NYC looks to kick its curbside EV charging plans into second gear

The 600 new chargers will also reserve parking spots for EVs and use the same pricing model as the initial pilot, according to the NYC Department of Transportation.

The city is still determining which EV chargers to use. In its Con Ed pilot, it chose the company FLO. But installing those chargers required digging underground to connect to a main power line, then patching up the street or parking lot — a process that’s not only expensive but time-consuming to get the right permits for.

The bill for FLO’s construction was $13.4 million — almost as much as the city’s new $15 million grant — to deploy just 60 chargers over six years. That per-charger rate would make it costly to install 600 EV chargers, let alone the 10,000 the city wants to eventually build. But there are less expensive approaches.

Voltpost, which installed two chargers in NYC as part of another pilot project, converts lampposts to EV chargers. Its model cuts costs significantly because it doesn’t require digging, said founder Jeff Prosserman, though it does entail upgrading the electrical capacity of streetlights from 150 to 240 volts. That can be done with a single wire that connects to the lamp, Prosserman said, at a cost that’s less than the conventional charger model.

Prosserman declined to share specific per-charger costs, but said his company would be able to deploy 600 chargers within the $15 million budget and can retrofit a lamppost in one to two hours.

Another method for getting EV chargers close to consumers is connecting them to buildings — the model Itselectric uses. That also avoids the need to dig by tapping into energy already being sent to buildings. Each Itselectric charger costs under $10,000 to install, according to Gordon, who said the company could deploy more than twice the amount of chargers within the city’s $15 million budget.

“The power is already there at the exact right level, because Level 2 charger is the same as an electric dryer or electric oven that you would put into that building,” Gordon said, referring to the standard charging level that curbside chargers use. ​“That allows us to deploy chargers literally anywhere there’s a building and a curb.”

Neither Itselectric nor Voltpost is formally involved in the NYC project at this stage, though both say they intend to apply to DOT once it issues a request for proposals. A timeline for construction will be announced later this year, DOT said.

Once built, the hope is that the new curbside chargers will nudge more of NYC’s car owners to choose electric vehicles. While New York has more robust public transit options than most U.S. cities, offering residents a much climate-friendlier way to get around their city than even owning an EV, nearly half of its households still own a car. If the city is to decarbonize, those car owners — along with the city’s fleets of taxis, buses, trucks, and delivery vans — need to leave gas behind.

For all those vehicles, ​“we want to make sure they have the capacity to go from gas to electric,” Prosserman said. And that can happen only with the proper charging infrastructure in place.