Wait, so where are urbanites going to charge their EVs?

so you have A nice house with a garage where you can charge electric car– You live in the future. You too – sorry! — Far from original: 90% of U.S. EV owners have own garage. But woe to the urbanites. Chargers built into apartment parking lots are few and far between. As if parking in the city wasn’t enough of a nightmare, the competition for plug-friendly street parking has left electric cars in limbo with no access to life’s electricity.Can you hack into the power cord above and tuck a cord into your Tesla? Of course, if you like your creatures more crumbly. But a better way is coming, as smart people work to power thirsty urban EVs.

That’s good news, because transforming smoky city vehicles into electric vehicles will be an essential part of any plan to avoid further climate change. But convincing city dwellers to buy electric vehicles is difficult.even those who have passed Concerns about battery range will be found there Not many places to chargeSomeone has to solve this problem, says Dave Mullaney, who heads the Carbon-Free Transportation team at the Rocky Mountain Institute, a research institute focused on sustainability, who studies electrification. “It is now clear that Electric cars are coming, and they’ll quickly saturate the market for the wealthy with garages,” he said. “They need to expand. “

So the goal is clear: build more chargers. But in dense places, the eternal question is, where? And how to ensure that they are not only accessible, but cheap enough that anyone can use them?

“I’m not sure there is a one-size-fits-all strategy,” Deputy Transportation Secretary Polly Trottenberg said on a media conference call on Thursday. She’ll know: Until recently, Trottenberg was the head of the New York City Department of Transportation, overseeing her fair share of electric vehicle charging experiments. At least money can help cities solve this problem.This Federal Infrastructure Act Contains $7.5 billion to support hundreds of thousands of public charging stations.States including California – committed Stop selling new gasoline-powered cars by 2035– There are also programs dedicated to building more chargers.

Regardless of the strategy, however, addressing the issues is critical if cities—and the federal government—are to stick to the larger goal of improving equity, access, and racial justice. many politician have named priorityAfter all, low-income people cannot switch from conventional cars to EVs unless they have extensive access to affordable charging infrastructure. The lure of capitalism is for private companies to compete to see who can put more chargers in more places.But this may cause charging desert, America already has food deserts, impoverished communities where grocery chains don’t bother to set up shop. Public schools in the United States have similar structural inequalities: the higher the tax base, the better the local education.And since the charging business, which is still in its infancy, is actually It’s bleak now, the government may need to continue providing resources or subsidies to low-income communities to ensure EVs are included when the economy booms.

Making the toll a taxpayer-funded public good, rather than another corporate cash grab, could help encourage the adoption of electric vehicles in low-income urban communities—and they might even be powered by community-owned solar panels.Pulling petrol-powered cars off the road will improve local air quality far for the poor and people of color. It is especially important to install chargers in resource-poor communities, where buyers may be more likely to have used electric car Use older batteries that don’t get the best range, so they need a more stable charge.

But gaining the support of residents in these places will be critical because communities of color have become accustomed to “neutral or benign neglect, and sometimes outright viciousness. [transportation] policy decisions,” said Andrea Marpilero-Colomina, a clean transportation consultant at the nonprofit GreenLatinos. She said that for communities unfamiliar with electric vehicles, who may rely on gas stations or traditional auto repair shops for work, the sudden appearance of chargers could It looks like a harbinger of gentrification, a physical sign that they are being replaced.

Several urban areas are already experimenting with new charging strategies, each with its pros and cons. Big cities like Los Angeles and New York City, as well as smaller ones like Charlotte, N.C., and Portland, Ore., have taken smart ideas from Europe and installed chargers on the street, sometimes even at streetlights. superior. These are usually cheaper because the space or pole is likely to be owned by the local utility or city, and the necessary wiring is already there. Using them is even easier for drivers than charging station chargers: just park, plug in, and walk away.