According to the U.S. Department of Energy, there are now 320 publicly accessible charging spots across Manhattan. The same borough has just 29 gas stations.
That means that for the people who live or work in Manhattan, finding an EV charging location is more than 10 times easier than finding a gas station. Manhattan is a particular case, though, because drivers have long struggled to find places to gas up in the borough.
The area’s high land value drove out a lot of gas stations before EVs went mainstream. Given Manhattan’s small footprint and gas stations’ low margins, there simply aren’t many places to put them.
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Charging sites, on the other hand, can be installed into existing infrastructure. According to Bloomberg, numerous chargers are located in existing parking garages. New York officials are eager to add more curbside chargers, though, because they can serve even more people.
Finding more ways to serve EV drivers will only become more important as time goes on. New York state recently said that it would ban the sale of non-zero-emissions passenger vehicles by 2035.
The large number of chargers doesn’t necessarily mean it’s easy to charge, though. A recent survey of six garages conducted by Bloomberg found most of the spots filled, and a broken charger. That reflects findings by JD Power, which discoveredc that even though there are more chargers than ever, we still need more.
Although charging sites outnumber gas stations in Manhattan, they haven’t overtaken them citywide. Across all five boroughs, New York has 520 charging sites, but it has 697 gas stations. With legislation and increasing adoption of EVs, though, EV chargers are sure to overtake gas stations soon.
“I don’t think you need to go far up the electric-vehicle adoption curve to see gas-station deforestation,” Pasquale Romano, CEO of ChargePoint Holdings Inc., told Bloomberg. “It’s a question of when.”
