Charge It, Please!

What’s the current state of electric vehicle (EV) ownership in New York City? How many people own the vehicles, and what are you imagining the city will look like five, ten, or fifteen years from now?

The latest number that we have from the New York State DMV is that there are north of 53,000 EVs registered in New York City. This is, surprisingly, about double how many were registered as recently as January 2023. We’re seeing a lot of positive momentum, and much of this growth came from taxi and for-hire vehicle (FHV) driver registrations of EVs at the end of last year.

We’re going to need the vast majority of vehicles to be electric by 2050 to meet carbon neutrality goals. There are positive trends, but we need to keep those moving. Once we get past early adopters, to other automobile owners who are more hesitant to embrace the new technology, we have to make it more convenient for them to charge.

Both of you are working on electric vehicle charging initiatives at New York City’s Department of Transportation, including the recent curbside charging pilot. How did these programs come to be, and why are they important from both climate and social perspectives?

From a climate perspective, to meet our obligations to become carbon-neutral we need to get as many people as possible to take sustainable modes. This agency continues to prioritize that, and that’s where the majority of our capacity and our resources are. We lead the United States in the percentage of trips that are made by walking, biking, and transit. But, we need to increase them if we’re going to get to carbon neutrality.

Our basic line is: We prefer that you don’t drive, but if you are going to drive, drive electric. That’s where our EV charging program comes into play. We hope that there will be fewer car trips in the future and that fewer New Yorkers will own cars, but we need to make sure that the cars that remain aren’t spewing tailpipe and carbon pollution.

The public sector can play a role in filling some of the charging gaps, particularly in a city like New York, which is really different from most other American cities. Most people live in multifamily housing, and a lot of people who own cars don’t have their own driveway or garage. We estimate that about half of New Yorkers who are vehicle owners park on the street. What is the charging solution that meets the needs of those drivers and also addresses what we see as a growing disparity in the deployment of charging across the five boroughs? There’s lots of investment by private fast charging companies in Manhattan, lots of investment in inner Brooklyn and Queens, a lot less in the outer boroughs. A lot of taxi and FHV drivers — both targets for electrification — don’t live in the central business district of Manhattan or inner Brooklyn and Queens. We want to prioritize investments that will help to rapidly electrify those high-use fleets.

Fast charging can provide an 80 percent charge in as little as 20 minutes. Fast charging provides more of a gas station experience and is best for charging up on long trips or for high-mileage fleets, like taxis and FHVs. We need to create more fast charging hubs, particularly in the outer boroughs, where people can go and get a quick charge. That’s why we have three fast charging stations in operation and another 18 in the pipeline, including 13 through a partnership with the New York Power Authority. Those will provide places where people who park at the curb or people who are taxi and FHV drivers can go for that quick charge. Fast charging is more expensive to install, and more expensive to the end user, so we also want to provide Level 2 charging to people who don’t have their own driveway or garage. Level 2 charging provides an 80 percent charge in six to eight hours depending on the vehicle’s battery size. Level 2 is best for charging an EV where it is typically parked, like at home or work. Most charging in the United States is done at Level 2 chargers. That’s where the curbside program comes into play.

It initially came about because Con Edison approached us before the pandemic. They had some money through the Public Service Commission to invest in green energy and wanted to partner with us on a 120-plug pilot, which is up and running, and has exceeded our expectations, both in terms of how much it gets used and how good the uptime has been.

How do you site these chargers, at the curb level? What makes a site a good candidate, or not a good candidate?

When we place this kind of infrastructure, we want to make sure we’re doing it in such a way that doesn’t preclude us from coming back at a future point and putting in a bus lane, protected bike lane, a plaza, or pedestrian infrastructure at that curb. We in no way want to constrain the decisions that we can make in the future to implement those other uses.

We looked at a range of different neighborhoods: commercial corridors and also residential areas. You want these chargers to be sited in areas where folks are going to be parking longer-term. Somebody’s going to park their car for a few hours, go shopping, or visit somebody in the neighborhood. Or, if it’s residential, they’re parking their vehicle overnight or leaving it there for a few hours to go to the park, whatever it may be. Particularly for Level 2 charging, you want folks to have the time to top up their vehicles and not be in and out of the location. We also paid attention to the parking regulations that existed at these curbs. While we did try out locations where there are parking regulations that limit parking to two to four hours, we were really looking for those longer-term stays where folks were going to be able actually top up their vehicle.

We are in all five boroughs, going everywhere from the Upper West Side and Upper East Side to the central Bronx, Staten Island, or outer Queens. There are sections of the outer boroughs where a lot of the predominant housing stock has a driveway or garage. In those areas, this solution isn’t needed as much because most people have access to home charging. A lot of the focus is on areas with high-density, multifamily housing and not a lot of off-street parking. In Manhattan, for example, you have a lot of multifamily housing, but you also have a tremendous amount of off-street parking, in part because it’s so profitable to operate it. In other neighborhoods where the building stock is older but still quite dense, you don’t have those other lots. So that’s less of a viable solution for people who are trying to go electric.

Before installing the chargers, you had an outreach process, both with community boards and using an online portal. How did these efforts impact your work?

