- A Tesla Supercharger station worth a whopping $18 million is coming to the Queens borough in New York City.
- Tesla paid real-estate developer Wildflower for the lot in Queens' Maspeth neighborhood, public records show.
- NYC's existing charging infrastructure has been overwhelmed by increasing number of electric rideshare drivers.
Tesla has paid real estate developer Wildflower $18 million to acquire a piece of land in New York City where it will build a Supercharger station, public records show. This appears to be just the cost of the land. Permitting and installing the stalls would dial up the costs further.
Despite having one of the biggest appetites for EVs in the U.S., NYC has been slow to expand its public charging footprint. The problem was exacerbated after mass layoffs at Tesla, which included dismissing the entire 500-member Supercharger team. At the time, a source familiar with the city's real-estate landscape told InsideEVs that Tesla had opted out of four planned Supercharger sites in the city. That included one in the South Bronx, one in South Brooklyn and two in Maspeth and College Point, Queens.
A deed filed with the city register now reveals that the Maspeth location will get a brand new Supercharger station. The seller is listed as Wildflower Industrial LLC and the buyer is Tesla U.S. Property Holdings, Supercharger Ops. The deed is signed by Max de Zegher, Tesla's director of charging for North America (who was affected by the layoffs and later rehired). Real-estate news outlet PincusCo was the first to report on the deal.
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Wildflower's Managing Partner Adam Gordon confirmed the same in a post on LinkedIn. "Urban development is by definition a process that requires constant innovation and inventiveness," he said. "The city is a work in process. Wildflower focuses on next generation climate conscious urbanism."
The Supercharger station, once up and running, would help reduce the burden at the other two free-standing Tesla Supercharger locations in NYC—one at JFK airport and the other near Coney Island on the southern tip of Brooklyn. These chargers have been overcrowded by electric yellow cab drivers since November last year.
When the City of New York passed the Greenrides Initiative last year, it mandated all new for-hire vehicles (FHV) to go electric. The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC), the agency responsible for licensing yellow taxi cabs, saw a surge in FHV applications after that.
By March 2024, NYC commuters had already taken some two million electric trips, saving some 731,000 gallons of gas.
But this came at a cost. An InsideEVs investigation at the time found that rideshare Tesla drivers had to wait up to 90 minutes at the South Brooklyn Supercharger station due to long lines. The other stations were either too far, or required pay-to-park fees. One Uber driver said she earned between $35-40 per hour and was losing business due to long waiting times.
However, the City of New York is moving slowly to solve these issues. Last week, NYC's Department of Transportation announced two new DC fast-charging locations where drivers licensed by the Taxi and Limousine Commission are highly concentrated. It's installing four fast chargers each at the White Plains Municipal Field in The Bronx and Bensonhurst Municipal Field in South Brooklyn. The former is set to open in November 2024 and the latter in January 2025.
That's in addition to the charging stations ride-hail start-up Revel is building across the city—it's the one that operates neon blue Teslas in the five boroughs. One of Revel's locations near LaGuardia Airport will be America's largest airport charging station, where 48 200-kilowatt charging dispensers are set to open in the first half of 2025. Google-backed start-up Gravity also recently opened a fast-charging station in the heart of Manhattan, near Times Square.
