With the uniquely dense landscape of cities, urban EV charging must take a different form from its suburban and rural counterparts. City dwellers are less likely to have a private garage or a driveway.
They have fewer cars per household, and they are more likely to live in multi-unit dwellings (MUD for short). As a result, daily transportation routines, EV adoption rates, and charging patterns are quite different too.
The Current State of EV Charging
Today, about 80% of EV charging in North America occurs at home. The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) projects that by 2030, nearly 70% of U.S. EV charging will still happen at home—whether at single-family residences or within MUDs.
Notably, this forecast excludes curbside charging, which is technically public but often serves residents in densely populated neighborhoods. The shift in statistics suggests a more built-out charging ecosystem and EV adoption beyond people living in single-family homes.
While Level 2 (L2) charging is the most common charging speed across geographies, the exact form of L2 charging is distinct. While suburban and rural residents often charge in private driveways or garages, city dwellers are more likely to rely on shared or public infrastructure. Public L2 charging demand is predicted to be roughly 15% of charging in cities, compared to 4% and 8% in rural regions and suburbs, respectively.
For urbanites without dedicated parking—think places like the streets of Park Slope in Brooklyn—public curbside charging might become their “at-home” solution.
The Infrastructure Conundrum - Chicken or the Egg?
Residential EV charging programs currently cater largely to single-family homeowners. This makes sense as 78% of EV owners live in single-family homes. With access to private parking and incentives for L2 chargers, these households can easily support EV adoption.
But what about all those MUD residents; why would they shift from an ICE vehicle to an EV?
As the Joint Office of Energy and Transportation aptly reported in 2024, approximately 31% of all U.S. households (44 million households) are MUDs. This is a huge untapped market that can reap the benefits from transportation electrification.
This is clearly a classic chicken and egg problem. There is not the same level of EV adoption in cities, but that’s largely due to lack of home charging availability. More residents are likely to transition their vehicles from ICE to EV if they have reliable charging options.
Technology solutions taking shape
When deciding on a charging solution, it is crucial to engage stakeholders, and to understand what the MUD residents want, what parking is available, and how to put it together. If there is little to no dedicated parking, but public street parking is available, then solutions like curbside charging could make the most sense.
Leading technology providers in the curbside space include Flo, it’s electric, and Voltpost. Darcy highlighted the Flo pilot with NYC DOT and Con Edison that ran from 2021 through 2025.
The successful Flo pilot highlighted by Darcy Partners ran from 2021-2025 with NYC DOT and Con Edison and had 118 7.2 kWh L2 plugs installed, 99% system uptime, 7,200 unique users, and 80% system-wide utilization as of January 2025.
Also taking a curbside space-saving approach, Voltpost retrofits light posts as EV chargers. The New York Governor recently awarded Voltpost $775,000 to deploy L2 chargers in New York State’s cities.
For those urban area MUDs with dedicated parking, whether it be a building lot or parking garage, L2 solutions from a company like SWTCH might make sense. SWTCH offers a turnkey solution that focuses on integrating EV chargers seamlessly into the existing electrical infrastructure of all types of buildings, from retrofit apartments to condominium and commercial properties.
If residents in a MUD have assigned parking spots, smart L1 solutions from players GoPowerEV, Orange, Plugzio, or others might make sense since these chargers can be assigned to EV owner spots, where EV drivers can reliably charge overnight.
These solutions can typically satisfy commuter needs, as they charge up to 60 miles overnight and can manage load for buildings—and they are less expensive to install than their L2 counterparts. A range of solutions for MUD charging can be found in the framework below.
The Stakeholders and Challenges
Having established that whether MUD and curbside chargers are chickens or eggs or simply a large piece of hardware, they are needed for the EV transition, it’s important to understand why North American metropolises don’t have EV chargers on every street corner.
What are the challenges?
Capital expenditure costs are consistently identified as a primary obstacle. Utilization expectations are still uncertain, making it difficult to justify investments based on traditional payback calculations.
The range of stakeholders—residents, property managers, fire departments, utilities, and city transportation departments—adds complexity. Knowledge gaps about technical aspects like electrical capacity, signal strength, and load management often hinder progress.
Coordination can feel like a game of telephone, with slow and fragmented decision-making.
Utility Role in Powering Up Urban Charging
With these challenges, utilities can offer both useful education and incentives around EV charging installations for property managers and DOTs.
For public curbside charging, it is important to have clear guidance on interconnection requirements and right-of-way regulations. It’s also crucial to think about how EV charging and driving fits into the ecosystem of other transportation options, from micromobility to public transit.
This requires collaboration between utilities, DOTs, other government agencies, and charging companies. In many cases, EV charging is a new consideration, and rules might not be fully developed yet.
Cities like Portland, San Francisco, Toronto, and Boston have recently developed curbside EV charging programs by engaging with different stakeholders.
While EV charging might not be a profit center for MUD property managers, it might be an amenity that gets people to choose to move into a given building.
Utilities can work with property managers to help them understand what type of charging options are available and verified as meeting standards can help property managers make decisions on what to install.
Examples of leading utilities in this area are National Grid, Eversource, DTE, Consumers Energy, Xcel, PG&E, and SCE; they have incentives and information specifically for MUD charging installations.
Charging Forward
Often, people talk as though EV charging must be less convenient if you don’t live in a single-family home—or as though people in cities simply do not want to buy EVs. The truth is that there is a wealth of charging solutions for population centers, and people simply want to know that using an EV will be easy and affordable.
This starts with effective communication and information sharing amongst stakeholders.