We wanted to be in communities that were embracing this technology, where we were wanted. We were also conscious of the equity impacts of our projects, making sure that we distributed these beyond the neighborhoods where charging infrastructure already existed. Through our conversations with elected officials and community boards, as well as our online suggestion portal, we were able to get a better understanding of where it was that communities wanted these chargers. We approached them with some tentative locations, and a lot of them approached us with positivity. But others said: “Maybe this other street is better for us because the chargers are still readily available but there’s less impact to the community.” Getting that on-the-ground understanding from the community was critical. We also had an online portal where folks were able to indicate where they did and didn’t want chargers in their community. This was citywide, and 96 percent of the responses that we received on this map were positive responses, folks saying: This is where we want chargers, this is a general area where we think they’d be a great idea. And the other four percent was folks saying: “Maybe not in this location, but you should consider this other site in the neighborhood.”

Installation of the chargers began in 2021. How are they doing now? How much are they being used, and how reliable are they?

Last May, we reported a 99.9 percent uptime with these chargers. The uptime, in short, is the amount of time in which the chargers are actually functional and can be used. A big issue in the EV charger industry has been reliability; we look to keep that moving forward. We want not only for these chargers to be physically available but to be usable.

In terms of charging activity, utilization is the percent of time during a month — or any given amount of time — that the chargers are being used. Last May our utilization was around 34 percent systemwide. All our chargers, on the whole, being used 34% of the time. That’s more than doubled in February of this year. We’re at about 72 percent systemwide utilization, which is almost unheard of for charging infrastructure in the US and is a sign that there’s demand for these chargers. We have some sites that are over 80 percent. And we’re seeing that in locations where we did expect it — the Upper West Side and Upper East Side where there’s that built-in demand already — but we’re also seeing it in other neighborhoods, where the adoption of EVs from taxi and FHV drivers has been helping to boost the use of these chargers.

Some neighborhoods — especially lower-income neighborhoods — have lower EV uptake largely due to the high up-front cost of buying one. What value is there in locating the chargers outside of the places where consumer purchasing of EVs has been higher?

We were very explicit that utilization is a key metric for us, but it’s not the only one. We are putting chargers in some neighborhoods where we knew that EV adoption is lower because people can’t adopt EVs if they don’t have a convenient, affordable, and safe way to charge. That’s why we put chargers in the central and northern Bronx, further out in Queens and in Brooklyn. If EV adoption is part of our overall transportation sustainability agenda, you have to provide access to more neighborhoods, particularly ones where the private charging industry is not going first. Those companies are rushing to serve the neighborhoods that have the highest saturation of EVs now.

A lot of regular users, including taxis and FHV drivers, live in more working-class neighborhoods, and they can be major drivers of charging use, particularly if they’re charging when they’re off-shift, when their car is parked on the street.

As for the question of EV affordability: since we’ve managed this pilot, we’ve seen a dramatic increase in the choice of model and a dropping in the average price point. We need more companies to come forward with affordable electric models. As that happens, we’ll also need to see the growing of the used car market, because a lot of people who have more constrained budgets aren’t buying new vehicles, they’re buying used ones.

This pilot program involves partnerships with both Con Edison and Flo, which manages the actual chargers. How does this partnership work?

Con Edison got a pool of money to invest in this project. They then did a competitive procurement and selected Flo as their provider. Con Ed and Flo worked very closely with us, because obviously, it’s our streets. We had a lot of discussions about the siting and the design of the chargers. We had to go to the Public Design Commission. I think that is going to be unique to the pilot.

Going forward, we aspire to an expansion of the program where DOT is leading and would do the procurement and bring on a private partner that would come with chargers and resources.

If you have a gas car, you go to the gas station, which is privately owned, and pay a private company for the gas. But with curbside charging, you’re on a public street and using a public sidewalk, but also utilizing a private company, Flo. Where does the revenue go when you pay to use a curbside charger?

It’s split between Con Edison and Flo. Because this is a demonstration, the city isn’t receiving direct funding, but moving forward beyond the pilot, we will be looking for ways for the city to receive funding from curbside charging.

Just to make clear, the current pilot doesn’t make money.

In Europe, they’ve reached a point in the market development where cities are making net revenue from these chargers. We’re not there in New York, but at some point there is the potential for this to contribute to the city’s general fund.

Amsterdam (where new EV registrations are 31 percent of new purchase vehicles) is in a different place from New York, where we’re seeing very strong progress, but we’re not nearly that level. They’re deploying at scale, and there are other ways that they’re making it more efficient.

As you look back on the work of this pilot, what do you see as the future of this program?

We’re keeping a couple of things in mind as we approach potential expansion. The first is to maintain our focus on equity, looking to invest in neighborhoods where the private companies are not, to make sure that all New Yorkers who want to go electric have the option to do so. Closely aligned with that is our focus on neighborhoods where a high percentage of taxi and FHV drivers live, to make sure that as we push for full electrification of those industries, they have convenient and affordable places to charge. The third is to continue to innovate with what the chargers look like, and how we can best fit them in to the urban fabric, in such a way as they can blend in rather than stand out.

We’re looking at different options, including user-supplied cord EV chargers. That means that the person that has the vehicle brings the cord, and that dramatically reduces the necessary size of the unit. We’re also considering systems that have cords and a cord management system. And of course, always making sure that we’re siting in a very deliberate way that makes sure that we’re not losing that important flexibility that we currently have for programming the curb — be it for bike lanes, bus lanes, pedestrian plazas, loading, all that kind of stuff. That we’re being as smart as we can be.