I posted this back in May on another NYC charging thread. Might be helpful to you.

I just completed my NYC trip, and the Bolt performed beautifully. Leaving from my home in northeast West Virginia I traveled I-70 to I-81 and onto the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Stopped for a first charge at an EVgo station located at a Rutters just off the pike in Harrisburg. Thanks to the recommendation from "just frank" I followed the Penna Turnpike onto the New Jersey Turnpike and charged again at an EVgo in the Joyce Kilmer Service Area. Very convenient and gave me confidence I'd get into the city with no problem. As chance would have it I was forced to get a last minute hotel room my first night, which put me in a DoubleTree on West 29th near 6th Avenue. I pulled into a parking garage almost directly opposite the hotel and noticed an "electric car charging" sign on a post. I asked the attendant who said he didn't know anything about it and had to call "the boss" to find out. Sure enough right around the corner was a Chargepoint terminal just waiting for an EV to come along. Apparently Chargepoint doesn't know it's there either, because it doesn't appear on their map of NYC charging locations (although their accounting department knows). So cool. Full charge overnight, enough juice to last my week (mostly parked) in the city and to get back on the NJ Pike to head home. The Bolt was perfect for driving in the city, including the grueling crawl to the Holland Tunnel.

 

Hi!
I am planning a trip to NYC in the coming months, and have been looking for a place to park & charge my Bolt while I'm down there. I took a look on PlugShare, and while there appeared to be plenty of stations, many of them seemed to give the indication that they were inactive, or that the attendants of the parking garages weren't familiar with charging stations. I didn't get the sense of a lot of reliability.

Any suggestions? Is anyone aware of charging stations through hotels? I will most likely be staying somewhere in midtown (planning to go to a Broadway show), though if someone has a great recommendation of a hotel with a garage that supports EVs outside of midtown, I'm all ears.

Welcome to the city. Now, fuggedaboutit from a lot of points of view.



First of all, you should be driving a Bolt EV (that's why you are here, no?) with a 238 mile range, even more in the summer. So -- if you are driving down from Albany on the NY Thruway, stop in Nanuet and use the biggest, newest, EV Go mega-fast charger (https://www.plugshare.com/location/152110) to fill your battery to 75%. That means you have at least another 180 miles of range to play with. Cross the Hudson on the new Tappan Zee bridge (saves $8.50 in tolls), and drive another 27 miles (6.5kWh) to any good midtown hotel then...


Park. The. Car.



Forget about finding an L2 or valet charger.



NYC parking is already extremely expensive and overbooked. There is little incentive for parking operators to install and feature L2 chargers. They are available in many of the QuikPark or FastPark locations, but will charge a hookup fee and about $0.49/kWh to charge. If you do not need to, why?


NYC also has BEVs for public use while your BEV is in the garage.

• BEV (Big Electric Vehicle) -- It's called the subway. For $2.75 you can go from the beach to the Bronx.
• BEV (Bigger Electric Vehicle) -- It's called Metro North. You want to have lunch at Louis in New Haven and dinner at Goodfellas in Little Italy. Take Metro North out of Grand Central.
• BEV (Bicycle Excursion Vehicle) -- It's called CitiBike and for about $9 lets you bike share.

If you really, really, feel the need to drive and recharge in NYC, try these.

• Go to the Bronx Zoo or the NY Botanical Garden. Take a leisurely stroll, have a glass of wine in the cafe and enjoy the summer. Parking is about $12-16 but includes all the L2 you can use.
• Go to the beach. Jones Beach has free ChargePoint chargers
• Charge on your way out-of or back into the city.

Again, if your ideal is that your midtown hotel will carefully park your Bolt next to a dedicated L2 charger and plug it in for you...fuggedaboutit.



But it should not stop you, from coming or going back without a problem.

 

How about dealers in the area or nearby?

 

I visited NYC earlier this year and took my Bolt. My advice to you? Don’t expect to actually be able to charge, even though you find a garage with a charging station on plugshare. Fortunate for me, I found a garage that was within walking distance of a restaurant in Koreatown that was listed having a Blink charging station. However, when I told the attendant that I wished to use the charging station, he was adamant it was broken and didn’t work, despite the Blink app saying it was active. It took about 10 minutes of talking (and a call to his boss) to finally convince him that the station was active and usable. I plugged my Bolt in and activated charging no problem.

While I walked out of the garage, the attendant told me that’s the first time he had ever seen anyone use the charging station, and he had been working there for 7 months.

Your best bet might be to ask the hotel you’re staying at if they have a 120V outlet on their property they’d be willing to let you use overnight. 40-50 miles of range is better than nothing. But being NYC, I’m sure you’re familiar with the outrageous parking fees.

TL;DR – Don’t rely on any NYC charging stations.

 

I see this as ironic because NYC (where I was born) had many electric charging stations over a hundred years ago when electric cars outsold the gasoline and steam cars. You can search and find many old photographs and articles showing these charging stations. Most of the original electric car owners were women because gasoline was sold in cans, was easily spilled on their expensive dresses which damaged them or made them smelly, gasoline engines were very hard to crank to start, and the emissions damaged or stank their clothes. Finally the first electric cars did have over 100 miles of range, enough for a week of driving in NYC.

 

^ that's why it's amusing to me to read the thread about the guy looking at a non-DCFC Bolt at $10K off list and people are insisting he's missing out by not having DCFC.

