Credit: Flo / itselectric
On Tuesday the EV charging company itselectric announced its partnership with Hyundai and the NYCEDC to deploy curbside Level 2 chargers at two Brooklyn locations as part of a two-month pilot program. Most of the coverage takes note of the fact that these will be the first chargers in North America to feature “a fully detachable charging cord” (see here, here and here), but that undersells what I think is a pretty exciting development: finally, we are getting BYOC (bring your own cord) chargers.
BYOC is a common-sense solution to some of the biggest challenges associated with wide deployment of AC public charging infrastructure (read: not DC fast charging). BYOC has long been the standard in the UK and broader Europe and the benefits are substantial.
1. BYOC significantly reduces the initial cost –and unsightliness– of AC chargers. While not extremely expensive, nondetachable cables that are made for commercial use are built quite robustly and cost more than a cord for individual use. And because these commercial cords need to be kept off the ground when not in use, the chargers themselves tend to be bulky and intrusive. BYOC changes all that. Instead of tall cable management towers that are a street eyesore, we can build chargers right into existing street infrastructure. For example, since 2020, Siemens has worked with Ubitricity to retrofit thousands of lampposts in central London with EV charge points.
2. BYOC also significantly reduces the cost of charger maintenance. One of the main challenges in keeping EV chargers operational is ensuring the charging cables and connectors remain in good condition. Wear and tear accumulates on these components from normal use as well as from deliberate abuse, and proactive maintenance is required to keep everything operating properly. Even the simple act of connecting and disconnecting the cable from the car slowly wears out the connector itself.
The cables, because they need to be able to reach all points of a car, are necessarily quite long and unwieldy–we’re talking 25 feet, as long as a garden hose. This means that the cables often rest on the ground and, if not put away correctly, can be run-over or otherwise damaged. The perceived political character of going electric, combined with the high copper content of the cables, means the cords are also often targets of deliberate vandalism or theft.
These factors make operating a widespread public charging network in a city a particularly daunting prospect. What municipality or charging operator would want to be responsible for maintaining thousands of long charge cables in a city where one man destroyed 42 LinkNYC screens?
3. BYOC eliminates a major point of failure from the charging experience. As any EV owner can tell you, one of their biggest complaints is the unreliability of the public charging network. For homeowners and renters who have a dedicated place to park and charge every night, this is only an occasional annoyance. For city dwellers whose cars spend most of their lives parked curbside, this can be a make-or-break problem. If the majority of the energy going into your vehicle is coming from public chargers, the dependability of those chargers will be critical to your purchasing decision and your satisfaction as an owner.
For all the reasons already mentioned, charger cords are susceptible to damage. BYOC makes the charger that much easier to maintain and puts the cord into the hands of owners who can easily store it in the trunk of their vehicles and keep it out of harm’s way. This model also ensures that any act of vandalism affects a single user at a time, rather than the entire user base of a given charger.
Urban AC charging doesn’t get as much press as DC fast charging but is an equally crucial piece of the EV charging challenge. It’s very exciting to see a simple, cost-effective solution to the problem of curbside charging being deployed in NYC. Here’s hoping the pilot is successful and can serve as a model for smart citywide curbside charging nationwide.