These Sleek EV Chargers Are About To Be All Over New York CityInsideEVscontact@insideevs.com (Tim Levin)Tue, September 15, 2026 at 1:01 PM UTCAdd us on GoogleitselectricNew York selected Brooklyn-based It's Electric to install 700 curbside EV chargers over the next three years.New York City selected Brooklyn-based It's Electric to install 700 curbside EV chargers.The hardware will be dispersed across the five boroughs and target neighborhoods with lots of rideshare drivers.Curbside charging is common in Europe but rare in most large U.S. cities.Say goodbye to dangling a 30-foot extension cord out of your window to charge your Tesla. New York City has selected Brooklyn-based startup It's Electric to blanket the five boroughs with hundreds of new curbside chargers, the company announced on Tuesday. The idea is to make going electric an easier decision in a city where off-street parking is hard to come by and where EV charging has always been a challenge.It's Electric will install 700 level 2 chargers across the city over the next three years, creating the kind of EV infrastructure for street-parkers that's popular in Europe but barely exists in most U.S. cities.AdvertisementAdvertisement"Once you leave L.A. and you go to Boston, you go to New York, you go to San Francisco, you go to D.C., you go to Philadelphia, you go to New York, it's a desert," Tiya Gordon, the startup's cofounder and COO, told me.It's Electric chargerThe U.S. has an unusually high proportion of people who live in detached homes, which is a boon to the country's EV transition, since those folks can charge cheaply in their garage or driveway. But making the switch is much harder for people who live in apartments in America's densest cities and don't have that luxury. Although DC fast chargers tend to get more attention and public funding, EV researchers and advocates see curbside Level 2 infrastructure as an important piece of the puzzle for expanding EV adoption too.Today, New York has 88 curbside Flo chargers that were installed through a pilot program and that will be replaced over time by It's Electric. Those have been "immensely popular with EV owners," the city said in August, when it announced plans to dramatically expand its curbside charging network. According to the city's Department of Transportation, the sites were occupied by an EV 70% of the time (or up to 99% for some stations) and were supplying energy 85% of the time they were occupied.It's Electric chargerNow the DOT is expanding the program in a bid to cut CO2 emissions and support its goal of making all rideshare vehicles electric by 2030. For the new It's Electric sites, the city selected areas heavily populated by Uber, Lyft, and taxi drivers. Gordon hopes that will be a game changer for the city's 80,000 rideshare drivers.AdvertisementAdvertisement"Without curbside charging in neighborhoods like Jackson Heights or Flushing or the Bronx, they are being forced to drive to a limited amount of fast charging stations, wait in long lines, … pay 50 cents per kilowatt hour, and then drive two hours back into Manhattan," she said. "By putting chargers in the neighborhoods where these rideshare drivers just park overnight and go to sleep, they're waking up and they have that full battery."It's Electric's hardware differs from other level 2 chargers you might find in a parking garage or by the curb. The sleek, stainless steel posts lack included cords; drivers bring their own instead that the company provides. Further reducing the clutter, they don't have screens or credit card readers. Gordon told me the company designed the hardware from the start to get through New York's Public Design Commission review, which "ensures that we just don't have terribly ugly street furniture everywhere.""New York has been like the apex city for us in a lot of ways, and so we knew that we had to do things in a very specific way to win a city like New York," she said.It's Electric chargerIt's Electric's chargers get their power from nearby apartment buildings, which the company says makes the infrastructure cheaper and quicker to build. Gordon said they will be dispersed throughout the city, and that a given block will have no more than two units. They will be manufactured in Queens.AdvertisementAdvertisementOn Tuesday, It's electric also announced that it had closed a new funding round, bringing its total funding to $15 million. Today, the company operates 50 chargers and has 700 customers, Gordon said, with all of those coming online since April of last year. It should have many more in the ground soon; the startup has also won contracts in Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Philadelphia.Contact the author: Tim.Levin@InsideEVs.comMore EV Charging NewsBYD Takes On The Tesla Semi With Its Own 372-Mile TruckVolkswagen Just Unveiled The Most Efficient EV Ever TestedIonna's EV Charging Network Grew 50% In Just Six MonthsPeople Are Mad About The Jeep Recon's 222-Mile Range. Here's What They're Missing