Americans’ path to an all-electric future has so far resembled stop-and-go traffic more than the rush to the finish line many environmentalists have called for. A record one in 12 new cars Americans bought this year has been an EV and last month, for the first time, electric vehicles crossed the price parity line to become cheaper than their gas-powered counterparts. At the same time, EV adoption has lagged the exponential growth policymakers say is needed to sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the foreseeable future.
The major reason for that isn’t the cars but the chargers needed to refuel EV batteries. A still-sparse charging network has been the “weak link” in the EV revolution, Tyson Jominy, a vice president in the data and analytics division at J.D. Power, told Fortune earlier this year. EV buyers who own homes can easily install a charger and “fill up” while their car is parked, but EV proponents say the availability of so-called Level 3 charging stations—which can charge a battery in under an hour—are crucial for long-distance travel and large-scale adoption.
Within the coming decade, the Energy Department predicts that 28 million chargers will be needed, 1 million of them publicly owned, but the Biden administration’s efforts to bolster public charging have been excruciatingly slow, only yielding a handful of stations in the previous two years, the Washington Post reported.
One startup aiming to solve this problem is Brooklyn-based itselectric, which builds on-street chargers that use electricity from neighboring buildings rather than the municipal grid. The solution allows chargers to be built quickly, with minimal permitting; building owners and itselectric share the money earned from those chargers.
The startup on Tuesday received a $6.5 million round of funding led by Uber and Failup Ventures to scale its charging system. The round, which brings itselectric’s total funding to date to $11.8 million, comes on the heels of a series of federal and local grants that have allowed it to build in cities including Alexandria, Va., Detroit, Jersey City, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Earlier this month, the company won a contract to install hundreds of chargers in Boston and is currently soliciting resident suggestions for charger placement.
Public charging “allows people who don’t have off-street parking to charge the way their counterparts in the suburbs do,” said Nathan King, itselectric’s co-founder. “It’s better for the car’s battery because it’s a gentler way to charge, and for drivers it’s a lot less expensive.”
Drivers often pay a premium to be able to charge fast. Putting 100 miles on a Tesla Model Y would cost, on average, just $3.80 for someone charging overnight at home, but anywhere between $10 to $19 for the same person using a high-speed public charger, according to Car and Driver. At the higher end, that cost exceeds the price of filling up an equivalent car with gas.
Uber’s all-electric goals
Uber, for its part, has made a public commitment to be zero-emissions by 2040, although some states have much more aggressive goals to electrify ride-sharing vehicles. (California, notably, will require its hundreds of thousands of ride-share vehicles to be electric by 2030.) Public charging would make life easier for Uber’s more than 1 million U.S. drivers, nearly half of whom are unable to install a charger at home, according to a company survey.
“Uber drivers are already going electric 5x faster than private car owners, but access to charging persists as a major barrier,” Camiel Irving, GM of Uber US & Canada, told Fortune via email. “To overcome this, there needs to be an increase in the supply of low cost charging for EVs, through a combination of new fast-charging sites in high traffic urban areas, overnight charging in areas overrepresented by renters and lower income families, and “right to plug” policies.” Irving added that the company has already put $800 million toward its efforts to help drivers go electric.
While the Biden administration estimates a need for 1 million public chargers, itselectric’s founders suggest the true number could be higher—as many as 4 million. Co-founder Tiya Gordon says hundreds are ready to be installed this year, with work starting as soon as next week. Two of the first ones will go up in Detroit, one in front of a convent and one by a donut shop.
“We’ve got them queued up,” Gordon said. “The product is done, it’s tested, it’s market-ready, we have them stored and stacked, ready to be put in the ground.”
“This fresh funding is literally going to be what pushes us now to be able to scale at rapid speed.”
In the not-too-distant future, Gordon and King hope to be customers of their own startup: The Brooklyn residents purchased an EV two years ago, but strategizing where to charge it remains a challenge.
“There are a couple of curbside chargers New York City installed in my neighborhood, but I’ve only been able to use them once in the last two years, because they are always in use,” King said. “I’m one of the lucky people who has access to a workplace charger [but] I have to be strategic, wake up a half hour earlier and get to the charger before everyone else.”
