Insights from the field: How early adopter cities are approaching EV charging program design

By: Elaine Buckberg, Laila Ale, Kathryn Carlson

If you can install home charging, owning an EV is like waking up with a full tank of gas every day. But if you live in the heart of the city, you are more likely to live in an apartment-style building, park on the street, or rent your home—all of which make it harder to install home charging.

The U.S. Department of Energy predicts that urban EV owners will do 62% of the charging away from home, versus just 32% for suburbanites and 16% for rural residents. Although EV sales are increasing, some city residents may hesitate to buy an electric vehicle due to concerns about publicly available charging.

That’s why in June, we brought together representatives from eight early adopter cities that are leading the way on EV charging programs. Hosted at Harvard’s Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability, the workshop provided a forum to discuss their early wins and challenges that can help other cities expedite their charging programs. 

Cities are investing in EV charging programs for a variety of reasons, including public demand. Many cities have broader climate goals where increasing EV adoption will help deliver climate benefits by avoiding carbon emissions, and local health benefits by lowering pollution. And billions of federal dollars are available to expand the nation’s electric charging network between the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act.

The workshop, co-sponsored with the Taubman Center for State and Local Government at Harvard Kennedy School and MIT’s Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research, included representatives from the cities of Ann Arbor; Austin; Boston; Denver; Los Angeles; New York; Oslo, Norway: and Portland, Oregon. The cities came together for a day and a half of discussion and exercises. Based on the event, we wrote a guide for city officials, “Lessons from Leading EV Charging Cities.” The guide also offers tips for utilities, charging operators, property owners, and non-profit and neighborhood associations who can all play a role in increasing EV charging in their communities.

 Here are a few of the lessons from the workshop:

For cities in the pre-launch phase:

• Set measurable operational goals and milestones. On that, the City of Denver told us, “Don’t wait until your plan is 100% before installing chargers. Have goals identified, but parallel to that, build the infrastructure.”
• Coordination and partnership are key. The City of Portland emphasized, “Build private partnerships early. Our experience is that a city needs dedicated staff for charging partnerships with the private sector.”
• Allocate money for operational costs. “Budget for maintenance!” said the City of Los Angeles, on funding and investment.

For cities that have already launched their EV charging program:

• Get community input on charger locations.  The City of Boston said, “Early on, EV charging sites were chosen based on opportunity and there was very little communication with the public.  For our curbside program, we conducted a citywide site analysis and engaged with stakeholders and community groups to identify locations.”
• Consider the energy grid.  As the City of Oslo said, “Grid planning is crucial to figure out how much electricity is necessary for EVs.”
• Use data. Data from current chargers can encourage additional support from city partners to continue investing in the EV program.

Cities have a large toolkit to facilitate investment in charging, from directly investing in chargers, to facilitating private investment, to using building codes to encourage investment at multi-family residences and workplaces.  We hope “Lessons from Leading EV Charging Cities” will help cities leverage all its tools.

For more insights, read the full report here. 

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