Youth rideshare startup HopSkipDrive passed two major new California emissions standards in 2023, an achievement the company believes will bolster its case for relying more on shared passenger vehicles to get kids and teens to and from school .
The company tells TechCrunch that electric vehicles drove 8% of all platform miles in the state last year, 400% more than the 2% goal set by the California Air Resources Board (CARB). Total emissions for the year in California were 240 grams of carbon dioxide per passenger mile, comfortably below the benchmark of 252 grams per passenger mile.
It’s a feather in the cap, but also an additional selling point for the decade-old company, which has had to reinvent itself a few times over the years as it faces increased competition — including Uber — and new challenges, such as a recent data breach. .
One of those developments came during the pandemic. That’s when CEO Joanna McFarland says her team pushed to create its own strategic route planning software for schools that uses machine learning, creating a new line of business alongside the sharing offering.
The aim was to help make school transport networks more efficient and also ease concerns about driver shortages. While drivers must have five years of childcare experience, they do not need the commercial license required to operate a school bus.
“We can be more than just a care-centric transportation marketplace,” McFarland remembers thinking. “We can really solve these school transportation challenges and help lead school transportation into a newer, cleaner era.”
The targets cleared by HopSkipDrive were set as part of CARB’s Clean Miles Standard and Incentive program, which was approved in 2018 in an effort to clean up the fleets of so-called Transportation Network Companies (TNCs) like Uber and Lyft. This regulation went into effect in 2023, and TNCs like HopSkipDrive must submit their results later this year.
HopSkipDrive beat the targets for two reasons, McFarland says. First, California already has a fairly high rate of electric vehicle adoption, thanks to a mix of regulatory policy and financial incentives. In fact, HopSkipDrive says that 36% of all vehicles that completed a ride in California last year were electric, hybrid or fuel cell.
The second is route planning software. “This dramatically reduces the number of miles driven and the amount of emissions,” he said, because “many school districts have very inefficient routes.”
“Whenever you have less than 12 kids on a school bus, a better option is actually to put those kids in sedans, and that lowers emissions, lowers mileage and makes the whole operation more efficient,” he said.
That may seem unthinkable at a time when the Biden administration is raising a billion dollars in federal funding for schools adopt electric buses. But in some cases, these buses will not be ready immediately. And while a billion dollars is a lot of money, it won’t buy clean school buses for every region of the country.
In addition, says McFarland, “how our children go to school has changed dramatically in the last 30 years.” City planning enthusiasts may shudder at the thought of it slow multi-lane transfer and pickup linesbut funding for electric buses isn’t going to inspire those schools — or parents — to immediately change their ways, he says.
“It’s wonderful what’s happening. It’s going to take a little longer than I think anyone would because of the excitement surrounding it,” he says. “I think what we’re offering is a real way to accelerate that and accelerate districts to achieve some of their goals that they won’t be able to without services like ours.”
McFarland says the flexibility of passenger vehicles is helpful for students who are experiencing homelessness, or are in foster care or going through any other situation where they have to move around a lot. He says kids are also more open to carpooling, a trait he’s had trouble catching on with big ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft.
“These increased personalized needs really wreak havoc on a fixed-route school bus model,” he says. “We can really solve the school transportation crisis in this country and do it in a way that makes a lot more sense and is better for our families, is better for our communities, and is better for our schools.”
