The first in the nation EV fleet to fleet shared local charging hubs opened today (May 15th) as Mitra EV held the grand opening event to highlight their work with two customers in Rancho Cordova. Small and medium sized businesses (SMBs) operate over 50% of all commercial trucks, yet they face the greatest barriers to electrification - they are underserved, and viewed as “unbankable” by financiers.

Mitra EV is accelerating EV adoption by alleviating these issues by helping SMB commercial fleets save money and deploy charging infrastructure in the most grid-congested areas. The hubs will provide businesses the proper infrastructure to operate electric fleets. More detail on the event can be found here.

Galina Russell of Mitra EV says "The local businesses that are doing home services in the Sacramento community now have the ability to drive electric trucks and charge in their warehouses and at other neighboring fleets warehouses when they are running routes in those areas. The obvious benefit is reducing carbon emissions and keeping those communities cleaner but the immediate benefit is that businesses will save on their refueling costs starting month 1 with a savings of over 50% on their refueling expenses."

California Energy Commission Commissioner Nancy Skinner adds, "Energize is one of the grant solicitation programs that the energy commission administered and we have a number of different grant programs to support EV charging infrastructure and the Energize program is designed specifically for fleets and it's original design was to fund private fleets. Mitra EV identified a number of smaller fleet entities where it didn't make sense to put individual chargers and it made sense to put in fleet to fleet charges where lots of small fleets would have access."

The event was held at the Sierra Pacific Home and Comfort location in Rancho Cordova. "The immediate impact to us is operational savings," says Sierra Pacific President Jason Hanson. "We've already done side by side comparisons between operating what are install trucks cost to run everyday versus the new electric install trucks and it's easily a 50% savings on fuel and energy to operate.

The Afternoon News with Kitty O'Neal