New York City has set aggressive, nation-leading timelines for full-scale electrification of passenger vehicles to improve air quality and help avoid widespread climate change catastrophes. One of the city’s standout goals is the conversion of the city’s high-volume for-hire vehicle fleet to 100% zero emissions by 2030
The New York City’s Taxi & Limousine Commission (TLC) says data shows TLC-licensed vehicles represent about 4% of total emissions for the city’s transportation sector. While 4% may seem like a small number, it represents around 600,000 tons of CO2, as well as other harmful emissions spewed into the air in 2022 alone. The TLC said converting its fleet of over 130,000 vehicles to zero emissions vehicles through the “Green Rides” program is a major step toward cleaner air citywide.
At a recent New York City Tech Week event, a panel of EV and charging experts from both the private and public sector discussed how they will need to work together to meet these goals. First and foremost, the panel agreed, the city will require a massively expanded EV charging infrastructure.
The panel included: Alejandro de la Garza (moderator), Staff Writer, TIME Magazine; Dr. Britt Reichborn-Kjennerud, Director of E-Mobility, ConEdison; Ryan Wanttaja, Deputy TLC Commissioner; Kevin Miller, Senior Advisor at the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation; and Frank Reig, CEO & Co-Founder, Revel.
Barriers to Electrification of For-Hire Vehicles
“It was important for us not to mandate that any individual driver go out and purchase a new vehicle to meet certain fuel economy standards,” said Wanttaja. “By putting the requirement on the people who have the money, not on the individual drivers who may be struggling to make a living, but on Uber and Lyft, we are hoping to encourage these companies to incentivize their drivers to move toward electric and wheelchair-accessible vehicles.”
Wantajja added that the TLC collects and reports on vast amounts of data: where TLC vehicles go during their shifts, when they go there and where they’re parked during off-hours. The TLC makes these data and reports available to the public and to partner agencies to help inform where charging infrastructure is needed.
Improving the Infrastructure
ConEd’s Dr. Britt Reichborn-Kjennerud said the key is to plan ahead. While installing Level 2 chargers rarely requires infrastructure improvements, fast chargers (L3 chargers) often do. “These are upstream investments in substations and feeders that can take five to seven years. So, you can’t really recover from that if you don’t plan ahead of time. We built a bottom-up model for EV charging through full adoption. We’re now working to build ahead, before the load and not try to just perfectly ‘right-time’ the capacity but start the build out now because there’s a lot of work ahead to get the grid ready.”
Think Federally, Act Locally
Miller talked about his agency’s focus on about $7.5B in funding earmarked for the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program ($5B) and the Charging, Fueling and Infrastructure (CFI) program ($2.5B). NEVI focuses on high-speed highway corridor charging for practical long distance EV travel while the CFI program focuses on Level 2 community charging. The combined goal is to deploy at least 500,000 public chargers across the country. “We need to make sure we’re not just plopping infrastructure down in a neighborhood without making sure that it provides value to that community and communicating that value to its residents,” he said. There are stipulations built into the funding that require that new chargers be available a minimum of 97% of the time and that they reach certain minimum power levels. If states want to receive funding for these programs, their electric infrastructure plans need to be fully fleshed out for the short- and long-term.
Charging Challenges
Reig described three factors that need to align to deploy high-volume high-speed charging stations in NYC: power availability, permitting and “landlord rationality.” The site must have adequate power to run multiple high speed EV chargers concurrently. Is it close to a sub-station or was it previously used for an electricity-heavy business? Then there’s the permitting requirements, and the site owner must be willing to work with the charging provider, Reig says.
“We’ve been scouring New York City for over three years, working with folks like ConEd almost daily to identify the best locations for chargers,” said Reig. “Power is always that biggest piece but there can be all kinds of other challenges. If I could wave a policy wand and make one thing happen, that would be that if the project is public, and it’s charging infrastructure, it goes to the front of the queue for power grids. That alone would work magic for businesses like us and allow us to invest much more quickly.”
EVs vs. Public Transportation
As “clean” as an EV is, it still takes up space on a road and contributes to traffic congestion, de la Garza noted. Miller added that, while the focus of the panel was decarbonizing app-hail and private vehicles, there is also a large amount of funding available for electrification of mass transit vehicles and “modal shift” initiatives.
Reasons for Optimism
Reichborn-Kjennerud showed optimism that the convergence of policies, manufacturing, technology, and market demand that point to electric vehicles is becoming the norm. Although the current market share of EVs in ConEd’s territory is only at around 2%, she said 1 in 10 new vehicles purchased there within the past year is now electric. Her biggest concern now is whether the grid will be able to be built out fast enough to meet demand.
Wanttaja said his optimism comes from the overwhelming political and corporate buy-in to electrifying the fleet. “The optics of opposing the green transition are just bad. So, people who are privately opposed to it, and would otherwise be dragging their feet aren’t really able to mount an effective attack against it.”
Miller is optimistic, thanks to the increased buy-in across the board for EV adoption. “We’re not talking about whether this is going to happen. We’re talking about the how.” It won’t be easy, he added, it still requires the tight alignment of federal, state and local initiatives, but the general consensus is that it’s doable.
“I think of the journey of EV adoption as almost like a startup journey,” added Reig. “It’s all heading in the right direction, but there are ups and downs along the way. Every time I travel to California, I just see more and more EVs. It’s almost like they’re two years ahead of us. So, if you want to see what 2025 looks like for New York City, just go to Los Angeles. And that makes me optimistic.”
Source: Clean Technica
