One of the most significant choices people can make toward reducing their environmental impact is changing how to get around. Transportation accounts for about 28% of each American’s carbon footprint, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, the EPA reports, primarily come from burning fossil fuel for our cars, trucks, ships, trains, and planes.
That’s why shifting from a gas-powered car to an electric vehicle can be powerful. More than 3 million of than 278 million vehicles in the United States are currently electric. That includes an estimated 36,000 in the Hudson Valley, according to NYSERDA’s most recent EVaulateNY report. And as that share grows, each individual move goes toward making an increasingly strong collective impact.
Studies show that EV owners tend to love their vehicles. Major selling points include everything from how fast they accelerate and how quietly they glide along to how they reduce the guilt about driving the country’s open roads. That’s not to mention their owners’ appreciation for the money that EVs save on gas and maintenance.
Still, making a change can feel intimidating. An electric model’s initial sticker price might be higher, even though it’s typically cheaper over the long run given gas and maintenance, along with rebates and tax incentives in New York State. Even more so — in a country where gas stations are everywhere — finding a charger when and where you need one can sound daunting.
That may be why EV sales, while still growing 40% year on year, have slowed their pace since 2022, when their growth rate was 52%. So what’s really happening with the hoped-for electric transition? Here are the latest developments.
New Models, Longer Ranges
If you’ve watched big events like the Super Bowl, or any TV at all lately, you’ve no doubt seen more and more commercials for electric cars. Automakers are releasing plenty of exciting new models, and prices of several mid-range offerings are dropping below $40,000 in 2024.
Ranges (the max distances each vehicle can travel on a single charge) of a number of EVs are now north of 350 miles. One type, the Lucid Air, even cracked the 500-mile mark recently in testing. And the innovation continues: Fisker’s Ocean model, which has a solar roof, and the Hyundai Inoniq 5, which has optional rooftop solar panels, have been spotted on New York roads.
On the luxury side, Porsche has let it be known that it expects to soon produce vehicles with a stunning 800-mile range and 15-minute charge time using solid-state lithium-ion batteries. That’s excellent news even for those of us not on the high-end market. Once those kinds of batteries are out there, automakers will be rushing to adopt similar technology at more affordable price points. Lots of car companies — including Hyundai, Toyota, and Volkswagen — are now working on their own versions of solid-state technology.
Charging-Network Challenges
Last year, the Biden administration announced ambitious plans to expand charging networks nationally, investing $7.5 billion in the effort. But where the rubber hits the road, the vast majority of states have yet to install any new chargers under the plan, the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure Program.
The good news for those driving in or to the Hudson Valley is that New York was one of the first two states (along with Ohio) to actually open new chargers under the program. The opening of a new bank of super-fast chargers in Kingston, the EVolve NY set a half-mile off the NYS Thruway, was celebrated in December.
Hugo Jule-Quintanilla, project engineer for e-mobility at the New York Power Authority, showed off how well they worked on his leased EV in early spring. The state already has 174 EVolve NY chargers in place, he says, and the goal is to get 6,000 chargers of all types available in New York by the end of 2025.
Still, installation is a long process, he says, since a charging bank can use as much power as a good-size building. Permitting can take up to six months, procurement can take more than three, and construction can take up to two, leading to overall installation times hovering around a full year. “I always feel that California is the one we’re competing with, but I think we’re doing a strong job of getting this infrastructure up and running,” Jule-Quintanilla says. “We are making it possible for people to travel long distances [by EV].”
Try-It-Out Rental Options
With an electric vehicle being a new kind of ride, many of us would like to try before we buy. So it’s lucky that there are many more rental options than in the past. Turo, a peer-to-peer service that’s like an Airbnb for rental cars, offers some of the easiest options, with a filter to search for only electric vehicles if desired. Traditional rental agencies have added more EVs to their fleets, too. Although short-term demand has been in flux, companies like Hertz say they’re still committed to their EV strategies long-term.
Leasing an EV, like Jule-Quintanilla himself has done, is another popular option for trying out an EV without a long commitment. Most charging of leased and owned EVs is done overnight at home. That can be done using a special charger (which runs about $350 and is tax-deductible in New York), or even just — especially for those leasing — plugging the car into a regular outlet.
At a Hudson Valley hotel or even a town that hosts municipal chargers in business districts and at train stations, overnight charging options are surprisingly ample and can cover apartment dwellers whose buildings don’t offer chargers. (And yes, that includes visitor-friendly regional cities and towns like downtown Hudson, Kingston, and Saugerties, as well as in Beacon, where charging is available at multiple Scenic Hudson parks.)
So take a test drive and start exploring. “Electricity is cheaper than gas, so you can save quite a bit of money,” Jule-Quintanilla says. “The fumes, the pollution, the emissions are gone. And the handling, the power, the smoothness of an EV — it’s a better experience.”
