“Our goal, as a company, is to become ubiquitous and interwoven into the communities,” said Luke Mairo, co-founder and chief operating officer at Voltpost, which integrates car charging with streetlamps. “We want to be the bodega of charging.”
Voltpost, headquartered in New York, recently conducted pilots with the New York City Department of Transportation and the city of Detroit, and has plans for more extensive deployments.
“We’re exploring a number of opportunities across California,” Mairo said during a June 27 panel discussion with Veloz, a Sacramento-based EV policy and advocacy group. More projects will be announced in the coming months, he added.
“Hopefully, everyone here will be seeing a lamppost charger in your area coming soon,” said Mairo.
Meanwhile, GreenWealth Energy will invest about $12 million into building out more than 1,000 Level 2 chargers at multifamily housing across Southern California to serve more than 30,000 households. Half of the focus will be on disadvantaged and low-income communities, said Ariel Fan, founder and CEO of GreenWealth Energy, a woman- and minority-owned charging company based in California. GreenWealth will function as the owner-operator of the chargers over the next 10 years.
Other partners in the project include Los Angeles County and the U.S. Green Building Council California, a statewide nonprofit organization to advance green buildings, which will take the lead on education at the different sites.
“Without this type of coalition-building and also some government support, the charging deserts still exist. It doesn’t pencil, really, to do Level 2 charging in these low-income communities,” Fan said in comments during the panel.
Overnight dwell charging opportunities at multifamily housing locations have often been identified as essential to make electric cars a workable option for residents who rent or may be low-income. Drivers want lower-cost charging, and they also want overnight and convenient charging, Fan said.
“We’re taking a creative approach on pricing, using time-of-use methods and other pricing features,” she explained, as part of the strategy to introduce low-cost charging for residents.
GreenWealth owns and operates the EV chargers it develops.
“But historically, it has not penciled,” Fan said. “Which is why we partner with government agencies, and we do additional services on top. We get very creative from the structure of the owner-operater model, or the hybrid model. And then get creative, also, in how we recoup that investment in different ROI mechanisms.”
Voltpost sees its market in a similar fashion, offering dwelling charging for drivers who rely on street parking.
“Ultimately, our mission is to democratize charging access and work intentionally with policy, with the communities where we deploy,” said Mairo.
