by Barbara Grady, Yale Climate Connections
June 23, 2026
Sales of new electric vehicles cooled in the U.S. after the president and Republican-led Congress last year squashed tax credits that reduced their cost. But with gasoline prices soaring since the war against Iran began, more drivers are eyeing electric vehicles again – if only wistfully. Buying a new car is a big expense.
Enter California’s Míocar ride-share program.
“With the cost of gas, insurance, registration, we don’t want to own a car,” said Michael Defriese, a Stockton, California, resident who lives on social security disability payments.
But he loves driving an electric vehicle rented from Míocar two or three times a month to visit his mother, 110 miles away in Santa Rosa, or his daughter, 71 miles away in Oakland.
“We also use it for grocery shopping and getting to doctor appointments,” he said.
Accessible transportation, less pollution
Míocar is a nonprofit car-sharing program subsidized by the state of California and local governments. The service was founded to make transportation more accessible in low-income areas burdened by air pollution. Users join Míocar with a one-time $20 fee and then pay $4 an hour or $35 a day to rent a Míocar EV – most often a Chevy Bolt, but sometimes an IONIQ 5 or Hyundai Kona. If a trip exceeds 150 miles, a mileage charge of $0.35 a mile kicks in.
“With the price of gas these days,” says fellow Stockton resident Jennifer Flores, “I prefer driving Míocar over using my own personal car.”
A survey of Míocar users by the University of California at Davis Institute of Transportation Studies found that Míocar allowed for 81,318 gas vehicle miles to be avoided between 2019 and 2023. Also, 19% of survey responders said their experience led them to either shed or delay buying combustion engine cars, often by not replacing a broken-down one. The Institute was a partner in launching the program and now studies whether it is effective in increasing access to transportation and reducing climate-warming pollution.
The car-sharing program has hubs in six cities, mostly in the Central Valley – the vast swath of land where much of the nation’s fruits and vegetables are grown. The Valley’s topography between mountain ranges traps air that is polluted by diesel truck emissions and agricultural activity. Its cities are among the most polluted in California. And its people are among the poorest: Poverty rates in the big agricultural counties of Kern and Tulare hover around 19%.
A government initiative
Míocar was born when local governments in the San Joaquin Valley, which is the southern half of the Central Valley, realized that limited transportation – low car ownership and scant public transportation – hindered people’s access to health care and jobs. The San Joaquin Council of Governments, composed of local governments in eight counties, joined with the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies to figure out how to address the problem. They applied for grants from the state’s California Climate Investments fund that were being distributed for clean mobility pilot programs.
California Climate Investments distributes revenues generated by the state cap-and-invest greenhouse gas emissions reduction program. It supports projects that reduce emissions, protect public health, strengthen local economies, and support natural environments around the state. By law, 35% of those investments must benefit low-income communities.
Gloria Huerta, chief operating officer of Míocar, said car-sharing is one of several programs the San Joaquin Council of Governments set up with the state’s help to improve transportation equity, especially clean transportation. Other projects include EV bike sharing and improvements to public transportation, but in farm country, public transit still is not frequent enough to provide for all the hours and routes that people need. Car-sharing fills a gap.
“Users include households who share one vehicle that gets tied up because a parent takes it to work each day, so other family members rent a Míocar for shopping or doctor’s appointments,” Huerta said. “We also have users whose cars have broken down and they don’t have the money to fix them. For others, it extends travel beyond bus limits, or they just want to try an electric vehicle.”
The rental cars and their charging stations are situated near public housing projects, civic centers, libraries, senior centers, and hospitals “in cities where residents don’t have a lot of resources,” Huerta said. “Since they are all electric, we can address equity issues and climate issues.”
In areas where it is most popular, like Stockton, Míocar receives new applications every day from potential users, Huerta said, and oftentimes cars are fully reserved. In other locations, the cars sit waiting for users. Míocar staff spend a fair amount of time doing outreach to build awareness of the program and training people to use the chargers.
“Orientation is important to make sure people are comfortable with using an electric vehicle and a charger,” she said. Míocar staff also provide 24-hour, seven-day-a-week customer service. Insurance, charging, and vehicle maintenance are included in the rental fees.
A climate solution in action
State subsidies are needed to make the service pencil out financially, but officials see it as an investment in meeting state goals for reducing climate pollution from transportation and improving access to transportation.
The state’s climate change and air quality programs, including Míocar, are working: Between 2000 and 2023, California’s climate pollution fell by 21% even as the state’s gross state product, a measure of economic growth, increased by 81%, according to the California Air Resources Board.
Brian Harold, program evaluation specialist with the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies, said that while Míocar is providing transportation for people without much access, “it is not substituting for transit – rarely do people say they use it instead of a bus. It is substituting either for personal vehicle travel or for transportation they would not have taken.”
The studies show that higher-income Míocar users were replacing miles they would have driven in gasoline vehicles. A much larger group of low-income users rented Míocars “for transportation that would not have happened,” he said.
In Stockton, California, where Míocar has nine sites, each with about six EVs that are frequently used, per capita income is only $33,000. Stockton is an agricultural logistics hub with a heavy dose of both smog and poverty.
Charging challenges remain
Míocar operates in one city that’s not in farm country: Richmond, California, a working-class suburb of San Francisco. Richmond is home to a large Chevron refinery, and its air quality is compromised as a result. The city and Contra Costa County are subsidizing the program there with the help of state grants.
“We are a fence-line community,” said Arredondo Gabino, Richmond’s project manager for transportation services, using a term that means a community is immediately adjacent to a high-emissions industry, “so we are environmental-justice focused. We are trying to improve access to everything clean: solar, paratransit. Míocar is another opportunity.”
Míocar got off to an OK start in Richmond in 2023, but it has yet to catch on as it has in Stockton. Recently, the charging stations in the Richmond Míocar program were vandalized, allegedly by an organized ring seeking the copper in the charging equipment for resale. So Richmond and its partners are working to design charging infrastructure that is vandalism-proof.
“It is hard to get these (car-sharing programs) up and running. It requires a lot of work from all parties,” Harold of UC Davis said, with collaboration among cities, charging providers, the state, and Míocar personnel. Harold added that getting charging infrastructure right and identifying the right sites for them is part of the challenge.
EV use nationwide has run into the same challenge: unavailable or unreliable charging infrastructure discourages use and sales of EVs.
“The reliability of public chargers is crucial to the success of transitioning to EVs and transforming the transportation system to be electrically fueled to support California’s emissions and zero-emission vehicle sales goals,” according to an Electric Vehicle Research Center report by the UC Davis Institute of Transportation Studies.
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