Title: Charge order in the half-filled bond-Holstein model Abstract: We use determinant quantum Monte Carlo to study the half-filled `bond-Holstein' model on a square lattice. We find that the model exhibits a \gls*{CDW} phase transition with a critical temperature $T_\mathrm{cdw}$ considerably higher than that of the canonical `site-Holstein' model. Using a finite-size scaling analysis of the charge structure factor $S_{\rm cdw}$, we obtain $T_\mathrm{cdw}$ to greater than one percent accuracy. At the same time, local observables also show clear signatures consistent with the transition temperatures inferred from our scaling analysis. We attribute the enhanced \gls*{CDW} tendencies to a phonon-mediated nearest-neighbor electron repulsion that is directly proportional to the dimensionless electron-phonon coupling $\lambda$ in the atomic ($t\rightarrow 0$) limit. This behavior contrasts with the site-Holstein case, where the same limit yields only an on-site attraction. We supplement our analysis with results from several unsupervised machine learning methods, which not only confirm our estimates of $T_\mathrm{cdw}$ but also provide insight into the high-temperature crossover between a metallic and bipolaron liquid regime. Ref: Physical Review B, in press. Preprint: https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2601.13121