A collaboration between local tech and climate entrepreneurs is aiming to improve the livelihoods of dollar van drivers and decarbonize urban transport by helping dollar van drivers convert to electric vehicles.
On this week’s Impact Briefing, Host Monique Aiken and ImpactAlpha’s Roodgally Senatus chat with Su Sanni and Chris Coles of Brooklyn-based Dollaride, which is working with with climate and tech startups to electrify the city’s informal “dollar vans” and boost the livelihoods of drivers in New York’s transit deserts.
Backed by a $10 million grant from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority, or NYSERDA, the Clean Transit Access Program aims to electrify at least 100 dollar vans operating in New York’s most severe transit deserts in Brooklyn and Queens this year.
“We want the drivers in the industry to have the best equipment and technology because oftentimes our communities don’t get what is the best,” says Su Sanni, co-founder of Dollaride, the Black-led, Brooklyn-based tech startup spearheading the collaboration. “We’re trying to show the world that this is how you uplift communities and you deliver impact. You use the best tools that you have available.”
Dollaride has raised $1.1 million in pre-seed funding from Backstage Capital, Sorenson Impact Foundation and Powerhouse Ventures and other investors.
