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New York City is getting its first public electric vehicle charging hub at Manhattan Plaza this fall. Infrastructure startup Gravity is leasing a street-level space (which will have a dedicated entrance on W42nd Street and Ninth Avenue) from Related Companies. They hope this will be the start of a model that can be replicated throughout the city.
The garage will accommodate 29 vehicles at a time and is projected to service up to 600 cars a day. Of the available chargers, 22 will be fast chargers that can replenish an electric vehicle in about 30 minutes (enough time to pop around the corner for a coffee at Grind NYC Coffee Shop or a slice at the Little Pie Company). The rest will be a mix of intermediate chargers, which can take up to three hours (that’s time for a nice lunch or dinner next door at the West Bank Cafe) and slow chargers, which need six to eight hours per charge (that, you’ve got to go home for!).
“We’ll probably see five to 10 fast-charging sites of different capacity in Manhattan over the next six months or so,” Moshe Cohen, Gravity’s CEO and founder told TechCrunch.
The company is working with Related to survey hundreds of sites throughout the five boroughs. The initiative is being partly financed by Con Edison’s EV PowerReady Infrastructure Incentive Program, a $235 million program that was launched last year to offset the infrastructure costs associated with installing chargers for electric vehicles.
The sleek, wood-clad space — featuring touchscreens and plants — is designed by Rangr Studio “to showcase an experience around what the world would look like if parking areas for cars had no pollution or oil spills,” Cohen said.
Prices will reflect electricity costs only, without markups or parking fees, according to Gravity. The site at Manhattan Plaza is still under construction but is expected to debut within the coming weeks.