New York City is installing its first roadside electric vehicle charging stations this year to address the city’s lack of charging.
The Ministry of Transport announced that it would install 100 charging points for public use by October. Another 20 ports will serve the city’s electric vehicle fleet.
City officials said expanding an electric vehicle charging network is essential to meet environmental goals, which include achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.
“If New York City is to reduce and ultimately eliminate its carbon footprint, it is critical that all cars in the city are electric,” said Hank Gutman, NYC DOT commissioner. The four-year pilot program is a start.
“Our plan is to make it big here,” he said. “And we assume that the private sector will be strengthened and will do its part.”
Currently, New York’s charging capacity is limited for the nearly 15,000 electric vehicles registered in the city. Around 1,400 level 2 charging plugs that are 80% charged in four to eight hours and 117 quick-charging plugs that are 80% charged in 30 minutes to an hour can be found across the city. The vast majority of these are in parking garages in Manhattan, according to DOT officials.
The roadside charging stations will be level 2 ports.
Mr Gutman, who drives a plug-in hybrid car, admitted that the limited charging capacity has been an obstacle to expanding access to electric vehicles for many people in the city, especially those who cannot afford private garage parking spaces can. The proportion of electric cars registered in New York rose by 50% in the past year alone, according to DOT, but still makes up a fraction of the total number of vehicles on the road.
A demonstration was held on Thursday at the new electric vehicle charging station in the Bronx.
Photo:
New York Department of Transportation
The first of the new charging stations was installed in the Norwood neighborhood of the Bronx, where a demonstration took place on Thursday. The new city chargers will cost $ 2.50 an hour during the day and $ 1 an hour at night. FLO, a Quebec City-based charging network operator, will operate the network under a contract with Consolidated Edison. manage Inc.
The program is funded by a grant from the New York State Public Service Commission.
“That brings chargers to the streets and into the Bronx,” Gutman said. “It’s an opportunity to make electric driving accessible to all New Yorkers.”
He declined to go into detail about how many more charging stations the city wanted to add beyond the 120. However, Jamie McShane, a spokesperson for Con Edison, said the company is investing $ 310 million to fund more than 21,000 Level 2 chargers through 2025 at more than 525 fast charging stations in New York City, as well as Westchester, Orange and Rockland Counties . The company expects the vast majority of these to be in New York City, McShane said, but the market will dictate geographic locations.
Dozens of new electric vehicle models are expected to arrive at dealerships over the next few years. We followed eight Wall Street Journal reporters in four countries to see if they and the world were ready to make the switch.
Joseph Chow, a professor at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering, said the city appeared to have political will to expand access to electric vehicles but this week questioned a decision to end the licensing of electric vehicle taxis in Manhattan. “There seemed to be a dynamic as more electric taxis came out, but now they’re limiting that,” Chow said.
Mr. Gutman declined to comment on the Taxi and Limousine Commission’s decision. TLC Commissioner Aloysee Heredia Jarmoszuk said at a hearing on Tuesday that in a congested city it is unsustainable to continue exempting electric vehicles from a rental vehicle cap on the street.
New York had planned to start installing charging stations last year, but the Covid-19 pandemic delayed the rollout. The private market has now started to fill the void. Revel, an electric scooter and taxi company, announced in February that it would open a supercharging station in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where 30 stations are open 24/7 and can provide vehicles with 100 miles of charge in around 20 minutes, company said.
Tesla Inc.
offers supercharger systems capable of charging batteries to 80% capacity in around 40 minutes for vehicle owners across the city. Most other EV owners only have a handful of fast-charging options in the city.
Write to Ian Lovett at ian.lovett@wsj.com
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