NYC's EV revolution is riding on Uber and Lyft drivers
On one Upper West Side side street, you can hear the quiet hum of electric vehicles almost all day and night.
Manhattan isn't known for its plentiful parking. But this street has something even rarer: two public spots reserved for EV charging. Often, vehicles linger for hours.
On a recent weekday, one licensed ride-hailing driver had been charging for more than 12 hours. Another EV sat for more than five hours at the neighboring plug. For the ride-hailing driver, that's 12 hours they didn't work. For other EV owners, it's one less charger to plug in to. A Tesla slowed as it drove by in hopes the spaces weren't occupied.
This snapshot in time comes as New York City aims to convert almost its entire ride-hailing industry to EVs by 2030, with the exception of wheelchair-accessible vehicles. Mayor Eric Adams' Green Rides Initiative affects the city's more than 84,000 Uber and Lyft drivers — among the largest markets in the world. It's an ambitious target, given that under 10% of rides were taken in an EV in March, according to city data.
The biggest hurdle is building enough public chargers, especially in such a densely packed city with an old power grid and lengthy bureaucratic delays. For Uber and Lyft drivers, time is money, so widely accessible charging is key to the EV switch. The majority live in NYC's outer boroughs, such as Queens, and park on the street, where chargers are sparse. A study by the US Department of Energy found that 1,000 fast chargers were needed for every 20,000 EV drivers on the road. Currently, there are fewer than 200 across NYC. Plus, building thousands of new chargers requires billions of dollars of investment.
City officials and ride-hailing companies told Business Insider that electrifying the sector could unlock a broader EV revolution because it could solve a crucial conundrum: Companies won't build charging stations if there aren't enough drivers, but drivers won't buy an EV if charging isn't widely accessible.
"This is the industry that's going to get this infrastructure off the ground because a ride-share driver is a great customer for a charging station," said Bobby Familiar, a spokesperson for Revel, an all-electric ride-hailing service that operates three public fast-charging stations in NYC. "They have to charge every single day that they do a shift. They want fast charging because every minute spent at the charger is time they could be on the road earning a fare."
Electrifying the ride-hailing industry also has big returns for the environment, Michael Replogle, a former deputy commissioner for policy at NYC's Department of Transportation, said.
"If you can electrify Ubers, Lyfts, and taxis that drive several hundred miles a day, it will really reduce the city's carbon footprint and clean up the air," he said.
Given the stakes, a lot has to go right in the coming years. The city has to strike a balance between the number of EV drivers and charging sites. Long wait times risk turning off drivers from making the switch, but if there isn't enough demand, the economics could fall apart for stations run by the government or private entities. Chargers also must be in neighborhoods with a history of underinvestment.
A mad dash for EV licenses
The transition is getting an early test this year now that thousands more ride-hailing drivers have licenses.
In October, the Taxi & Limousine Commission opened applications for this gig work for the first time in five years — but for EV drivers only. A cap had been in place since 2018 to stabilize drivers' wages and decrease traffic congestion.
The TLC approved about 8,400 EV licenses. That brought the total to more than 11,000, a huge jump compared with several years ago.
The program is on hold because of a lawsuit filed by the New York Taxi Workers Alliance. It represents the yellow-cab industry, which isn't under the EV mandate but can voluntarily make the switch to certain models. The alliance argued that the market would become oversaturated.
TLC Commissioner David Do said many of those who applied were ride-hailing drivers already and the total number of drivers in NYC was still lower than pre-pandemic levels.
A lot of ride-hailing drivers are excited about the EV push because it's a pathway to owning their own car, rather than renting from fleet owners, according to Aeraj Qazi, the owner of Primetime Brokerage, which helps drivers through the TLC licensing process.
"Rentals are like handcuffs for drivers, so EVs provide an opportunity for drivers to own their own plates," Qazi said.
Weekly rental rates average between $450 and $600, several drivers told BI. That's more than a typical monthly car payment.
Qazi said he and other brokerages helped file thousands of EV applications before the court-ordered injunction took effect late last year.
"We didn't realize how crazy it would get. The charging infrastructure isn't there right now," Qazi said.
Guillermo Fondeur, an Uber driver who bought a Tesla in 2021, charges at home. He said the switch had saved him money on gas and maintenance, and he earns some perks from Uber, including an extra $1 on every ride.
But he's heard complaints from other EV owners about the lack of public charging infrastructure.
"It's very inconvenient to find chargers," Fondeur said. "There are one- to two-hour waits to plug in some places."
He added: "Drivers want to charge on the block where they live. The city could put chargers in the parking spaces. There's also a lot of parking lots."
NYC's most valuable asset
Today, there are nearly 200 fast chargers in NYC and more than 1,900 Level 2 chargers. The Adams administration wants to grow the network this decade to 6,000 fast chargers and 40,000 Level 2 plugs.
"We need every space we can find," Do said.
In general, EVs can get up to 30 miles of range for every hour they're plugged in to a Level 2 charger. That makes them ideal for overnight street parking, or for several hours during the day while drivers run errands or go to work. Fast chargers, such as those in Tesla's Supercharger network, can add up to 200 miles of range in just 15 minutes, helping ease range anxiety among road trippers and ride-hailing drivers who need a quick refill but don't want to lose too much time.
