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Jan Pepper, chief executive officer of Peninsula Clean Energy, plugs in her electric vehicle to charge in the PCE headquarter parking lot in Redwood City on Jan 3, 2020. A new partnership with Lyft aims to help its drivers afford to lease electric vehicles. Photo by Magali Gauthier/The Almanac.
Jan Pepper, chief executive officer of Peninsula Clean Energy, plugs in her electric vehicle to charge in the PCE headquarter parking lot in Redwood City on Jan 3, 2020. A new partnership with Lyft aims to help its drivers afford to lease electric vehicles. Photo by Magali Gauthier/The Almanac.

San Mateo County’s electricity provider Peninsula Clean Energy announced a partnership with Lyft on a $500,000 pilot program to provide a rental incentive to ride-hailing drivers that would make the cost of renting an electric vehicle comparable to a gas-powered one.

The program, which will launch this fall with Lyft’s rental car partner Flexdrive, seeks to expand EV use to about 100 Lyft vehicles in San Mateo County while getting more drivers used to using electric vehicles and collecting data that can better inform how the EV fleet can be expanded further.

“Partnering with Lyft and Flexdrive in this pilot effort represents a big opportunity to reduce a significant source of heat-trapping emissions in our region,” Peninsula Clean Energy CEO Jan Pepper said in a news release. “We believe this can eventually lead to a far greater number of ride-hailing and other drivers on the road who will opt for cleaner electrified transportation options.”

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