Our Mission

You’ve seen those electric vehicle ads on TV, where a car comes up a long driveway and pulls into a big garage, where the driver plugs it in.

It looks great, but those ads weren’t filmed in New York City or any big city. Suburban homes like that are where electric vehicles are easiest to own. But cities like New York are where they’re needed the most. Here in the city, we must deal not just with the consequences of global warming, although we are dealing with those, too, but with the immediate effects of car and truck exhaust. It causes health effects, like high asthma rates, in places with dense traffic.

More than half of New York City households do not have a car, but a significant number do. According to census data, about 45% of households throughout the city have a car. In Queens, though, it’s about 64%, and in Staten Island, it’s 82%. And in many of those households, there’s more than one car.

It would be great if more New Yorkers could drop car ownership altogether and rely on bike-sharing and public transit, but there will always be a significant percentage of car owners in New York. Public transit doesn’t work for everyone in every situation, especially outside of Manhattan, and many people feel they need a car. It would be great if more of those cars could, at least, be emission-free.

It's not easy, though. Many New Yorkers can't have a home charger. They live in apartments where EV charger installation isn’t up to them. Plus, in many—even most—parts of New York City, public charging is hard to find, and where it exists, it is already in heavy use. 

We’re here to provide news and information about public charging in New York City, incentives for home charging, and vehicles. However, we don’t assume that an EV is right for everyone today. If you don’t live where there’s easy access to a charger, a plug-in hybrid or even a standard self-charging hybrid might be a better solution. We’ll talk about all of it. Any of these will reduce your fuel costs while also making New York City cleaner for all of us.