Many, many places don't even have L2/1772 based charging available no less DCFC... NYC is a perfect example!
The public charging infrastructure sucks if you don't own a Tesla, you can only rely on home based charging in downstate NY.
I used to have a public Chargepoint Station at work... it was 7 yrs old and finally failed. The county removed it last June.. there's still an orange cone over the mounts where it sat... it's been missing for 14 months now.

 

So I'm going to attempt a trip from Boston to Manhattan in my Bolt, this coming weekend. I have reserved parking with my ParkWhiz app, at the Roosevelt Hospital garage on West 59th St., near my hotel. According to PlugShare, they have a free "JuiceBar" Level 2 station with 2 plugs in the garage. I'm hoping that I can plug the car in when I arrive, and come back the next morning before we head out for the day, and have them move the car to the "regular" parking. Or, come back at least a few hours later, on our way out for the evening.

I planned to stop at the EVgo station in West Haven on our way to Manhattan, and that's about 80 miles from Manhattan. If the charging plans at the garage don't work out, I guess I can always stop at the multi-plug stations in either New Rochelle or Rye, and then maybe another quick "insurance" stop either at the new Electrify America station in Waterford, CT or another EVgo station near Providence.

My other concern is whether the attendants understand how to operate a Bolt, or whether I'll have trouble with that? I've not had occasion to leave the car with a valet before now.

 

....My other concern is whether the attendants understand how to operate a Bolt, or whether I'll have trouble with that? I've not had occasion to leave the car with a valet before now.

I've had my Bolt at three weddings and two christenings so far... no problems with the valet parking jockeys.


Push the blue button and go....

 

I'd be worried more about car washes instead...

 

Hi. I thought I'd post an update on my trip. Everything went very well, exactly to plan, which was nice.

We left Boston Friday morning with a full charge, and the Car reporting 265 miles of range. Our first stop was the EVgo station in West Haven, CT which was 147 miles away. Doing a steady 60mph in cruise control on I-95, we arrived with a bit below a "half tank". This particular charger is in the parking lot of a CVS, but they were smart and put it in the far corner, farthest away from the store. I plugged in and we walked down the street to have lunch at a little pub I found on Google. While we were eating, the app sent me a notification that my charging session was "finished", because I had hit the 45 minute limit. I tried to restart it from the restaurant, using the app, but no luck. You need to push a "Start" button on the screen on the station, to start it. Very annoying. But, the 45 minutes was more than enough to get us the rest of the way to Manhattan, so I just disconnected with 80% charge and we continued our trip.

The parking garage I had reserved space in, was a block from our hotel. It's the parking garage used for Mt. Sinai hospital on W. 59th st., just off 10th Avenue. It showed up on Plug Share as having an EVSE "Juice Bar" as I had mentioned earlier. When I drove in and handed the attendant the key fob for the car, I asked him if they could charge the car for me while we were there for the weekend and he said sure, no problem. They also didn't have any trouble driving the car or figuring out the shift, so my concerns were unfounded. During the weekend, I got a text from my car that it had completed charging, and sure enough when I checked the Chevy app, it had a full charge. I gave the attendant a nice tip when they brought the car out and thanked him for charging it. The charging was free, which is a very nice perk. So, if you are driving your Bolt to NYC to the Lincoln Center area and you want a good place to charge up while you stay, this garage would be perfect.

Now, on the way back from Manhattan, even with the full charge, I decided to stop in New Haven again, because this was the last EVgo charger we'd hit until we got to Providence, and I decided to stop sooner rather than later. I'm still working off the $175 Chevy Bolt special charging credit that EVgo sent me, so I was only using their stations. But this time, we went to a unit in the eastern part of New Haven, because they had a little Italian restaurant nearby I thought would be good for lunch (it was). Now, this EVgo is at a Dunkins on a main road not far off of I-95. But this one is placed right by the front door of the shop, with the handicapped space on one side. I had been afraid that it was highly likely to be ICED, and sure enough it was. Really annoying. But, this station has really long cords attached so I was able to park in the spot next to the EV spot and reach the charge port on the Bolt. It saved me having to go into the Dunkins and start yelling for the owner to come out to move their car. I did leave a "nasty note" under their windshield, mentioning that they need to be more thoughtful of where they park next time. I half expected to see my note back on my windshield with an F.U. on it when we got back from lunch, but that didn't happen.

The remainder of the trip home was uneventful. I had 75 miles of minimum charge left when we got home, for a trip of 215 miles in total (from NYC to Boston), and I was driving a bit faster this time, with the cruise set at 67MPH. Anyway, the car performed flawlessly and it was actually very comfortable to drive. I didn't find the seats at all uncomfortable. The driving position is good, visibility excellent, the lane changer warnings very helpful, road noise minimal too. A good, solid highway car. I just wish GM wasn't trying to drive it into extinction with their lousy marketing.

 

...... the car performed flawlessly and it was actually very comfortable to drive. I didn't find the seats at all uncomfortable. The driving position is good, visibility excellent, the lane changer warnings very helpful, road noise minimal too. A good, solid highway car. I just wish GM wasn't trying to drive it into extinction with their lousy marketing.

Applause. I totally agree - that's a Bolt EV for sure. GM does not market it, period. I think they are lying low, with lots of new EVs up their sleeve. The Bolt is after all a small car, not suitable for all the truck, SUV, mini-van drivers with bigger needs.