NYC Picks Brooklyn's it's electric for Curbside Charging
New York City and NYPA tapped Brooklyn-based it's electric to replace pilot curbside hardware with hundreds of permanent EV chargers across all five boroughs in three years.
New York City and the New York Power Authority have selected Brooklyn-headquartered it's electric to build and operate the city's permanent curbside EV charging network across all five boroughs, replacing pilot hardware with hundreds of new chargers over the next three years.
New York City has picked a hometown company to solve one of the hardest problems in American electric-vehicle policy: how to charge a car when you do not have a driveway. The city and the New York Power Authority have selected Brooklyn-headquartered it's electric to build out the permanent curbside charging network across all five boroughs, replacing the pilot hardware installed during the city's earlier trial and adding hundreds of new curbside chargers over the next three years.
The decision, reported by Charged EVs, moves New York out of pilot mode and into procurement mode. That distinction matters more than the headline count of chargers. A pilot is a study; a permanent network is an asset the city expects to maintain, meter and grow.
Why curbside is the specific problem New York has to solve
Most American EV charging policy has been written for places where the car sleeps on private property. Home charging is cheap, slow, overnight and invisible — it is also unavailable to the majority of New York City households, who park on the street or not at all. That leaves two options: fast-charging depots, which are expensive per stall and require substantial grid capacity, or curbside Level 2 units that trickle power into a car parked at a meter overnight.
Curbside chargers are the cheaper unit of infrastructure but the harder unit of politics. Each one consumes a parking space or a stretch of sidewalk, needs a connection back to the grid, must survive snowplows, street cleaning and the occasional delivery truck, and sits inside a permitting regime that involves the Department of Transportation, the utility and the community board. That combination has stalled curbside programs in city after city. It is the reason New York ran a pilot at all.
Replacing the pilot infrastructure — rather than simply adding to it — is the detail worth noting. It implies the city concluded the trial hardware was not the standard it wanted to scale, and that a single operator running a uniform fleet of units is preferable to a patchwork of vendors. Uniformity lowers maintenance costs and makes uptime measurable, which is the metric public charging has most consistently failed on.
What the three-year clock actually demands
Hundreds of chargers over three years across five boroughs is a deliberate pace, not a moonshot. Spread across Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island, it works out to a modest presence in each neighborhood rather than saturation anywhere — enough to prove the model, establish siting precedent and build the permitting muscle memory that makes a second phase faster than the first.
The real test will be throughput of paperwork rather than throughput of electrons. Curbside deployments live or die on how quickly a site can move from identified to energized. Programs elsewhere in the United States have found that the physical installation is measured in days while the approvals are measured in quarters. A three-year window for hundreds of units implies the city and NYPA believe they have compressed that cycle.
NYPA's involvement is a meaningful part of the structure. A state power authority as partner gives the program a counterparty with grid expertise, public-sector balance-sheet capacity and an interest in load management — the ability to shape when hundreds of curbside units draw power so they support rather than strain the local distribution network. Overnight charging is, in grid terms, the friendliest kind of new demand: it lands in the trough of the daily load curve.
How this sits against the wider public-charging picture
The public charging business in the United States has been an unforgiving one. Operators have struggled with utilization that arrives slowly, hardware reliability that erodes consumer trust, and unit economics that depend on electricity pricing structures the operator does not control. Several listed charging companies have spent the period since the EV boom of the early 2020s restructuring, retrenching or seeking new owners.
Several listed charging companies have spent the period since the EV boom of the early 2020s restructuring, retrenching or seeking new owners.
A municipal curbside award changes the risk profile. The counterparty is a city and a state power authority rather than a retail driver who may or may not show up. Siting is granted rather than negotiated parcel by parcel. And the demand base — dense, car-owning, driveway-less households — is the most captive customer segment in charging, because for those drivers the alternative is not a home charger but no EV at all.
That is the broader signal for the battery and EV supply chain. Curbside build-outs address the specific objection that keeps urban buyers out of the EV market. Every charger installed on a New York block widens the addressable pool of buyers for vehicles, and behind them, for cells, cathode material and the lithium that goes into both. Infrastructure of this kind does not move commodity prices on announcement; it moves the multi-year demand curve that commodity investors are trying to forecast.
