Persuading people to use the e-Golfs stationed at low-income apartment buildings could be a challenge. They cost 15 cents a minute or $9 an hour to use. Mr. Ayala cited obstacles to adoption in his organization’s car-share program, which is free. He said many residents don’t have driver’s licenses or credit cards, which are needed to activate the service.

I paid three visits to the Whispering Pines apartments, which was included in the service by Electrify America on Nov. 1. Each time, I found leaves collecting in the charging ports of the two cars, as if they had not been moved for several days. Envoy Technologies, which operates the program, declined to share usage rates for the cars at Whispering Pines.

In yet another Sacramento-based experiment financed by Electrify America, a program called Gig this month started to put the first of 260 all-electric Chevrolet Bolts on city streets in a 13-square-mile zone between downtown and midtown. Seventy percent of residents in this zone are considered low income.

Users can locate a Bolt via a mobile app, unlock the door, start it up and drive for $2.50 a mile or $15 an hour. When the ride is completed, members can park the car in any legal spot in the designated zone, lock the door and move on.

These activities, which have turned Sacramento into a test bed for equitable access to E.V.s, are being conducted in the first $200 million cycle of the Electrify America investment. The company says these programs have taken about a year to develop and won’t bear fruit until later this year.

Even with few of those services fully in operation, Electrify America went back in December to the California Air Resources Board to get approval for the second $200 million cycle. The meeting became contentious when two board members, Assemblyman Eduardo Garcia and the former State Senator Dean Florez, both hailing from rural districts, accused Electrify America of primarily focusing on profits, which it is entitled to earn under the Volkswagen settlement.

“They plan to invest $95 million to $115 million in places like San Francisco, Beverly Hills or La Jolla, where projected demand is high for electric vehicles, rather than building charging stations in lower-income communities where the market will take longer to grow,” they wrote in a Sacramento Bee editorial. “Comparatively, only $2 million would be spent for community charging in rural areas badly in need of investment and opportunity.”