Brooklyn startup wants to bring EV charging to your curbside

Nearly one-third of US households live in multi-family housing—but only about 5% of electric-vehicle home charging is done there.

This underscores the reality that charging an EV is a little more complicated for apartment dwellers in the US. It’s also cumbersome in large cities like New York City and San Francisco, where the majority of residents live in multi-family housing, as they work to decarbonize.

But there’s an emerging solution, popular in Europe, that’s starting to gain steam in the US: curbside charging. Among the companies trying to make this a reality is Brooklyn-based startup Itselectric.

Tech Brew recently visited one of Itselectric’s charging posts in Detroit, one of several cities with which the company has a contract. Donté Harris, Itselectric’s Detroit project manager, demonstrated how drivers can use Itselectric’s app to initiate a charging session, then grab a detachable cable they can get from the company to connect their vehicle.

“We say, it’s not weird, it’s European,” Harris said of the detachable cable. In Europe, he said, it’s common for automakers to provide customers with a cable when they purchase an EV. Having users bring their own cable, according to Itselectric, helps prevent vandalism and other damage that can occur when cables are left hanging.

This particular charging station gets its electricity from an adjacent building that was once home to a convent and is now a community center.

This is another unique aspect of Itselectric’s business model: Installing one of its chargers does not require a utility connection. Instead, Itselectric connects behind the meter and draws spare electricity from the building. Installation comes at no cost to the building owner, and Itselectric shares 20% of the revenue from the station, according to Tiya Gordon, Itselectric’s co-founder and COO.

She told us that the startup decided to focus on urban curbside charging to fill in the gaps between private home charging and “destination” charging—for example, a driver who charges while they’re at the grocery store.

“That has created a false prophecy and an unnatural behavior, to ask someone to spend six or eight hours in a Walmart parking lot to charge their vehicle,” Gordon said. “We are trying to find ways to put chargers everywhere, and our solution in doing that is to identify the biggest pain point that cities face with deploying chargers. And that’s the fact that every other charging company out there connects to a utility or needs to get a utility permit to install their chargers.”

In July, Itselectric completed a $6.5 million seed round led by Failup Ventures and Uber Technologies. The funding will support deployments in seven US cities this year, including Detroit, San Francisco, and Boston.

The company also received a $1.5 million federal grant to create a curbside charging toolkit to provide recommendations to cities, as the federal government and municipalities across the US evaluate curbside charging as a solution.

The Joint Office of Energy and Transportation noted in a recent presentation that multi-family residents face barriers to installing home charging, like insufficient grid infrastructure, dependence on a property manager to install chargers, and permitting restrictions.

And 25% of people won’t be able to charge an EV at home, per an analysis from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory.

“To expand EV adoption, it is necessary to find and demonstrate solutions that enable those without home charging to charge their vehicle,” according to the US Department of Energy. “Curbside charging, including chargers attached to streetlights or other poles, seeks to fill this gap by increasing the locations where consumers can charge their vehicles.”

Itselectric isn’t the only curbside charging company in the game. In April, lamppost EV charging company Voltpost—which claims it can install a charger in as little as an hour—unveiled a commercial curbside charging solution. Voltpost was among the companies that participated in an initiative in New York City to support the city’s goal of installing 10,000 curbside chargers.

And Beam Global recently introduced a solar- and wind-powered curbside charging solution.

Researchers at Berkeley Law noted in a March policy brief that curbside and public right-of-way charging options “may be particularly valuable for city governments seeking to advance equitable access to EV charging for priority populations and underserved communities.”

Equity is a consideration for Itselectric, as well. Harris said the startup is installing chargers not only in communities with high EV adoption rates, but also in disadvantaged communities where EVs have not taken off.

“We don’t look at it as the chicken-and-egg problem. We just look at it as the egg, because without any infrastructure around, people will never have the confidence,” he said. “So, even in areas where we don’t see EVs already, we want to come in and put that infrastructure there. Because if nobody does it, then it will never happen.”