It's electric to install 700 EV curbside chargers in NYC
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It's electric's charging pedestals will enable curbside charging in cities. Photo: Courtesy of It's electric.
New York City is installing hundreds of curbside electric vehicle chargers in an effort to address one of the thorniest problems for urban EV drivers — where to charge overnight.
Why it matters: Cities could be among the biggest beneficiaries of quiet, emission-free vehicles, yet EV adoption is especially difficult in densely populated areas, where millions of people park on the street and can't plug in overnight.
Driving the news: A Brooklyn-based startup called It's electric has been selected to build New York's permanent curbside charging network, installing 700 Level 2 chargers across all five boroughs over the next three years.
- It's electric, with engineering partner Maverick EV, will replace 88 existing pilot chargers and then add 600 new ones, focusing on neighborhoods with large concentrations of rideshare drivers and limited off-street parking.
- The chargers will be manufactured in Queens.
State of play: More than 80,000 rideshare drivers live in New York, and the city has been pushing Uber, Lyft and other TLC companies to electrify their fleets by 2030.
- It's part of a broader push toward an 80% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.
- The city's initial curbside charging pilot proved to be immensely popular with EV owners, with utilization rates well over 70%.
What they're saying: "The whole point of curbside charging is that we are taking the gold standard of charging, which is charging at home, and we're replicating that on the street," It's electric co-founder Tiya Gordon tells Axios.
Zoom in: It's electric has specific strategies to tackle the unique challenges in urban charging rollouts.
- In other markets, it has aimed to eliminate typical construction bottlenecks like utility hookups and permitting delays by instead tapping into the surplus power of nearby buildings.
- The chargers meter and pay for their own electricity use, and the company also shares revenue with building owners.
- Gordon noted that New York will start differently, using existing utility connections at first, and then a mix of utility and building power, with an emphasis on speed of development.
How it works: The company's sleekly designed charging posts have no screens, touchpads, or credit card interfaces — and importantly, no charger cables.
- When drivers sign up with It's electric, they're automatically sent a detachable cable they can keep in their car and plug in at any of the company's chargers.
Yes, but: At least initially, New York's curbside chargers will have fixed cables — but Gordon says the company can easily switch to detachable cables in the future at the city's request.
Reality check: Even 700 chargers won't come close to meeting New York's potential demand.
- The city's longer-term plan calls for 10,000 curbside chargers.
- "We have a lot of catching up to do," Gordon says.
- London, with roughly the same population, already has nearly 30,000 curbside chargers, she notes.
The big picture: It's electric has installed about 50 chargers so far in Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Detroit and Washington, D.C.
- The New York contract represents a giant growth leap for the startup, which also raised a new bridge round of seed funding led by Halogen Ventures, bringing its total funding to $15 million.