The market backdrop the award lands in
The announcement arrived on a soft session for US equities. The S&P 500 tracker (NYSEARCA: SPY) closed at $757.39, down 0.46% on the day from a previous close of $760.88, with a day range of $756.15 to $760.35, as of 20:00 GMT on 15 September 2026. The Nasdaq 100 fund (NASDAQ: QQQ) finished at $704.54, off 0.65%, and the Dow tracker (NYSEARCA: DIA) closed at $521.23, down 0.62%.
it's electric is privately held, so there is no listed instrument that responds directly to the award. The read-through instead runs to the hardware, installation and grid-equipment names that supply programs like this one, and to the utilities that carry the load.
What to watch from here
- Siting cadence. How many chargers are energized in the first twelve months versus the last twelve. Front-loaded deployment signals permitting has genuinely been streamlined; back-loaded deployment signals it has not.
- Borough distribution. Whether the outer boroughs, where street parking dominates, receive proportionate coverage or whether the build clusters in Manhattan and brownstone Brooklyn.
- Uptime disclosure. Public reporting on what share of units are functional at any given moment is the single most useful accountability measure in charging, and the one most often absent.
- Pricing structure. What drivers pay per session, and whether the tariff is designed to encourage overnight charging when the grid has spare capacity.
- Phase two. Whether the city commits to a larger tranche before the initial three years elapse, which would be the clearest evidence the model works.
New York has been slower than several peer cities to commit to permanent curbside charging, largely because its street-space politics are harder. Committing now, with a single operator and a state power authority as partner, is a bet that standardization beats experimentation. The next three years will show whether hundreds of chargers is a foundation or a ceiling.
Key facts
- Operator selected: it's electric, headquartered in Brooklyn, New York
- Public partners: City of New York and the New York Power Authority
- Scope: Hundreds of permanent curbside chargers across all five boroughs over three years, replacing pilot infrastructure
- Market backdrop (close, 15 Sep 2026, 20:00 GMT): SPY $757.39 (-0.46%); QQQ $704.54 (-0.65%); DIA $521.23 (-0.62%)
Frequently asked questions
Who won the New York City curbside EV charging contract?
New York City and the New York Power Authority selected it's electric, a company headquartered in Brooklyn, to build out the city's permanent curbside electric-vehicle charging network. The award covers all five boroughs and involves replacing the infrastructure installed during the city's earlier curbside charging pilot with new permanent units.
How many chargers will be installed and over what period?
The company will install hundreds of new curbside chargers across New York City over the next three years. The deployment spans Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island, and includes replacing the existing pilot hardware rather than simply adding units alongside it.
Why does curbside charging matter more in New York than elsewhere?
Most American EV charging assumes drivers can plug in at home overnight on private property. A large share of New York City households park on the street and have no driveway or garage. Without curbside charging, those drivers have no practical overnight option, which is a direct barrier to EV adoption in dense urban areas.
What role does the New York Power Authority play?
The New York Power Authority is the city's partner in the program. As a state power authority it brings grid expertise, public-sector financing capacity and an interest in managing when hundreds of chargers draw electricity, so that new overnight demand supports rather than strains the local distribution network.
Can investors buy shares in it's electric?
No. it's electric is a privately held company headquartered in Brooklyn and is not listed on a public exchange, so there is no ticker that responds directly to the award. Exposure to this kind of programme comes indirectly through charging hardware makers, electrical installation contractors, grid equipment suppliers and utilities.
How did US markets close on the day of the announcement?
As of 20:00 GMT on 15 September 2026, the S&P 500 tracker SPY closed at $757.39, down 0.46% from a previous close of $760.88. The Nasdaq 100 fund QQQ finished at $704.54, down 0.65%, and the Dow tracker DIA closed at $521.23, down 0.62%. All three indexes ended the session lower.
Sources
Photo: Ludovic Hirlimann · BY-SA 2.0 — source
