NYC municipal fleet adds fast-chargers to network
New York City’s government announced it had opened 58 fast-charging stations to power the city’s fleet vehicles. NYC currently has over 2,700 electric vehicles in its services. By the end of the year, the city expects double the number of fast-charging stations and open some to the public.
In addition to the fast chargers’ use for city fleet vehicles, the New York City Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS) has opened two charging locations for public use. Three fast chargers are available at Randalls Island and two at Midland Beach. ChargePoint will operate the chargers and limit per-car charging time to one hour. Drivers will pay $0.30 per kWh at peak hours (8:00 am to 10:00 pm, weekdays) and $0.25 per kWh at all other times. At least five stations will be available for public use by June 2021.
Back to the City fleet, where Level 2 chargers make up most of their charging stations, new fast chargers are now operating at ten different City agencies. Fleet vehicles will use these chargers to recharge quickly during the day, expanding the scope of possible fleet activities.
The City began implementing fast electric vehicle chargers as part of its ‘NYC Clean Fleet Initiative’ in 2019. DCAS claims it has since replaced 2,200 gas-powered vehicles with plug-in electric models. They also operate over 500 off-road electric and solar units. They reckon using cleaner models reduced total fuel use by over 2.8 million gallons (about 13Mn litres) over the last three years.
In addition to ongoing investments to reduce emissions, in March 2019, Mayor Bill de Blasio signed an executive order to reduce the size of the city’s on-road vehicle fleet overall. New York City claims to operate the largest municipal fleet in the United States as they operate over 30,000 owned and leased vehicles.
Last February, de Blasio then signed an Executive Order, which ordered DCAS and NYC Fleet to develop said ‘Clean Fleet Transition Plan’ (CFTP) to decarbonise the fleet by 2040 entirely. In the new announcement, the city claims to be en route to exceed the targets.
New York City says it has one of the largest electric vehicle charging networks in the country, with over 1,000 charging ports open to the public. In a statement, the City emphasises that the network includes 87 mobile solar carports and says the initiative is the largest portable solar carport project in the world.
Going to the New York state level, the EV Make Ready initiative announced last year includes the construction of 50,000 AC and 1,500 DC charging stations in the US state by 2025.
3 Comments