During the COVID-19 pandemic, Tiya Gordon of Brooklyn, New York, wanted to buy a car so she could reach family outside the city.*
She planned to get an electric vehicle but then realized there was no convenient place in her neighborhood to charge it overnight.
Gordon: “It’s super easy to charge an electric vehicle if you live in the suburbs or if you’re suburb-adjacent and you have a garage or a driveway. … If you live in a city, it’s a lot harder because you don’t have that dedicated garage or that dedicated driveway.”
And she says city dwellers should not have to rely on EV chargers installed outside stores and in parking lots miles away.
Gordon: “You should be able to charge where you’re already parking every night, and that’s on your block.”
So Gordon cofounded itselectric, a new business that’s piloting one approach to EV charging in cities.
The company designed a simple curbside charger that looks much like a parking meter.
It’s designed to connect with adjacent property owners’ electricity service. Those owners earn a percentage of any revenue the charger generates.
Gordon hopes her company can help make EV chargers an unobtrusive and common feature along city streets so more people can charge close to home.
*Editor’s note: This sentence was updated Dec. 20, 2023, to clarify Gordon’s thought process.
Reporting credit: Sarah Kennedy / ChavoBart Digital Media
