🌐 Disco, Sunshine, and the Future of Curbside EV Charging — it’s electric

🧩 Climate Adoption Archetype: Friction Removal — Make it easier

The Charging Desert in America’s Largest City

Tiya Gordon lives in Brooklyn. “As a woman, it doesn’t feel great to park your car under the BQE at nine o’clock at night and then walk two miles home,” she told me.

That’s New York City’s EV charging reality. For city residents, NYC—like every U.S. metro—is a charging desert.

In 2020, when COVID shut the city down, Tiya began asking a bigger question: if the country was moving toward electric cars, where were people supposed to plug them in?

For urban drivers, the options are grim: staking out a hospital parking garage or idling in a Walmart lot, hoping one of the handful of chargers frees up.

Across U.S. cities, 40 million would-be EV owners wonder if and when things will change.

That gap was the spark for it’s electric, the curbside charging company where Gordon is co-founder and COO. The bet: EV adoption can scale in cities if you design for how people actually live.

It started as a sketch on a pad. Today, it’s hardware in the ground in Boston, Detroit, and San Francisco—with more cities on the way.

Gen 1 Charging Was Open-Heart Surgery on City Streets

The need is obvious. But the system Gordon inherited was never going to solve it.

Gen 1 public charging meant tearing up streets. Crews dug seven feet down to reach the high-voltage mains, dropped in transformers, and then rebuilt the road around them. It was open-heart surgery for every single charger.

The numbers didn’t add up. 

In New York’s first pilot, 50 curbside chargers cost $13 million to install, or $260,000 each. 

The city also had to cover maintenance. What it got was a small pilot, years in the making, with no clear path forward.

Residents were treated like afterthoughts. Units went where utilities could dig, not where people parked overnight.

Shallow Tech, Fast Installs, Zero Cost to Cities

it’s electric invented a new business model by designing a solution that avoids the trench and avoids the utility altogether.

Instead of digging seven feet down, they tap into the building right next to the curb. Power is already at the correct voltage, so installation is simple: a conduit under the sidewalk, a charger on the street, and it’s live.

As Tiya says, “We call ourselves shallow tech. We’re dumb. We are like the dumbest possible way to power a charger—and it works.”

Each unit costs $13,000—1/20th the price of a Gen 1 charger. 

In San Francisco, once the first permit was approved, a charger was installed and operational in 48 hours.

The pitch is simple: cities make the curb available, it’s electric covers the installation and maintenance cost, building owners earn, and drivers can finally charge where they park.

The Bottleneck Is Permission

But making the curb available isn’t straightforward. To state the obvious, cities were never designed with a vision for EV charging infrastructure.

“Who owns the sidewalk? Who gives you permission?” Tiya says, explaining the complexity. “Honestly, putting the charger in the ground is the cherry on top of the sundae. The hard part is building the relationship with the city.”

So Tiya assembled a team suited to the challenge. Professionals who’ve spent their careers delivering projects in the public realm — the kinds of installations that require precision, permanence, and city approvals. 

Tiya herself is a recipient of the National Design Award from the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian, and the SXSW Innovation Award for Urban Infrastructure. Before founding its electric, she helped lead the design, technology, and installation of the 9/11 Memorial & Museum.

Describing it’s electric’s city permitting playbook, Tiya says it’s “as much a product as the chargers themselves.”

Adoption follows a simple but powerful loop:

• Cities: Early adopters like Boston and Detroit share results with peers. When one city says yes, others can confidently follow.
  

• Building owners: No hardware to buy. They host the unit, supply power, and share revenue.
  

• Drivers: Through community-requested charging on the company’s website, residents across the country can nominate their city block for a charging station. That’s how locations are identified and vetted, and that’s a key reason why utilization reaches 40% in the first months, compared to 30% after two years for those Gen 1 projects.

Disco and Sunshine, Not Bolts and Volts

Gen 1 charging brands blurred together—clunky units, dangling wires, lightning bolt logos. Tiya wants the opposite. “We wanted to make it feel different — disco and sunshine, not volts and bolts.”

The chargers are sleek, designed to fit into the streetscape. The point isn’t to remind people they’re helping the planet. It’s to make life easier. Plug in at the curb, walk upstairs, and wake up to a full battery. 

“We’re not leading with climate. We’re leading with ease,” Tiya says. “We’re making the right thing to do the easy thing to do.”

That ethos runs through the brand — bright, playful, and unmistakably human. it’s electric positions curbside charging as a cultural upgrade, not a technical chore.

What about the cable? When you sign up with it’s electric to access their chargers, the company sends you your own cord. That keeps the streets uncluttered and the unit maintenance streamlined.

