Why the New York Area Is Seeing an Explosive Growth in Electric Cars (2023)

On weekdays, John Sibley motors down NY-17 from his home north of New York City, eventually crossing the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan and lurching through stop-and-go traffic to his job near Times Square. The 65-mile commute used to cost him a lot in gas.

Then last winter, he bought an electric car, a used Chevrolet Bolt.

“I was spending $100 a week on gas, and now I’m spending $100 a month on electricity,” said Mr. Sibley, 47. “I’m the cheap early adopter.”

He is one of many in New York City and its suburbs, as electric car ownership has shot up over the past several years. In 2020, there were about three electric vehicles per 1,000 people in the New York City metro region (excluding locations in Connecticut, which didn’t collect data by county); today that number has more than doubled to about seven vehicles per 1,000, according to data from Atlas Public Policy, a research firm.

Various factors are propelling drivers in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut to convert to electric: more varied models, including trucks and S.U.V.s; more public charging stations; and significant government incentives. And for the first time, the prices of some electric cars are competitive with those of gas-powered vehicles — without the expense of gas.

Yet there is also hesitation. Some drivers have concerns over the vehicles’ range. It can be hard to lay hands on an electric vehicle because carmakers cannot keep up with demand. And while electric vehicles have become cheaper, they still cost about $60,000 on average.

For now, electric vehicles are still a rarity on the road, and the combustion engine is not in danger of completely disappearing any time soon, said Michelle Krebs, an executive analyst at Cox Automotive, a research and consulting firm.

“For electric vehicles to proliferate further in the future, we need electric vehicles that are affordable to the masses, which will be a challenge because the cost of the minerals used in the batteries have skyrocketed in price,” Ms. Krebs said. “We need electric vehicles with longer range. We need an expanded electric vehicle charging network.”

Today there are about 158,000 electric vehicles in the New York City metro region — and that number is expected to increase tenfold by 2030, analysts say. The governors of New York and New Jersey have pledged that by 2035 all new vehicles sold in their states must produce zero carbon emissions, and Connecticut is considering a similar rule. There are more than five million passenger vehicles, such as cars, S.U.V.s, pickup trucks and vans, in the region.

The five boroughs have the most electric cars, about 27,000, according to Atlas Public Policy. There are also high concentrations of electric vehicles in affluent towns like Scarsdale in New York (1,332 cars), and Stamford (1,437 cars), Greenwich (1,186 cars), and Westport (1,233 cars) in Connecticut. High numbers can also be found in big cities like Newark and Jersey City.

Electric cars recently surpassed 5 percent of the U.S. auto market, a watershed moment, analysts say, that in other regions of the world has come before rapid growth.

“This is the biggest transformation in the industry since the migration from horseback travel to internal combustion engines,” said Hoss Hassani, a vice president at General Motors.

The expansion of electric vehicle ownership is closely tied to the build-out of fast charger hubs. There are at least about 1,500 public chargers in New York City and its suburbs, according to Volta, a charging installation company — up from 551 in 2019.

The federal government, aiming for half of all vehicles sold to be zero-emissions by 2030, has allocated $7.5 billion to installing public chargers nationwide over five years, including in the tristate area.

But Brandt Hastings, Volta’s chief commercial officer, says that the region still has fewer public chargers per electric vehicle than the national average — and that the entire country will need massive additional public and private investment to be able to support goals for reducing emissions.

“We have to build the charging network ahead of electric vehicle demand,” he said.

Even for drivers who have convenient home charging, keeping electric cars charged can require lifestyle shifts. Kathy Mulholland, 58, of Asbury Park, N.J., likens identifying charging stations along her route to the flight plans she made as a student pilot. Many use apps on their phones.

Some adjust their driving to extend battery life, and avoid high speeds or quick acceleration — or even the car’s ambient heat, which can sap a battery. They look for other ways to keep warm. “I learned to drive with heated seats and a heated steering wheel, but no heat,” said Joe Marganski, 67, of Guilford, Conn.

In the city, charging is more challenging, since many people live in apartments, without a dedicated parking spot. Municipal officials should find creative ways to make chargers convenient for apartment residents, said Alexia Melendez Martineau, the policy manager at Plug In America, a nonprofit organization advocating for an equitable conversion to electric vehicles. Policymakers should also think about how to make the cars accessible to lower-income people who might struggle to pay high upfront costs, she added.

The Biden administration’s Justice40 Initiative requires 40 percent of the federal funds for public chargers to be deployed in underserved communities.

Officials are also thinking about equitably distributing the environmental benefits of the conversion. Their concern is not only that cars and trucks produce about one-fifth of the country’s greenhouse gases — but also that neighborhoods with high truck traffic carry higher levels of air pollution, along with higher rates of hospital admissions for asthma and heart and respiratory disease.

New York State, Connecticut and New Jersey all offer consumer rebates to buy or lease new electric cars. There is also a possible $7,500 tax credit from the federal Inflation Reduction Act. The states offer subsidies for setting up charging at home and grants for municipalities to replace their fleets. A program that offered electric car commuters access to car pool lanes on Long Island may have contributed to the high rates of adoption in Long Island and Queens.

Many electric drivers say they are thinking about affordability.

“It’s so cheap to run,” said Jon Verzella, 47, of Verona, N.J., a director at a construction firm who commutes in a Chevrolet Bolt to his office in East Elmhurst, Queens. “There’s no maintenance, and no oil changes — there’s no oil.”

New York City area electric vehicles used to be mostly luxury cars. Now, among the 10 most popular electric vehicles in the New York City metropolitan area, the Tesla Model X (number three) is the only car priced above $100,000, and the Chevrolet Bolt (number seven) costs only about $27,000, according to an analysis for The Times by S&P Global Mobility. The most popular vehicle is the Tesla Model Y which starts at about $53,000, according to the Kelley Blue Book.

When Damali Alexander, 42,who now lives in Yonkers, leased her first electric car, a Tesla Model Y, she drove straight from the Brooklyn dealership to take her cousin for a ride.

Her cousin, Tiffany Tucker, had been hesitating about switching from a gas car to electric — but that day in fall 2020, she loved the car’s sleekness, its pickup and its quiet. “I just felt like it was the future,” Ms. Tucker said.

Last month, she bought her own battery-powered car, a Genesis GV60.