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Here's how 1 man is charging 3 electric cars from his Jersey City kitchen
By
David Brand
Published Jul 19, 2023
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Photo by David Brand
By
David Brand
Published Jul 19, 2023
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More and more New York and New Jersey residents are buying electric vehicles, but charging the car can be a challenge for owners who don’t have a garage or driveway.
Instead, renters like Jersey City computer tech Sal Cameli are getting creative.
Cameli, 51, charges his fleet of three electric cars from a wall outlet in the kitchen of his ground-floor apartment. He stretches a custom-made 34-foot cord through an air conditioner sleeve above his window, pulls it high above the sidewalk, yanks it down a street sign and plugs it into a cherry red Tesla, as well as a pair of decade-old Nissan Leafs.
After a divorce forced Cameli to downsize from his suburban home, he had to develop a strategy to secure the coveted spots outside his apartment and charge his electric cars. He spaces them apart just so, and works with a neighbor to hold down the spots on alternate side parking days.
“I have to. It’s the only way for me to charge,” Cameli said last week, as he waited for a street sweeper to pass. “To charge out my window costs me $12. It's very cheap.”
The curbside choreography and the do-it-yourself arrangement highlight the growing need for public charging stations as electric vehicle ownership becomes more popular in Jersey City and the five boroughs.
Although electric vehicles still make up a tiny percentage of cars in the New York City metropolitan area, ownership has more than doubled over the past three years, putting pressure on the limited number of charging stations. And on Monday, Gov. Phil Murphy announced a proposed rule that would ban new gas-powered cars by 2035.
Cameli’s charging setup also points to another trend: A number of apartment, condo and co-op residents are filling up their cars from their own walls. Nationwide, about 80% of electric vehicle owners charge at home, according to a 2021 report from the U.S. Department of Energy.
While Camelli and his three cars may be an extreme example, cords snaking out of windows and into parked cars are an increasingly common sight in densely populated neighborhoods.
Real estate broker Ekaterina Vorobeva said many of her clients in and around the five boroughs are looking for buildings with electric vehicle chargers in their garages — a request many landlords are starting to follow. She said her own condo complex in Jersey City allows residents to connect cords from their first-floor units into their electric cars.
“There’s a high demand,” Vorobeva said.
Plugging into a wall is simple, though charging can take a while depending on the outlet's voltage. Kelley Blue Book warns against charging an electric vehicle with a common extension cord — which can be prone to overheating — and instead advises using the cable that comes with the car.
Jersey City, meanwhile, is positioning itself as the state leader when it comes to EV infrastructure. The city said it now has 49 charging ports at 27 stations, with plans to add dozens more, and Mayor Steve Fulop, a candidate for New Jersey governor, is urging state lawmakers to beef up rebates and other incentives to make electric cars more accessible to everyday drivers.
Cameli stretches a custom 34-foot cord through an air conditioner sleeve above his window, pulls it high above the sidewalk and yanks it down a street sign so he can charge his vehicles.
Photo by David Brand
But is charging from an apartment legal? That remains a gray area.
No law explicitly prohibits at-home charging in Jersey City, though Fulop’s spokesperson Kim Wallace-Scalcione said city code requires that public areas “be kept free of all fire and safety hazards as well as nuisances.”
It’s a complaint-based system, and so far no one has complained about Cameli. His dad owns the building, and he says he even befriended a local “tattle tale” so they won’t make a stink about the cord stretched 34 feet from apartment to car. The cable runs about 10 feet above the sidewalk, making the whole configuration pretty inconspicuous.
New Jersey’s Department of Community Affairs spokesperson Tammori Petty-Dixon said a state ordinance states that charging cords should not cross a driveway or sidewalk, mainly because they could “create a tripping hazard.”
PSE&G, the local electric utility, discourages residents from plugging in at home. Still, Dawn Neville, the company’s electric transportation manager, said she understands the desire.
“One underlying issue behind charging can be a lack of equitable access to charging for people in multifamily dwellings, or high rises or any apartment settings,” Neville said.
Over in New York City, the Department of Transportation said there are now 1,955 publicly available Level 2 chargers — a device that can charge the typical electric vehicle in three to eight hours — in the five boroughs, including some installed by the city, and others that are privately owned. The DOT said there are another 187 fast chargers that take about an hour to juice up a car. Those numbers include locations, like a Tesla station in the lot of the Brooklyn Museum, where customers pay for museum parking along with the charge-up fee.
DOT spokesperson Mona Bruno said the agency advises New Yorkers against charging “through their apartments for safety reasons” but as in Jersey City, there is no explicit law prohibiting it.
The Department of Buildings says no one is supposed to run extension cords out of their doors or windows at all, but try telling that to New Yorkers stringing Christmas lights each year. Under the city’s electrical codes, the charging cords must comply with certain standards and reach no more than 25 feet without a cable management system.
Meanwhile, Britt Reichborn-Kjennerud, Con Edison's e-mobility strategy director, said the at-home method shows New Yorkers are innovators — and need more street chargers.
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” Reichborn-Kjennerud said. “Our goal is to bring them EV charging in a convenient way.”
So for now, it’s kind of the wild west out there, forcing landlords to play the role of sheriff.
Manhattan property manager Aaron Weber says it’s too risky to let tenants run cords out of their apartments. He worries: What if someone overloads the electrical system, or trips and sues the owner?
“They’d have to cease and desist right away,” he said.
Back in the Heights neighborhood of Jersey City, Cameli’s neighbor Emad Youssef has a different outlook. He owns a two-unit home down the street and says he doesn’t see any problem with at-home charging, as long as the tenant is footing the costs.
“The guy pays the electric bill,” Youssef said. “He charges the car from the apartment. It’s OK.”
Still, it’s not the most efficient system. Camelli plugs into a 240-volt outlet, the kind usually used for washers and dryers. It’s more powerful than the traditional 110-volt outlets, but still takes about 15 hours to complete a full charge, he said.
It’s worth it though. Camelli says his Tesla app shows he’s driven about 13,000 miles and saved around $1,200 by using electricity instead of gas over the past year.
But not everyone’s a fan of the setup. Cameli posts his EV endeavors on YouTube, with one clip of his curbside choreography generating over 1 million views — and plenty of angry comments.
“The amount of self-entitlement that goes into using one car to hold a parking space for yourself is astonishing,” one commenter wrote.
“These guys are using two old cars as placeholders to preserve four personal parking spots on public streets. It's really a douche move against your own neighbors,” another said.
But Camelli doesn’t care. He said he has no plans to forgo his current system, at least not until the city installs a public charging station on his corner of the block.
“I want to park my cars in front of my building and I'm going to do it, and that's it,” he said.
Tagged
new jersey
housing
new york state
Health and Science
David Brand
David is a reporter covering housing for Gothamist and WNYC. Got a tip? Email [email protected] or Signal 908-310-3960.
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