Making progress in NYC requires coordination across the government, power utilities, and private companies. Do is part of a charging task force that brings those parties together.
The TLC is sharing data on where drivers live and where and how often trips happen to help inform where chargers should be. The utility Con Edison is identifying where enough power is already available for new chargers and expanded a statewide program that subsidizes the cost of bringing electricity to chargers to $585 million. The Department of Transportation is investing in some curbside charging and fast chargers in municipal parking lots.
The department's efforts build on a curbside-charging pilot with Con Edison and a Canadian company, Flo. It created 100 Level 2 plug-ins across all five boroughs, a spokesperson for the department said, and there are plans for hundreds more.
But those efforts alone won't spur enough development, Replogle, the former DOT official, said.
"It took us 3 ½ years to stand up that pilot," he said. "We recognized we would not be getting thousands of on-street Level 2 chargers by scaling up that model. It's going to take some competitive procurement with the private sector to make this happen."
There are barriers, Replogle added. There isn't a clear path for private charging companies and real-estate owners to get regulatory approval for installing curbside plugs.
"Street space is one of the most valuable assets the city owns," Replogle said. "There are 3 million parking spaces, and less than 250,000 of them are priced. So there are a fair number of spaces that can produce the kind of economic return for electrification to happen."
A DOT spokesperson said the department last year sent out a request for information from EV-charging companies, which will inform future partnerships.
Beyond curbside, there are hurdles for companies such as Revel that are building larger fast-charging stations with dozens of plugs. These sites often need electrical-power upgrades to connect to the grid, a lengthy process with Con Edison.
"We're approaching every charging station like it's a new high-rise building," Familiar said. "But the timeline for getting a charging station up and running is a lot different than a building. If we have power, we can get a site done within months, not years. The power-upgrade timeline does not match that."
Charging stations should go to the front of the line, he added.
A spokesperson for Con Edison said the utility was evolving its grid-planning process to prepare for large EV loads.
"When upgrades are needed at the customer property, we are working to reduce interconnection timelines at every step in the process from early customer engagement and education through improved work coordination and collaborating closely with municipalities on permitting," the spokesperson said.
The charging pipeline
Despite the delays, Revel has a pipeline of 300 fast chargers over the next two years, Familiar said. That figure reflects active site leases in various phases of design and construction.
Revel owns a fleet of 500 vehicles and more than 50 plugs in NYC that are open to any model.
One of the new stations is set to be at LaGuardia Airport, one of the busiest areas for ride-hailing trips in the city. Installing 48 plugs would make it the largest fast-charging location at any airport nationwide. It's expected to open next year.
Revel in March also struck a deal with Uber that guaranteed its drivers would use at least 250 of Revel's plugs a certain amount of the time. If Uber doesn't meet the use threshold, it's financially liable. In exchange, Uber drivers will get up to a 25% discount when they charge.
The agreement could help Uber meet its own goal to have its drivers go fully electric this decade. So far, more than 6% of Uber's fleet in the US and Canada has zero emissions, and more than 17% of trips in NYC were in EVs last year. The company said it's spending $800 million by 2025 to encourage drivers to make the switch.
Josh Gold, Uber's senior director of public policy, said that after the TLC lifted its cap on EV licenses, he saw longer lines at Tesla's Superchargers. And for years, many of the platform's early EV adopters were going to Manhattan to charge, often in paywalled parking garages.
"That's not where our drivers live," he said. "So that's been a worry, but now we're seeing the charging infrastructure develop more."
Uber is sharing ride data with Revel so it can locate chargers in the most convenient places for drivers. Uber has a similar agreement with Tesla.
Lyft, for its part, said it's investing $80 million through 2025 on its EV push and working with charging companies including EVgo and Electrify America to offer discounts. Nearly 17% of NYC Lyft rides were in EVs last year.
The rising demand from the ride-hailing industry for EV charging could help buoy other startups. Itselectric is piloting some Level 2 curbside charging using excess power from buildings, which avoids the need for utility upgrades and therefore could speed up the build-out. In a parking garage in midtown Manhattan, Gravity in March opened what it says are the 24 fastest chargers in the country.
Almost everyone BI interviewed for this story acknowledged that the city's EV's ambitions were lofty.
There are some promising signs, however.
Do said that the Green Rides Initiative was two years ahead of schedule. By 2025, at least 15% of ride-hailing trips were supposed to be in zero-emissions or wheelchair-accessible vehicles. That threshold was crossed in January and ticked up even higher in March to 17%. That month, more than 2 million trips were taken in an EV — a fivefold increase compared with November.
Do said he wanted to boost the TLC's outreach to drivers so they could understand the perks of switching to an EV.
"There are so many more benefits to a green vehicle, not only for the future of our city but for kids who will breathe cleaner air, and it also might be a little cheaper," he said. "So we've laid the foundation, but now we need to convince many other drivers to convert."
Juliana Kaplan contributed to this article.
This article is part of "The Great Transition," a series covering the big changes across industries that are leading to a more sustainable future. For more climate-action news, visit Insider's One Planet hub.