The city and private vendors are upping their games when it comes to the expansion of curbside electric vehicle (EV) charging stations in Boston. Officials recently announced that 11 publicly owned chargers with enough space at each to charge two vehicles at once will be placed in neighborhoods as summer goes on, with 3 of the locations set in Dorchester – near Puddingstone Garden by the Franklin Park Zoo, near Hemenway Playground off Adams Street, and near the Erie-Ellington Playground close to Franklin Park.

Nubian Square-based Better Together Brain Trust will install them.

On the private side, chargers operated by the companies itselectric and Greenspot will be set up through a waitlist process. Specifically, the private installations will be “Level II and Level III DC Fast Charging” and “suited for commercial districts and areas with a high level of multi-unit dwellings.”

Jascha Franklin-Hodge, Boston’s chief of Streets, said that trying out both public and private EV infrastructure will help the city gauge the best way to prepare for the near future, when EVs will likely outnumber combustion engines on the streets.

“We’re testing all of these different models to try to understand what works well, and what do people prefer?” Franklin-Hodge said. “We’re trying to be very intentional about what we test. We’re not just throwing random things at the wall; these demonstration projects will really help inform our long-term strategy.”

The Legislature passed a law in 2022 requiring the state to phase out the sale of gas-powered vehicles by 2035 in an ongoing effort to meet ambitious climate goals of lowered emissions. Boston, meanwhile, has seen its registered EV numbers grow from 936 in 2020 to more than 7,000 in 2024.

“The biggest barrier to people feeling like EV ownership is an option for them is really access to charging,” Franklin-Hodge said. “We as a city have set a goal that every resident will soon be inside a five-minute walk to a charging station.”

Matt Malloy, owner of the Dorchester Brewing Company, likely recognizes that situation more than most. Dubbed “Dorchester’s most persistent man” by the Globe last year, Malloy lobbied the city for nearly three years before he received permission to install an EV charger in his driveway for his Tesla Y and Kia EV9.

Today, he says he’s glad the city is moving in the right direction, but he hopes they are doing so with the right level of dedication.
“EV infrastructure can’t be an afterthought,” Malloy said. “If you have a location of two spots, and then two people park there for four or five or six hours with a Level II charger, which is how long that can take for a full charge, it’s no longer a utility. We need to make EV charging a utility. You shouldn’t have to plan your life around charging your car.”

For their part, Cynthia Loesch-Johnson, president of the Codman Square Neighborhood Council, and her husband, Jeffery Johnson, note how people who don’t own their home typically can’t purchase an EV since they would have nowhere to charge it. That was their problem when they bought their Rivian.

“When we first got our EV, we didn’t have a charging station at our home yet,” said Loesch-Johnson, “and we really struggled. We had to wait in really long lines for machines that sometimes didn’t even work.”

Dorchester Brewing’s Malloy said he hopes incentives for charging at home will be the next step in Boston’s EV evolution even as he applauds the city’s efforts to “lean in to” making EV charging more accessible.

Said Franklin-Hodge: “No city has an ‘end-all’ deal,’ a ‘we-know-exactly-how-it’s-going-to-work’ answer. We think EV charging is going to be a mix of options, right? A lot of people will charge at home. And a lot of people will charge off-street at public charging stations.

“We started to think about all the places we go and we park, whether that’s the grocery store or office or municipal lot. All of these are opportunities for charging. And that’s something I think we as a city are learning, and, frankly, we as a country are learning.”