Electric vehicles accounted for a third of new San Francisco car registrations the past couple years. Undeterred by national politics — and the uncomfortable reality that the EV wave has lined Elon Musk’s pockets — the city wants to add a lot more places to charge those cars. It’s about to take a small but notable step in that direction.
Barring a last-minute objection, transit officials will approve Tuesday the city’s first two curbside charging stations on Fillmore Street in Duboce Triangle. (And they’ll take away two parking spots for anyone not actively charging an EV.) The chargers — each about the size of a fire hydrant — are the start of the city’s curbside EV charging pilot, announced last June.
The pilot is part of a broader effort to spread more than 1,700 public chargers around the city by 2030. SF is up to about 1,100, but none are curbside, which proponents say is a crucial location to serve San Franciscans who don’t have the luxury of a private garage or driveway. That’s about 70 percent of SF residents, according to the city’s Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA).
In addition to the curbside test, SF continues to add chargers to public lots and garages, thanks to a fresh infusion of federal cash. A $15 million Biden administration grant, part of a larger basket of funds, was in jeopardy with Donald Trump’s election. Just before his inauguration, SF lawmakers changed city rules to ensure the money wouldn’t be clawed back.
Now the SF Environment Department says it’s awaiting “further communications” from the U.S. Department of Energy about spending the money. (SF Environment spokesperson Joseph Piasecki tells The Frisc that SF officials are “cautiously optimistic” that the funding will stay.)
Trump’s anti-climate law crusade shouldn’t affect the curbside pilot, but there are local politics to navigate as well. While two Duboce Triangle parking spots reserved for EVs are a blip, hundreds more could follow. And that could add to fossil-fueled driver discontent over changes to parking and driving patterns.
“We know that parking is a bit of a zero-sum game, but we’re having conversations with communities and commercial corridors to see what works best,” says Piasecki.
So far, Mayor Daniel Lurie isn’t shying away from EVs. Last month he showed up to celebrate the installation of 12 chargers in a public parking lot in the Mission District, not curbside. Lurie noted that EVs have accounted for more than a third of SF car registrations the last two years, and that the 12 stations in the Mission lot “won’t be enough.” He also bought and donated a $134,000 electric truck to the city for his own official use.
In 2004, SF first pledged to curb local greenhouse gasses through better construction materials and more sustainable transportation. In 2021, the city pledged to aim for zero net emissions by 2040.
Climate change might be less prominent in the local consciousness — at least until the next orange-sky day — but even with the rise in EV ownership, privately-owned vehicles are the city’s biggest source of emissions.
Most city residents own at least one car. Curbside charging could encourage them to convert to electric, according to the program’s backers. But first the city needs to run a test.
Drive up, plug in
The point of the pilot is to figure out how to make public charging available to residents who rely on street parking. The two Fillmore Street chargers will test a few concepts: how much to charge per hour, how to ensure the spots stay available for EV drivers, and what charger design works best.
The devices will provide 20 to 30 miles of range per hour of charging. There will be an hourly charge of $3.50 during the day and $1.85 at night, and the units will be available 24/7 — any non-EVs or non-charging-EVs parked there risk a ticket.
SFMTA hasn’t set the amount, but in a New York City pilot, with more than 1,500 citations issued in the first 18 months, the penalty was $100.
The units come from New York-based It’s Electric, one of three companies whose technology is in the pilot. The others, Urban EV and Voltpost, have offices in San Francisco; their charger locations have yet to be determined.
It’s Electric’s system aims to thwart a common problem with charging stations, whose cables often need repair from misuse or vandalism. Drivers who sign up get a free cable that they bring with them and plug in. Tiya Gordon and her husband David Nathan founded the firm to bring EV charging to city dwellers who don’t have a garage or driveway. “If you make it hard for people to charge their cars, no one will transition,” Gordon tells The Frisc.
We know there is not a single answer how to provide curbside charging.
SF environment department spokesperson joseph piasecki
Gordon, a self-described environmentalist, relied on biking and public transit in Brooklyn until the pandemic hit and officials shut down the subway. When she needed a car to visit family members outside the city, she was set on buying an EV but had no way to charge it near her apartment. The closest option was three miles away in a private garage, where she had to pay for both parking and charging. “Not many people are going to do that,” says Gordon.
It’s Electric partners with building owners, drawing power from their electrical panels and adding its own meter to track electricity use. Licensed electricians do the wiring, and the company digs a shallow trench to run cable from the building to the sidewalk. Gordon says the whole operation takes two days. (Two city permits — for electrical and sidewalk work — are required.)
In exchange for providing electricity, the property owner can earn up to $1,000 a year per charger as a cut of the total revenue. It’s Electric says the arrangement means cities pay nothing for the service while earning fees for permits and citations. (The company also covers installation and maintenance costs.)
This workaround avoids a big obstacle for public EV charging: connecting directly to the electrical grid, which in SF requires extra work from Pacific Gas & Electric. The giant utility owns SF’s grid and has a backlog of work with EV charging hookups and other connections to the grid.
Boston recently chose It’s Electric for a similar pilot because of the business model and low installation cost, Boston Transportation Department spokesperson Nick Osborne tells The Frisc via email.
Any property owner can sign up with It’s Electric to host a charger. SF’s first installation will tap into the union hall of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 6 at the corner of Fillmore and Hermann streets.
Gordon says all the company’s installations will be done with union labor and that they have a relationship with IBEW international.
If approved by the SFMTA board on Tuesday, It’s Electric says the stations will be ready on April 22 — Earth Day. The company also has plans to install chargers in Alameda and Detroit in the next six months.
What other cities learned
Assuming Trump’s Energy Department doesn’t derail the $15 million grant, SF expects to install more chargers in lots and garages, including a Bayview parking lot later this year.
Meanwhile, SF Environment spokesperson Piasecki says residents are asking for curbside chargers. The question is where and when. So far, the two other companies chosen for the pilot — Voltpost and Urban UV — have yet to apply for permits. Additionally, Voltpost, which taps into street lights to power its chargers, needs to work through either PG&E or the SF Public Utilities Commission, depending on the location.
“We know there is not a single answer for how to provide curbside charging,” Piasecki says.
Other cities have tested curbside EV charging with varied results. Cities that own their electrical grid (Los Angeles and Seattle) can install chargers quickly. LA, Seattle, and New York have run experiments for at least a year; Seattle started with 50, LA and New York 100 or more. They all started in higher-income areas and saw high use, although New York grappled with illegal use of the spots. It’s looking at automatic enforcement instead of relying on reports from frustrated residents.
These are all good lessons for SF to learn as it moves into its pilot and — if it goes according to plan — hundreds more curbside charging spots. There’s a lot to navigate. Of all SF initiatives, perhaps none sits in the middle of so much Trump-fueled chaos and contradiction: a tariff-induced trade war, a loathing of climate-related research and funding, and the Tesla owner himself guiding a slash-and-burn campaign through several federal agencies.
San Francisco alone can’t reverse rising global temperatures. The city often tries new things, and sometimes they go off the rails. But sometimes San Francisco leads the way.
Correction, 4/15/25: A previous version of this story cited a specific number of potential curbside chargers in San Francisco. There is no specific number, only an estimate of “hundreds.”
