When it comes to automobiles in the Upper Valley, things are looking a bit like they did 100 years ago.
It was in 1921 that Lebanon made its first hard-surface road by laying down concrete slabs on Court Street to accommodate the growing prevalence of horseless carriages and the former Flanders & Patch car dealership opened on Mechanic Street — both signs of the nascent car industry that was just about to revolutionize transportation.
The Upper Valley, as with much of the country, now appears on the cusp of another such transformation, this time with electric vehicles.
Electric vehicles — EVs for short — are appearing with greater frequency on roads, indicating that car owners are overcoming skepticism that the battery-powered vehicles do not perform well in northern New England’s harsh winter weather.
“A year ago when talking about EVs, I was excited about it but I wasn’t as confident we were going to be able to ramp up as quickly as I now think we will,” said Jenny Carter, assistant professor at Vermont Law School and a staff attorney with the Institute for Energy and the Environment, which is advising the town of Hartford on policies to foster EV ownership and use. “But the dominoes seem to be in place and are starting to fall.”
The future of EVs has received a huge boost as General Motors, Volkswagen and Volvo have all announced that they will sell only electric vehicles within 10 to 15 years and automakers are introducing a raft of battery-powered SUVs and trucks. One of the first actions of the Biden administration was ordering all government vehicles to convert to zero-emission vehicles.
And charging stations are being set up around the Twin States. Last month, Vermont announced that a Florida company would install plug-in “fast charge” stations at 11 locations across the state, including Randolph and Springfield, putting most Vermonters within 30 miles of such facilities.
Once saddled with a putt-putt image when they came on the market in the 1990s, advances in technology now put EVs in many ways on par with gas-powered vehicles — even in some instances surpassing them, such as with torque and acceleration.
“It felt like a bit of a gamble, but we’ve been thrilled with it,” said Jay Davis, a Lyme resident who replaced the family’s Prius with a Nissan Leaf EV he purchased in December. “We had this image for many years you had to sacrifice power, but we’ve been pleasantly surprised. It’s very responsive.”
Harry Higgs, a biochemistry professor at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine and a Lyme resident and member of the town’s energy committee, has compiled a spreadsheet of all the EV and plug-in hybrid owners in Lyme as a resource for others in the community who may be considering purchase or lease of an electric car and want to talk with others about their experience with the vehicle.
“We’re up to 12 EVs and 12 plug-in hybrids that I know of,” Higgs said. “Each month, a couple more trickle in.”
In Thetford, resident Tom Ward is also assembling a list of EV owners and so far has found 33, including 19 all-electric owners and 14 plug-in hybrids. The Thetford Town Plan, Ward said, sets a goal of 185 EVs by 2025.
Higgs said he replaced his 12-year-old Prius with a Tesla Model Y and now counts seven Tesla owners in Lyme. Since purchasing the car in September, Higgs said he’s made two trips to the Philadelphia area and back, requiring only one 20-minute recharge stop each way — Tesla charging stations are equipped with the super-fast Level 3 commercial chargers.
EV owners readily acknowledge the vehicles run less efficiently during winter because cold temperature reduces the ability of the battery to power the range of the vehicle.
Linda Gray, a member of the Norwich Energy Committee who is on her second EV — a 2017 Nissan Leaf — said she’s been getting about 120 miles per charge during the summer, which declines 16% to 100 miles per charge in the winter.
“It functions just fine for all my local travel,” she said, noting that the car suffers no loss in torque.
“They are truly peppy,” Gray said. “I’ve never been one to care about zero to 60, but I will admit to sometimes being compelled to show off how quickly it can take off.”
To be sure, EVs and plug-in hybrids still account for only a single-digit percentage of the registered vehicles in the New Hampshire and Vermont — and not many people can afford a Tesla, whose entry-level models start in the high $30,000s and go up from there. Even “more affordably” priced all-electric EVs, such as the Nissan Leaf, Chevrolet Bolt, Kia Soul EV, Mini Cooper SE Electric, and Hyundai Kona Electric all start in the low- to mid-$30,000 range for base models. And of course the prices escalate with add-ons like home charging stations.
