Uber is betting on a startup hoping to solve the biggest roadblock to EV adoption
Summary
A record one in 12 new cars Americans bought this year was an EV, and last month, for the first time, electric vehicles crossed the price parity line to become cheaper than their gas-powered counterparts. EV buyers who own homes can easily install a charger and fill up while their car is parked, but EV proponents say the availability of so-called Level 3 charging stationswhich can charge a battery in under an hourare crucial for long-distance travel and large-scale adoption.Within the coming decade, the Energy Department predicts that 28 million chargers will be needed, 1 million of them publicly owned, but the Biden administrations efforts to bolster public charging have been excruciatingly slow, yielding only a handful of stations in the previous two years, the Washington Post reported.One startup aiming to solve this problem is Brooklyn-based Itselectric, which builds on-street chargers that use electricity from neighboring buildings rather than the municipal grid. The solution allows chargers to be built quickly, with minimal permitting; building owners and Itselectric share the money earned from those chargers.The startup on Tuesday received a $6.5 million round of funding led by Uber and Failup Ventures to scale its charging system. At the higher end, that cost exceeds the price of filling up an equivalent car with gas.Uber, for its part, has made a public commitment to be zero-emissions by 2040, although some states have much more aggressive goals to electrify ride-sharing vehicles. The product is done, its tested, its market-ready, we have them stored and stacked, ready to be put in the ground.This fresh funding is literally going to be what pushes us now to be able to scale at rapid speed.In the not-too-distant future, Gordon and King hope to be customers of their own startup: The Brooklyn residents purchased an EV two years ago, but strategizing where to charge it remains a challenge.There are a couple of curbside chargers New York City installed in my neighborhood, but Ive only been able to use them once in the last two years, because they are always in use, King said.