Filling the gaps of transportation with Evie
"When I discovered HOURCAR’s Evie Car Share program, it completely changed my life.”
By Cali Garzon • January 5, 2026
I am a self-proclaimed and longtime scavenger when it comes to mobility. Hailing from a New Jersey, car-forward suburb, then adapting to a small college campus with no reason to escape a one-mile, walkable radius, I have been navigating the disruption of now living in a city with severely entrenched car infrastructure, without a car. Minneapolis does have decent public transportation options. I am a frequent busser, and I tend to get where I want to go in the time it tells me it will take on Apple Maps. It also has celebrated bike infrastructure that is sustained and reinforced by a passionate bike culture. I know I could be the person with the panniers, the winterized bike, and the mental fortitude to pack a change of clothes everywhere I go, and I’d be a better person for it. But I’m not. The bike lifestyle just never nabbed me, and while I’ll ride mine here and there in a pinch, it has not supplanted the yearning for ease and comfort I often have.
When I discovered HOURCAR’s Evie Car Share program, it completely changed my life. I took a job in 2023, before I knew about Evie, where I would have to commute to Saint Paul, thinking that I would take the hour and 15 minute train/bus combo each way, every day. Mind you, this is a 15 minute drive. I suppose I would have, too, if I hadn’t discovered Evie about a week before my first day. I took $3 trips each way (just wait until I would find out about the drive credits earned from parking at a charging location), a dollar more for an hour less time. Since then, my job has changed, as well as my relationship to the Evie program. It has become a tool for me, a second-resort mobility option to fill in the gap for when I’m strapped for time, or just plain lazy… …
