NYC's curbside EV chargers are popular — and often blocked

In the three years since New York City began installing curbside chargers for electric cars, demand for the spaces has boomed — both from EV owners looking for a place to plug in and from gas-engine drivers willing to risk a ticket in exchange for street parking.

“We expected moderate demand,” with usage rates around 15%, said Roy Rada, project manager for e-mobility innovation at Consolidated Edison Inc. It’s been “exponentially higher,” he said. The 100 chargers are online 99.9% of the time with an average utilization rate of 72% in 2024, according to the New York City Department of Transportation. That’s an impressive feat, especially since vehicles with internal-combustion engines blocked access to the chargers 20% of the time during the program’s first 18 months.

Building on that success, the citywide charging pilot that was originally expected to end in July will now likely extend an additional year, allowing the NYC DOT and Con Ed, the utility that provides electricity to homes and businesses in New York City, to continue to gather data on demand. They’re also beginning to plot out a larger-scale, post-pilot expansion, issuing last September a request for expressions of interest from EV-charging companies. The details of the extension are expected to be finalized in April, Con Ed said.

“Across usage, availability, awareness, everything has exceeded our original expectations when we first started this project,” Rada said in an interview. “Let’s take our learnings here, let’s start the next rollout, so we can make this more accessible to more people in our city.”

The city that’s home to more than 8 million people began installing public curbside EV charging stations in 2021 as a way to encourage the adoption of plug-in hybrid and electric cars, a key step in curbing air pollution and helping it reach carbon neutrality by 2050. EV demand, already choppy across developed markets as buyers grapple with high prices and interest rates, faces a particular hurdle in dense cities, where many car owners don’t have access to private parking spaces or personal garages like they might in the suburbs. Half of New Yorkers rely on street parking to store their cars