5,000 chargers at NYC parking sites could boost EV ownership

New York City is due to get 5,000 new EV chargers through an alliance between a parking operator and charging-infrastructure company.

The Hudson Valley Parking Trust, which recently acquired Icon Parking, New York City’s largest purveyor of parking spots, is working with Invisible Urban Charging (IUC) to install the chargers at parking sites it controls, the organizations jointly revealed earlier this month.

IUC is the same company that in 2022 unveiled a plan to double the number of EV chargers in Florida. That project focused on high-amp Level 2 AC chargers, and that appears to be the case here as well. The company aims to deploy 1 million chargers over the next five years.

IUC EV chargers

Additional chargers will help address surging EV growth in the Big Apple. It saw a 660% increase in EV ownership over the past five years, and it aims to replace 400,000 vehicles with EVs in NYC for carbon neutrality by 2030.

New York City was fairly early in preparing for charging infrastructure, enacting a rule in 2013 that 20% of newly-constructed parking spaces must be charging-ready. That doesn’t cover existing structures, though, or address street parking. Roughly 1 million vehicles are street-parked in New York City, the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) estimates, and the city is working on a streetside charging program.

2024 Hyundai Kona Electric

While NYC hasn’t been short on logistical issues, it’s been the place for some charging innovation—like Gravity’s showcase charging station claimed to be the fastest-charging in America. 

As an MIT study out last year concluded, more emphasis on daytime and workplace charging could help reduce the need for additional power plants—by soothing peak-time evening demand. This goes hand-in-hand with a longtime argument that while DC fast-charging is great for long road trips, in the broader sense the deployment of smart charging is more important.