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TESTIMONY
Testimony by Tiya Gordon, Cofounder and COO of It's Electric, on EV charging infrastructure and charter reform
0:04:30
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8 min
Tiya Gordon discusses the barrier posed by the lack of public EV charging for city dwellers who park on the street.
She introduces It's Electric's model, which harnesses spare electrical capacity in buildings to power curbside chargers, avoiding costly utility interconnections.
Gordon highlights the burdensome franchise and revocable consent processes as obstacles to deploying innovative infrastructure and proposes charter modifications to section 363 to facilitate projects addressing climate and social justice priorities.
- Traditional curbside EV charging installation is extremely expensive due to direct utility connections.
- It's Electric offers a no-cost solution for cities by tapping into existing building electrical capacity.
- Current franchise processes are burdensome for smaller, innovative companies.
- The revocable consent process is ill-suited for network-wide deployments.
- Gordon advocates for charter changes to create flexible, longer-term authorizations for climate-focused infrastructure projects.
Tiya Gordon
0:04:30
Thank you, commissioners and members of the New York City Charter Revision Committee for holding this public input session on government reform.
0:04:38
My name is Tia Gordon, and I am the cofounder and COO of It's Electric.
0:04:43
We are a New York born curbside EV charging startup headquartered in the Brooklyn Navy Yard in District 33.
0:04:56
It's Electric is electric vehicle charging specifically designed for cities, and it's the lack of public charging which stands as a leading barrier for the adoption of electric vehicles from drivers that are looking to convert to EVs.
0:05:11
And so we were born to enable access to the choice of clean vehicles for people who live in cities.
0:05:17
Charging an EV is not the same as charging as fueling your gas car.
0:05:24
In The United States, Eighty Five Percent of people who drive an EV, they charge at home.
0:05:28
They have a garage.
0:05:29
So at the end of the day, they pull in, they plug in their car, same way you plug in your phone at night, and they wake up the next morning to a full battery.
0:05:41
And while municipalities like New York City are leading the way in setting policy targets to mandate a transition for EVs, No scalable charging solution exists for the millions of drivers, especially here in cities like New York that park on the street.
0:06:03
We have exactly private drivers as well as for hire vehicles.
0:06:09
And if we want all New Yorkers to have access to electric mobility, either in the cars that they drive or in the Ubers or the Lyfts or the taxis that they hail, we need to provide them with convenient and affordable public charging options.
0:06:26
And that's where they already park, and we need to meet them on the street at the curb.
0:06:34
New York City knows this, and New York City DOT, together with Con Edison, launched Plug NYC, the city's first curbside charging pilot.
0:06:45
The 50 chargers that New York City installed in 2021 have exceeded expectations with really high utilization.
0:06:54
And while a great product was selected, it was, as all other EV charging companies are, reliant on those chargers receiving a direct connection to the ConEd utility, and this creates a really expensive permitting timeline and a high cost.
0:07:12
Those 55 curbside chargers installed under this pilot cost Con Edison thirteen point four million dollars.
0:07:21
And this at a per charger rate would be incredibly costly to make the next 600 chargers for New York City available.
0:07:28
That would cost the city around a hundred and 60,000,000.
0:07:31
Or if the city hit its 10,000 target, it would put the price tag at $2,600,000,000.
0:07:37
So it was watching this high capital cost blocker for New York and other major cities that inspired us to found its electric and to create a charger that does not require a utility interconnection.
0:07:53
What we do instead is harness spare electrical capacity in buildings.
0:08:00
Per the Green Building Council, forty six percent of buildings in New York City have spare electrical capacity.
0:08:07
That means if I go into the basement of this building and I open the panel and I see two slots available, that's enough to power that charger that would be out front in front of this building.
0:08:17
And so we install small, simple, and elegant curbside charging stations at the curb.
0:08:22
And instead of making that costly inner utility connection, we instead pull capacity from that closest building, run the conduit below the sidewalk, and erect that public charger.
0:08:34
Think of it like arthroscopic surgery as opposed to open heart given that we're in a hospital.
0:08:40
So our model is free to buildings, and of greatest importance, it's free to cities.
0:08:45
So we are a true no cost solution for cities to reach their electrification targets.
0:08:51
It's from the city's first approach that an early stage company such as ours were able to beat Tesla to win the contract for the city of Boston as we just did last year.
0:09:01
We separately meter these chargers and pay the energy use directly so that building's energy bill doesn't go up, and then we revenue share back to that building.
0:09:11
So we're giving money to a single family home.
0:09:14
We're giving money to a school.
0:09:16
We're giving money to a library.
0:09:17
We're giving money to a commercial storefront.
0:09:21
And because we Britney.
0:09:25
And it's this allows us to launch the model in Boston, and now we have seven other cities that will follow this year.
0:09:33
Our hardware also allows us to make that traditional connection to the utility if that is requested by a city, so we're flexible.
0:09:42
To implement home overnight charging for the million plus New York City drivers who park on the street, we have to work through the revocable consent process.
0:09:52
And as the commission contemplates changes to the charter, we put forward for consideration the reworking of the franchise process and the waiving of revocable consent fees to help spur investment from private partners such as It's Electric that can help the city reach its strategic goals, especially around urgent and crucial environmental and human health targets.
0:10:22
We all know that new infrastructure is hard, but we work with cities because we know that climate health is human health.
0:10:30
And despite New York City's robust transit system, use of fossil fuel cars in the city, increases citywide GHG by 20% every year.
0:10:43
And these resulting climate impacts are flooding from hurricanes to droughts, creating, for example, the highest amount of brushfires in a two week period as we saw last year in New York City's history.
0:10:56
So here's how the New York City Charter Erosion Commission can help.
0:11:01
We need to review the challenges and the friction around deploying innovative infrastructure in our city.
0:11:08
Right now, the problem is that private companies that seek franchises because they are long term and safe, the process is burdensome to the degree that agencies are often afraid to push through franchise authorization, and therefore smaller, more innovative companies can't compete.
0:11:27
The revocable consent process is pretty constrained and expensive for a private company wanting to deploy infrastructure citywide.
0:11:37
Concessions and pilots do not offer a long term security or guaranteed opportunity to turn a profit.
0:11:45
So it's hard for these companies to secure financing or investment to then invest in the city.
0:11:51
The revocable consent process right now is really intended for one off deployments and not something that would be a larger network effect.
0:12:01
Our proposed revisions are as follows.
0:12:04
First, we propose a charter modification to section three six three, which defines the city's current franchise process.
0:12:12
We propose to modify this section to make smaller deployments easier.
0:12:17
And in our written comments, we've described how such authorizations would work, limited to projects that address the city's climate and social justice priorities.
0:12:29
These flexible franchises would have longer term pardon me.
Richard R. Buery Jr.
0:12:34
I'm sorry to interrupt.
0:12:35
We're we're at time.
Tiya Gordon
0:12:36
Can you can
Richard R. Buery Jr.
0:12:37
you wrap up?
0:12:38
And then we'll we'll have some time during the question.
Tiya Gordon
0:12:40
Absolutely.
0:12:41
Basically, we are looking for modifications that would help and be limited to the city's climate and social justice goals and align with agency metrics.
0:12:51
We know that over the next ten years, the city will need to respond to new technologies, and I'm grateful for the chance to be able to present this to you today.
0:12:59
Thank you.