Next Up — Cars as Wallets, Energy as Currency

Earlier this month, it’s electric secured a $1.1 million grant from the California Energy Commission to develop, certify, and commercialize the nation’s first bi-directional, vehicle-to-grid curbside charger. The unit will charge cars and compensate their owners for sharing power back with the grid.

“The car becomes a battery on wheels. That’s the vision. And if it’s sitting there 95% of the time, why not use it?” Gordon said. “It’s your car, but it’s also your wallet. You can get paid for pushing energy back when the grid needs it.”

Cars as wallets. Energy as currency. The low-carbon future is about more than solving climate change. It’s about new ways to create value—and a better way to live.

🌐 Supercool Takeaway

By stripping cost, complexity, and cultural friction from public charging, it’s electric shows how to unlock the 40 million urban EV drivers waiting on the sidelines.

Operator Takeaways:

• Prove the model with hard numbers. $13,000 chargers versus $260,000 makes the economic case undeniable.
  

• Align every stakeholder. Cities save money, building owners get paid, and drivers get curbside convenience.
  

• Lead with ease, not climate. Disco-and-sunshine design reframes charging as a lifestyle upgrade, not a taxpayer burden.

This Week’s Podcast Episode

Disco, Sunshine, and the Future of Curbside EV Charging - it's electric

🎙️ Listen on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and all other platforms.

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Stat of the Week: 10,000

The number of curbside chargers New York City wants installed by 2030 to meet resident demand. A city with 8 million people with about 100 curbside public chargers is staring at a massive gap — and a massive growth opportunity.

Quote of the Week:

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How to Build the Future

Your design is a tool. Your technology is a tool. Your adoption strategy is the solution.

We’ve spent the past year decoding how climate innovation wins. Now we’re sharing the playbook.

Launching this October: The Supercool Climate Adoption Playbook. It’s the first course built on real-world case studies of companies overcoming barriers to win customers, drive revenue, and capture market share.

It draws on deep insights from founders, executives, and CEOs of world-class climate companies. It reveals the strategies they use to drive rapid market adoption.

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Related

Cities Are Writing a New Low-Carbon Playbook for Operations

New all-electric skyscrapers (see last week’s Alloy Development coverage) are reimagining the low-carbon city skyline. Just as important: upgrading the pipes, poles, and buses that keep cities running.

Whereas it’s electric is modernizing urban charging infrastructure, core urban systems are also being re-engineered for a lower-carbon future.

Water That Doesn’t Go to Waste

WINT manages building water use with AI-powered monitoring and leak detection, now deployed across portfolios from offices to hospitals. At the Empire State Building, the technology reduced water use by 7.5 million gallons a year, saved $100,000 annually, and prevented more than 300 tons of emissions—with a three-month payback.

Streetlights That Do More Than Light

Ubicquia has retrofitted streetlights in dozens of U.S. cities, transforming poles into efficient, connected infrastructure. Philadelphia’s upgrade of 130,000 lights is projected to cut power demand by more than 50% and save over $8 million each year, while adding adaptive lighting and real-time monitoring.

Trash That Travels Underground

Envac has installed pneumatic waste systems (sealed tubes that vacuum trash below ground) in more than 40 cities worldwide, replacing trucks with hidden infrastructure. On New York’s Roosevelt Island, the system has eliminated over 90% of garbage truck traffic, reducing diesel use, noise, and congestion while keeping streets cleaner (see Clean Streets: Piping Out The Trash Below Cities).

Heat That Gets Reused From the Sewer

SHARC Energy is deploying wastewater heat recovery across North America and Europe, turning sewage into a steady thermal source. In Vancouver’s False Creek neighborhood, the technology now supplies over 70% of heating demand, avoiding thousands of tons of emissions each year (see Recycling Heat from Sewers and Vancouver’s Green City Ambitions.

Buses That Run Smarter

Optibus powers transit scheduling for over 3,000 agencies in 35 countries, making bus networks more reliable and efficient. In New York, its platform reduced deadhead trips—buses running empty between routes—by 10%, cutting diesel use while improving reliability for riders.

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Where Supercool traveled this week:

The day I met Robert Redford

Robert Redford once asked me to walk with him, to talk about the environment.

The head of SundanceTV and I had driven down from Park City during the 2009 Sundance Film Festival to have lunch with him at his resort.

He was warm, engaging, and genuinely excited about my upcoming television show, "The Lazy Environmentalist."

Excited about finally bringing some humor to the environmental conversation. Excited that the network he founded was putting a “green” TV show in a primetime slot.

In that brief window, it was clear why he was beloved. Yes, he told us stories about filming Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid—including how he’d arranged to move the actual bar from the movie to his resort. But mostly, we talked about the environmental movement.

Reflecting on his recent passing, I wrote about how meeting him impacted me. Read the full post.

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