New York City considering installing electric bicycle charging stations
Electric bike riders in the Big Apple who need a place to charge up their e-bikes might soon find more options thanks to a plan being considered by the New York City Council Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure.
Electric bicycles, which are essentially normal pedal bicycles with the addition of a helper motor and battery, are common sights in most large cities around the world.
New York City has long been home to a large number of e-bikes used by commuters and delivery workers, though the numbers have skyrocketed after the city finally got with the times and legalized them in 2020.
While e-bikes are fairly common among commuters seeking to avoid the hassle of car ownership and the limitations of public transit, they’re even more popular with food delivery workers and bicycle couriers. As one of the busiest and most densely populated cities in the world, NYC poses unique challenges for efficient food delivery such as traffic congestion, limited parking, and the need for quick and agile navigation.
Electric bikes address these issues by providing a fast and cost-effective form of transportation. The electric assist allows riders to cover greater distances with less physical strain, enabling them to complete more deliveries in a shorter period of time.
Additionally, electric bikes require minimal maintenance and have lower fuel costs compared to cars or gasoline-powered scooters, making them an attractive choice for workers trying to maximize their income.
But with the increase in cheap electric bikes imported from budget factories overseas, there has also been an increase in li-ion battery fires.
These are usually sparked by the use or self-repair of damaged batteries or by using an improper aftermarket charger that is incompatible with the batteries.
While e-bike battery fires occur in a tiny fraction of all e-bikes operating in NYC, there have been a few fatalities linked to these fires so far this year.
NYC recently passed a measure that will ban non-UL certified electric bikes from being sold in the city. Now the New York City Council Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure is going a step further to try and provide a safe charging space for e-bikes, according to ABC.
The proposed plan would see e-bike charging stations installed throughout the city, though details relating to their design and implementation are sparse.
We’ve seen electric bike charging stations in other US cities, but they’re basically just a standard outdoor 120V electrical outlet.
In fact, any standard home electrical outlet can effectively become an e-bike charging station. Unlike electric cars, which generally use higher power electric vehicle charging stations, e-bikes charge with a small external charger just like a laptop. That makes it easy to provide charging infrastructure through simply installing outdoor outlets.
The effectiveness of such electric bike charging stations in New York City remains to be seen, especially since most electric bikes use slower chargers that can take between four to seven hours to fully recharge the battery.
Riders needing a quick top up can use a higher power charger to get around a third of a recharge in an hour, but faster charging speeds than that are usually not advisable on electric bikes that lack sophisticated cooling systems like those found in electric cars.
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China just laid out a plan to roll out over 100,000 ultra-fast EV charging stations by 2027 – and they’ll all be open to the public.
The National Development and Reform Commission’s (NDRC) joint notice, issued on Monday, asks local authorities to put together construction plans for highway service areas and prioritize the ones that see 40% or more usage during holiday travel rushes.
The NDRC notes that China’s ultra-fast EV charging infrastructure needs upgrading as more 800V EVs hit the road. Those high-voltage platforms can handle super-fast charging in as little as 10 to 30 minutes, but only if the charging hardware is up to speed.
China had 31.4 million EVs on the road at the end of 2024 – nearly 9% of the country’s total vehicle fleet. But charging access is still catching up. As of May 2025, there were 14.4 million charging points, or roughly 1 for every 2.2 EVs.
To keep the grid running smoothly, China wants new chargers to be smart, with dynamic pricing to incentivize off-peak charging and solar and storage to power the charging stations.
To make the business side work, the government is pushing for 10-year leases for charging station operators, and it’s backing the buildout with local government bonds.
The NDRC emphasized that the DC fast chargers built will be open to the public. This is a big deal because a lot of fast chargers in China aren’t. For example, BYD’s new megawatt chargers aren’t open to third-party vehicles.
As of September 2024, China had expanded its charging infrastructure to 11.4 million EV chargers, but only 3.3 million were public.
Read more: California now has nearly 50% more EV chargers than gas nozzles
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Tesla is starting to experience some consequences for misleading Full Self Driving customers – at least that’s the finding of one arbitration ruling that has Tesla refunding one customer $10,000 plus legal fees for failing to deliver on their promises. Find out more on today’s legally challenging episode of Quick Charge!
An arbitration “court” found that Tesla misled customers with its Full Self Driving product, and has now been forced to refund at least one person’s $10,000 payment (plus legal fees) for the not-quite autonomous driving software. France, too, is piling on claims of deceptive business practices – but there’s some good news for FSD fans! If you’re still willing to pay for it, Tesla will thrown in 0% financing on a brand new Cybertruck.
Check out the relevant links, below, to learn more.
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