Source: S&P Global Media Portal via S&P Global.
Urban electric vehicle adoption in the US is constrained by limited access to residential charging. While charging infrastructure has largely been built around suburban homeownership, many urban drivers rely on street parking or multifamily housing without private charging options. In dense neighborhoods, front-of-the-meter curbside deployment has been slowed by grid upgrade requirements, lengthy permitting processes and high installation costs. It’s electric addresses this gap with a behind-the-meter, low-voltage Level 2 curbside charging model that uses adjacent spare building capacity to enable faster and lower-cost deployment in urban residential settings. This infrastructure gap is reflected in consumer sentiment:
According to a study conducted by 451 Research by S&P Global, lack of charging infrastructure is the second-most-commonly cited reason for not purchasing a battery-electric vehicle in the US, after vehicle cost.
The Take
Behind-the-meter curbside charging is gaining traction because traditional grid-connected models struggle to scale in large US cities. As electric vehicle (EV) adoption expands in urban areas, where deploying direct-current fast charging is often impractical, cities are prioritizing residential-adjacent solutions that can scale quickly without triggering grid upgrades. It’s electric fits this shift by converting underused building capacity into curbside infrastructure aligned with urban dwelling patterns. For energy players, it shifts EV load growth away from capital-intensive grid investments; for technology providers, it creates an integration point at the urban edge of the grid, with opportunities across charging software, energy management, data platforms and future vehicle-to-grid services.
Context
While early EV adoption in the US has been facilitated by suburban households with access to garages and driveways, urban drivers without private charging face challenges. Unlike newer developments or EV-mature European cities with standardized on-street infrastructure, most US urban neighborhoods cannot support front-of-the-meter utility-connected curbside chargers without grid upgrades and long approval processes.
In this context, conventional curbside chargers that rely on direct utility connections remain expensive to deploy and slow to scale, while streetlight-based charging — successful in parts of Europe — has been constrained in the US by fragmented ownership, inconsistent electrical capacity and nonuniform street infrastructure. Behind-the-meter curbside charging represents a different model, drawing low-voltage electricity directly from adjacent buildings to avoid grid upgrades and interconnection approvals, while supporting Level 2 charging (6-7 kilowatts) suited to long-dwell residential use cases.
Policy is reinforcing demand for residential-adjacent charging in some US cities. In New York City, the Green Rides Initiative mandates a phased transition to zero-emission rideshare trips by 2030. Because rideshare drivers disproportionately rely on street parking, the policy increases near-term demand for scalable curbside charging solutions.
Charging speed and dwell time shape the suitability of charging solutions at the neighborhood level. Public DC fast charging has addressed corridor and highway use cases, but it is poorly matched to residential charging, as it requires high-power grid connections, real estate and higher capital investment while prioritizing short dwell times. By contrast, behind-the-meter Level 2 curbside chargers favor deployability over throughput, supporting long-dwell parking in residential neighborhoods where vehicles remain parked for several hours or overnight, while reducing infrastructure complexity and cost. Supporting this, survey data shows that more than 60% of US EV and plug-in hybrid electric drivers say they would use urban charging innovations, such as street-level or curbside chargers, very often or somewhat often, comparable to everyday destinations such as gas stations.
CHART
Company
It’s electric was founded in 2021 and is based in Brooklyn, New York. The company employs about 45 people and has raised $9.97 million in overall funding, including a $6.5 million round in July 2024 led by Failup Ventures and Uber Technologies Inc. Other investors include Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, Flybridge Capital Partners, Clean Energy Venture Group, Third Derivative, Halogen Ventures and the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator. Uber is both an investor and a strategic partner, helping seed early demand through its driver electrification programs.
The company sells primarily to US cities. As of April 2026, it has deployed 54 chargers and has been awarded contracts for approximately 1,600 additional units. Deployments include Boston and a 10-year contract to install up to 1,000 Level 2 curbside chargers in Philadelphia, one of its largest municipal commitments to date. It’s electric also operates in Los Angeles; Detroit; San Francisco; Yonkers, New York; and Washington, DC, working with city governments and nearby building owners that host the chargers.
It’s electric follows a cities-first strategy, securing municipal right-of-way before deploying hardware. Once installed, chargers face high switching barriers, as competitors must navigate long-term city contracts, separate procurement processes and the replacement of revenue-generating assets. The company focuses on dense urban areas where grid connection costs are high and demand is concentrated among apartment residents and rideshare drivers.
Revenue comes from three sources: charging fees paid by drivers, direct charger sales (with 40%-50% gross margins), and recurring operations and maintenance contracts with cities. Based on it’s electric estimates, a single curbside charger generates about $12,000 in annual gross revenue, supported by charging usage and California LCFS credits, with a payback period of under two years.
Beyond Uber, it’s electric partners with automakers including Hyundai Motor Co., Kia Corp., Ford Motor Co. and BMW AG, as well as utilities such as Con Edison and PG&E Corp. Auto OEM relationships include pilot programs aimed at expanding urban charging access, including its original pilot, which was supported by a joint Hyundai-Kia deployment in New York City.
In parallel, the company is developing a vehicle-to-grid (V2G) curbside charger. In September 2025, it’s electric received a $1.1 million grant from the California Energy Commission to support development and certification, in partnership with the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Delaware. If launched around 2028, V2G capability could extend the platform from charging infrastructure into grid services.
Products
It’s electric’s core offering is a compact, single-port, screenless AC Level 2 EV charger purpose-built for behind-the-meter curbside deployment. The platform’s software-agnostic design helps lower adoption friction for cities and partners by avoiding lock-in to a proprietary charging software stack. The charger excludes fixed cables, touchscreens and on-device payment hardware, reducing physical footprint and exposure to vandalism and cable theft. Drivers access the service through a mobile app that manages registration, payment and charging sessions, and provides a portable charging cable. The behind-the-meter power-delivery model draws low-voltage electricity from an adjacent building, avoiding utility coordination, trenching and transformer upgrades. This enables installations to be completed in as little as a few days. Electricity consumption is sub-metered, and the company shares approximately 20% of charging revenue with host properties.
The company outlines three milestones: a building-powered curbside charger optimized for dense urban environments, a certified detachable cable system designed to mitigate vandalism risk, and a V2G-capable curbside charger — currently under development. V2G functionality would enable connected EVs to discharge electricity back to a building or the grid, allowing curbside chargers to operate as bidirectional energy assets. The California Energy Commission estimates that street-parked EVs could provide up to 9 gigawatts of power and 105 gigawatt-hours of storage capacity in California alone, positioning V2G as a potential extension into grid services such as peak shaving and demand response.
The company manages the full deployment life cycle, including site assessment, permitting, installation, operations and maintenance. Through its city-by-city rollout, it’s electric aggregates building-level spare capacity and curbside charging usage data, creating a dataset that could support grid planning, load forecasting and integration with third-party energy and mobility platforms.
Competitors
In the US curbside charging segment, key competitors include FLO, Blink Charging and ChargePoint. FLO’s SmartTWO public chargers have been deployed in New York City through a utility-connected model that carries significantly higher installation costs than it’s electric’s behind-the-meter approach, but FLO benefits from a broader portfolio that includes DC fast charging. Blink and ChargePoint both deploy Level 2 chargers in urban environments and compete for municipal contracts, supported by established brands, large installed bases and access to capital. In Europe, curbside charging is more mature, with companies such as Shell Recharge and Trojan Energy deploying large-scale, low-power on-street networks for residential streets. While these systems typically rely on lamppost or municipally metered infrastructure rather than private building connections, they provide a reference point for the density and residential focus that behind-the-meter curbside models are beginning to pursue in US cities.
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