There can't be sufficient public charging in NYC in 2035. Most cars are parked on the street and parking lots where chargers could be installed are scant. Those who have to commute to work by car usually park on the street. NYC is the (slim) majority of NY State's population and a large chunk of the vehicle fleet. That said I could imagine a scenario where private parking garages become de-facto gas stations.
NYC should do what my London borough has done and turn every streetlight pole into an EV charging station. A fast update to the pole, an attachment that is about the size of a paperback book, and instant charging station. That is what allows people to easily use EVs in a city with nearly double the percentage of people living in apartments as NYC and where an actual garage is almost unheard of for any property costing less than $10M.
This is a big piece of the solution for street charging. Another piece would be mandated chargers at retail parking lots. Start with 5% of parking spots and increase that percentage as EV sales grow.
Plus parts of NYC rely heavily on Parking Meters which should in theory be even easier to adapt to chargers than streetlight: they've already got the credit card charging infrastructure for time spent parked in one spot, adding EV charging as a bonus utility to the parking prices already paid in theory should be easy.
Is that the solution? I don’t know, but honestly all of these issues are solvable problems and the idea that we can’t figure it out in 13 years says more about our self belief than it does about the tractability of the problem.
