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Supplemental mobility services such as carsharing offer significant opportunities for benefits to rural communities. Due to low population density, lack of charging infrastructure, lack of familiarity with carsharing or electric vehicles, and longer driving distances, carsharing has not been well established in rural communities. The Clean Rural Shared Electric Mobility Project (CRuSE) introduces an all-electric carshare program in Hood River, Oregon. The carshare, consisting of five electric vehicles placed with dedicated electric vehicle charging stations at five distinct sites, helps provide access to several groups of users including city employees, affordable housing residents, tourists, and the local community population. This project will develop, demonstrate, and refine an affordable, accessible, sustainable, and replicable financial model for electric carsharing in rural Hood River, Oregon. The overall project goals of the CRuSE Project are to demonstrate that round trip electric vehicle carsharing can serve rural communities—including low-income residents—in an effective and financially sustainable way, and to develop the tools and voice to educate, encourage and replicate carsharing in other rural communities. The project team will collect a broad variety of data from users, carshare vehicles, and charging stations to assess the impact of the project on energy use and greenhouse gas emissions as well as local knowledge of electric vehicles.

For more information on this project, check the Technology Integration 2020 Annual Report or Annual Merit Review presentation.