an annual TCO of €9,200 (€6,000 lease, €2,000 fuel, €1,200 servicing and insurance), on a gross salary of €70,000. One fifth of gross is €14,000, the TCO is €9,200, so the mobility budget lands at €9,200. The smaller of the two wins.

One detail that grates: the bigger your current company car, the bigger your budget. The colleague in a well-equipped diesel estate walks away with far more than the one who chose a frugal city car. The system mechanically rewards whoever was polluting most. It is counter-intuitive, and it is written into the formula.

The share of Belgians making the switch is still modest, but it is moving fast. According to the SD Worx analysis of 20 February 2026, covering 37,000 employers and 1.1 million employees, 7% of workers with a company car opt for the mobility budget. In Brussels the figure rises to 16.2%, against 5.5% in Flanders and 4.2% in Wallonia.

Should you really take a car in pillar 1 at all?

Not necessarily, and the Belgian figures show it: three beneficiaries out of four use their budget to cover housing costs, and nearly one in three for public transport passes. In practice the mobility budget has become a housing scheme as much as a mobility one.

The reason is fiscal. Everything routed through pillar 2 is net: no income tax, no social contributions. Rent, mortgage interest and capital repayments count there as sustainable transport, provided you live within 10 km of your workplace or work from home at least half the time. For someone working in the Brussels Pentagon and living in Ixelles, that is several hundred net euros a month.

The limiting case deserves to be said plainly. If you live 40 km from the office and you are in every day, the housing side of pillar 2 falls away. You are left with passes, a bike and carpooling, rarely enough to absorb €8,000. The balance then drops into pillar 3, cut by the special 38.07% contribution. On a €3,000 balance you receive roughly €1,858 gross before withholding tax. Not a disaster, but no longer the deal of the century, and worth knowing before you sign.

Is that cash balance really wasted?

Not entirely. The 38.07% contribution builds social rights: pension, sickness, unemployment. It is not a flat tax. That said, the immediate return is clearly lower than pillar 2, where a euro spent is a euro's worth. If you can load pillar 2, load it.

Which profiles does the mobility budget suit?

The maths works in your favour if you live near work, drive little, and your current car is expensive to run. It works against you if you cover 30,000 km a year between Namur and Antwerp.

"The mobility budget does not reward whoever picks the nicest electric car. It rewards whoever picks the most frugal one and puts the rest into their rent."

What if I drive a lot for work?

The mobility budget is still possible, but pillar 1 will absorb all of it. A high-mileage driver needs range and fast charging, so an expensive model, and the electricity weighs heavily in the TCO. In that profile a standard leased company car is often simpler. The total cost simulator lets you compare both scenarios on your real mileage.

What if I do not have a company car yet?

You can still claim it. Since 1 January 2022, an employee eligible for a company car under their employer's pay policy can move straight to the mobility budget without ever having had the car. The budget is then calculated on what the car you were entitled to would have cost.

What if my employer does not offer it yet?

They will have to. The obligation starts on 1 January 2027 for employers with at least 50 staff, then on 1 January 2028 for those with at least 15. Today only 2.4% of Belgian employers offer it, roughly one in 42, with a clear Brussels lead (6.8%) over Flanders and Wallonia (2.2% each). Nothing stops you raising it at your annual review.

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