Yoshi Mobility Brings Mobile EV Charging To Fleets

When Yoshi Mobility opened shop in 2015 the philosophy was simple according to CEO and co-founder Bryan Frist: “We started with the simple idea of never go to the gas station again.”

That’s when the Nashville, Tennessee-based company began its business of delivering gasoline directly to customers and growing to provide other on-site services that include washes and detailing, inspections, windshield wiper replacements.

Now, the company that started with the idea of motorists never having to visit a gas station is making it easier for fleet operators running electric vehicles to never have to install or visit a charging station again.

Starting this year, Yoshi Mobility will begin converting General Motors BrightDrop Zevo 600 electric delivery vans into mobile EV superchargers, the company announced Monday.

Those superchargers are essentially 240 kW DC fast chargers that are driven to a fleet’s lot and dispense electrons drawn from the mobile charger’s battery.

“There’s kind of this critical grid problem and so we think that we can accelerate towards an EV future and this is a unique way that we can do it,” said Frist in an interview. “The mobile charger can charge and then it can multiplex all the spots. So we tell people, it can electrify every spot in your parking lot.”

Each mobile supercharger can service between five and seven vehicles according to Frist. With perhaps two superchargers operating on a fleet operator’s lot, one would service a vehicle while the other supercharger would replenish its own charge off the grid and they would alternate, according to Frist.

“What we say is we can do that same charge instead of three and a half hours, we can do in 10 minutes, and we can move around your lot,” Frist says. “You don’t have to put in all the infrastructure. You don’t have to build it out. You just contract with us.”

The company plans to begin with a “handful” of mobile superchargers in BrightDrop vans but expects to ramp up production and begin commercializing more widely during the first quarter of 2025.

While starting with the BrightDrop Zevo 600, Yoshi Mobility is also looking at creating superchargers in Chevrolet Silverado electric pickup trucks, although the technology is “vehicle agnostic” the company said. The key, according to Frist, is using a vehicle large enough to accommodate a higher-capacity battery than would power a normal EV.

The focus, right now, is on using vehicles built by General Motors Co. since the automaker is a major investor in Yoshi Mobility, Frist said.

The mobile superchargers will complement Yoshi Mobility’s existing offering of high-capacity mobile generators that sit on a fleet operator’s lot putting out as much as a megawatt of power and can service a larger number of vehicles than the mobile units.

Adding mobile EV charging for fleets comes barely two months after Yoshi Mobility acquired Mobile Auto Concepts Inc.-MACi- in a move to bolster its on-site service offerings and broaden its West Coast presence.

The San Francisco-based company specializes in providing on-site services that include tire care and replacement, preventative maintenance, multipoint inspections and eco-friendly washes.

Its major clients are ZipCar, UpShift Inc, and the City of San Francisco.

Expansion of services is a key to Yoshi Mobility’s growth, but with the introduction of its mobile EV superchargers, Frist says the company is embracing its role in accelerating the transition for fleets in going electric, declaring, “we think behind AI this is the biggest transition of our generation.”