Here’s How Slowly New York City Is Moving on Electric Vehicles

[New York Times, 4/3/2022]

There are just 15 electric public buses on the streets of New York, out of a fleet of more than 5,900 buses. There is just a single electric police patrol car, a Tesla, and only one electric garbage truck. And in a city with nearly 1.9 million registered passenger vehicles, zero-emission vehicles make up less than one percent. Despite the urgent need to move away from burning fossil fuels that accelerate climate change, the nation’s largest city is embracing electric vehicles at a tortoise-like pace and lagging behind other major American cities, including San Francisco, Los Angeles and Seattle. As a result, New York will have to work much harder to adopt greener options, including meeting an ambitious goal of electrifying its municipal fleet of nearly 30,000 vehicles, from ambulances to the car that carries the mayor, by 2035… In a city where street space is a precious commodity, many chargers are squeezed onto crowded curbs alongside truck loading zones, bike lanes and bike racks, newsstands and outdoor dining, where they are routinely blocked. “These competing uses do exist in other cities,” said Dale Hall, a senior electric vehicle researcher at the International Council on Clean Transportation, a nonprofit environmental research group. “But I think it’s perhaps even more politicized and competitive in New York.”