TLC puts additional electric Ubers and Lyfts on hold in NYC after last year’s run on plates
The Taxi and Limousine Commission said additional electric Uber and Lyft cars are “not needed at this time,” in New York City following a run on the cars last year that added more than 7,500 EVs to the city’s rideshare fleet.
The news was quietly announced in the TLC’s annual report on the state of the city’s for-hire vehicle industry, published late Friday.
“Based on [the TLC’s] analysis, the pending litigation concerning TLC’s decision to issue EV-restricted licenses under the previous License Review, and the need to evaluate the impact of new licenses before determining whether any additional licenses should be made available,” the report continues, “TLC finds that additional for-hire vehicle licenses are not needed at this time.”
Last fall’s run on the coveted TLC license plates, which are required to accept app-based hails, came after the New York Taxi Worker’s Alliance sued to stop the Adams administration from modifying the 2018-era cap on for-hire vehicles to allow an unlimited number of Ubers and Lyfts, so long as they were electric. The plan was part of the Mayor’s so-called Green Rides initiative, meant to make the entire fleet electric by 2030.
The Taxi Workers Alliance argued that the TLC didn’t have the legal authority to unilaterally change the license plate cap rules, and that a slew of new vehicles with TLC plates would saturate the market, hurting existing ride-share and yellow taxicab drivers.
In response, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Machelle Sweeting in November ordered a temporary stop to the new licenses. At the time, Sweeting granted a five-day grace period for those who may have already purchased an electric car. By its end, 9,756 applications had been filed to the TLC.
As previously reported by the Daily News, the new electric cars have pushed the total number of electric Ubers and Lyfts citywide to more than 10,000, or roughly 12% of the fleet.
“The rush for licenses brought about by the lawsuit resulted in a much more rapid expansion of EVs in the [for-hire] fleet than TLC had anticipated,” the agency acknowledged in Friday’s report.
The TLC’s report was widely read as a signal that no new EV plates would be issued even if the agency prevailed against the Taxi Worker Alliance’s lawsuit in court. TLC officials did not say Monday when or if additional EV license plates would again be available.
“We’re two years ahead of schedule in our Green Rides initiative,” TLC commissioner David Do said Monday at an event celebrating the opening of a new-technology EV charging hub in midtown.
The plan had initially required 5% of all app-based hails to be served by electric or wheelchair-accessible vehicles by the end of this year. The TLC now seems poised to soon meet its December 2025 goal of converting 15% of all rides to electric or accessible vehicles.
In October, when first announcing the plan alongside Mayor Adams, Do had emphasized the TLC’s desire to build the EV fleet slowly, in part to keep the city’s charging infrastructure from being outpaced.
Monday, at the opening of a 24-port, 500kW charging hub run by New York-based firm Gravity, Do praised innovation in charging.
“Moving forward, we need more facilities like this one,” he said of the facility.
The charging hub, Gravity’s first open to the public, is capable of providing up to 200 miles of range in as little as 5 minutes, depending on an EV’s battery, CEO Moshe Cohen said.
“This initiative was meant to spur more electric vehicle infrastructure,” Do said of the city’s EV push, “and it has done just that.”
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