Ms. Ibarra, like some Green Raiteros drivers, started out as a client. Her husband, Victor Garcia, worked as an agricultural truck driver and needed access to the sole family car, so Ms. Ibarra relied on raiteros to get around. Gregorio Hernandez, 69, one of her regulars and a retired farmworker, was an original “green raitero” but became unable to drive after two strokes. He usually rides in Ms. Ibarra’s Bolt along with Enrique Contreras, a fellow dialysis patient who said it would otherwise cost $40 a day to pay someone to drive him.
Ms. Ibarra’s route to the dialysis center is a slice of Central Valley life, bisecting miles of pistachio and almond orchards, and cotton fields shedding fluff along the shoulders. She passes local employers like a major state prison and the sweltering tomato paste processing plant where she used to work. In the car, the three chitchat about what’s growing, the job scene in the fields and, of course, the weather. Ms. Ibarra always waits for the two men to finish their dialysis appointments, then drives them home.
She cares about the planet but likes E.V.s chiefly because she hates pumping gas, she said. She tracks mileage on her iPhone, pulling up to a charger at day’s end. At night, the program’s cars reside behind a chain-link fence guarded by two pit bulls, Princess and Puki.
“It’s important because many people don’t drive, don’t have cars and there is nobody to take them,” Ms. Ibarra said. “They are all farmworkers and would have to lose a day of work.”
Green Raitero’s clients, about 120 in total, either sign up for rides in advance or just wander into the former repair shop. Many “still have old-fashioned flip phones,” said David Mercado, the dispatcher and a longtime driver. “They can call day or night. We’re a tight community.”
Inventive models for E.V. ride sharing are flourishing elsewhere, from rural, unincorporated communities outside Fresno to a new car-sharing program bringing E.V.s to affordable housing complexes in eight states. A pioneering public-private effort in Los Angeles, BlueLA powered by Blink Mobility, began in 2015 with funding from California Air Resources Board and the city’s Department of Water and Power. It offers car sharing at discounted rates for low-income members: $1 per month for membership and 15 cents a minute in rental fees.
At Rancho San Pedro, a largely Latino public housing complex abutting the heavily polluted, highly trafficked Port of Los Angeles, residents campaigned for a $100,000 state-funded pilot launched by the nonprofit Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator to bring two electric vehicles and charging stations to this transportation desert more than 20 miles from downtown.
