A new type of electric vehicle charger is appearing on the streets of New York, as the metropolis draws inspiration from Europe to enhance its infrastructure. Unlike most of its chargers, these can’t be found at eye level.
Instead, the “Voltpost Air” dangles more than three metres above the ground. It’s an unconventional attempt to solve one of the biggest urban bottlenecks in the shift to electric transport: where to plug in.
The system, designed by the New York start-up Voltpost, attaches directly to existing streetlamps or utility poles. It feeds power through a retractable cable that lowers when needed.
Mounting the unit high up is meant to protect it from vandalism – it’s NY after all – and bad weather – it’s the East Coast after all -, two issues that have dogged earlier generations of street chargers.
Drivers can activate charging sessions by app or with a credit card, while property owners can install one or two chargers per pole, delivering up to 9.6 kilowatts per port.
Repurposing infrastructure
Voltpost’s pitch is simple: rather than ripping up pavements or waiting months for costly grid upgrades, repurpose the infrastructure that is already there. According to the company, installation can take just a couple of hours, requiring only a cable pull through existing cabling channels.
That speed and relative affordability, the company argues, could allow cities to scale charging access quickly enough to keep pace with rising EV adoption.
“Millions of streetlights already line our streets,” said Jeffrey Prosserman, Voltpost’s chief executive. “If even a fraction were converted, it would dramatically change access to charging.” The company is pursuing projects in several other US states, outside New York.
Urban charging remains one of the trickiest aspects of the energy transition and isn’t confined to the US. Also, in densely populated areas of European cities, many drivers park on the street overnight and lack access to home chargers.
Without a reliable curbside network, the adoption of EVs in these locations risks remaining a luxury for those with garages or private driveways. Cities in the UK, the Netherlands, and other European countries have experimented with lamppost chargers, but the American market has lagged.
Fifty in Brussels
European cities have turned streetlamps into EV chargers to expand access without costly roadworks. In the UK, London, Birmingham, and Brighton are rolling out hundreds of retrofitted lampposts, while Dutch towns like Alkmaar and Renkum and Berlin in Germany are piloting similar schemes.
Brussels has roughly fifty of such ‘charging lamp posts’ provided by Energyvision. But these don’t hang three meters above the ground.
State officials have welcomed the deployment in New York as a “replicable” model that could be rolled out further. Still, questions remain about how drivers will respond to a system that requires pulling a cord from overhead, and whether the design will prove as durable and convenient in practice as Voltpost claims.
Critics point out that while lamppost retrofits avoid heavy construction, they still rely on local grid capacity that can vary dramatically. The question is how urgent the deployment of charging solutions remains with the Trump administration on a path to reverse the electric transition sooner rather than later.