Drive Electric Vermont, a Winooski-based public-private partnership to advance the adoption of electric vehicles in Vermont, estimates that as of July, there were a total of 3,971 EVs in the state, including 2,159 plug-in hybrids and 1,812 all-electric vehicles.
(A spokesman for the New Hampshire DMV said current data on the number of EV registrations in the state was not immediately available. A 2019 state report said that 1,123 new EVs were registered in 2018, accounting for 1.2% of all vehicle sales that year, a 42.5% jump over the 788 registered in 2017.)
Chris Stromberg, general sales manager at Key Chevrolet in White River Junction, said the dealership is selling “three to four” Bolt EVs per month during the peak auto selling season from the spring through the fall. “We just took delivery of three EVs today,” he said Monday.
Although EVs account for a small percentage of the 50 to 60 new and used vehicles the dealership sells each month, Stromberg said it’s been trending upward since the dealership opened in 2019.
“This is a good market for the Bolt,” Stromberg said. “I personally believe that is because Vermont has more people who are a little more green-minded and care about the environment.”
EVs are seen as a key part of the global strategy to combat climate change because they don’t burn gasoline, a contributor to global warming, and instead are run by electricity, which increasingly is being generated from renewable sources such as solar and wind power.
“We put solar panels on our roof in November, and to be able to directly power up our car is very appealing. Zero emissions was a big factor for us,” said Lyme’s Davis, who directs the first-year student enrichment program at Dartmouth.
Norwich, which had 91 EVs registered by address in January, has the second-highest per-capita EV ownership in the state, exceeded only by Charlotte, Vt., in Chittenden County, according to Drive Electric Vermont.
EV industry stakeholders — manufacturers, policymakers, politicians and critically the utility industry, which will have to produce much of the electricity to charge EV batteries — are aware of the high financial barriers to electric vehicle ownership and have introduced a patchwork of programs, from tax credits at the federal and state level, to ratepayer adjustments with utilities and automaker rebates.
The incentives, which include a federal tax credit of up to $7,500 for some vehicles, can vary widely depending upon income level, tax liability, whether a buyer is purchasing or leasing a new or pre-owned model and the amount of manufacture’s rebate.
Dave Roberts, coordinator of Drive Electric Vermont, said incentive packages can total $14,000. “If you’re talking a $30,000 price, then that will get you down to $16,000,” he said.
“In some cases, I’ve seen people drive off the lot with $13,000 off” the Bolt’s sticker price, said Stromberg, of Key Chevrolet.
Although the upfront costs can be higher, proponents of EVs argue the battery-powered cars make up for it through lower maintenance costs and the equivalent in electricity kilowatt hours from recharging the battery that comes out to an average of $1.50 per gallon for gasoline.
Not everyone has had a favorable experience with EVs, at least initially.
Dan Fraser, whose family owns Dan & Whit’s general store in Norwich, has owned a Tesla 3 for three years and said in the beginning it was a series of calamities, from waiting for 14 months for one to be delivered to having to ship the car back to Boston for two weeks to be repaired.
“It was a nightmare for three months,” Fraser said, although “now I love it. There’s no maintenance. It’s wonderful in the snow.”
The rise of EVs will also have profound consequences downstream for automotive maintenance and repair businesses, from local mechanics to quick-change oil stops, as electric cars do not require oil and have considerably fewer parts than cars powered by gas engines.
Bob Watson, owner of Watson’s Automotive in Thetford, said his shop sees “two to three” EVs per week during the high-volume summer months for inspections and light maintenance work such as brakes, tire rotations and headlights. The entire nature of auto maintenance will change, Watson said, with mechanics trading grease-stained coveralls for “white lab coats and laptops.”
“Jiffy Lube is going to be hurting,” he said.
Contact John Lippman at jlippman@vnews.com.
