Climate Action, It Takes  a Community

Greetings from Krystal Ford, volunteer member of the Town of Philipstown’s Climate

Smart Communities Task Force, and resident of Garrison. Because motor vehicle emissions are the fifth largest source of greenhouse gas pollution in Philipstown, and because switching to an electric vehicle (EV) powered by clean solar, wind or hydro energy can be the quickest way to greatly reduce your vehicle emissions, I recently decided to ask various friends of mine what questions and concerns they had about electric vehicles. I was blown away by the number of responses! Clearly, they had a lot of questions about EV’s and equal amounts of interest. Although making the switch can at first seem daunting, sometimes it just takes hearing from an EV owner to set one’s mind at ease. So, with this in mind, I volunteered to write this “Q&A” article to address some of the most frequent electric vehicle questions, and recruited two other EV-owning Philipstown residents - David Limburg and Tara Vamos - to help me do so.

 

As context, I owned a 2013 Tesla Model S that I purchased used from a dealership in 2017 for $52,000 three years ago, and I currently own a Tesla Model 3, purchased in 2018 for $40,000 after tax credits; David Limburgh leases a 2019 Hyundai Ioniq Electric for $21,200 after tax credits; and Tara Vamos owns a pre-owned 2017 Chevy Bolt, purchased at 46,000 miles for $17,600.

 

Question 1: How many miles of range do you get?

 

Krystal: 2013 Tesla Model S: 225 miles, Tesla Model 3: 315 miles

David: Hyundai Ioniq, 124 miles

Tara: Chevy Bolt, 238 miles

 

Question 2: How do you charge your vehicle?

 

Krystal: At home we plug one car in at night, and by the morning it has a full charge. For road trips, we use the Tesla supercharger network that is very developed. We’ve driven to Canada and Florida and have had no problems. Tesla makes it so easy to find the super chargers. I can input my trip into the map and it will tell me exactly where to stop and how long to charge.  Charging takes around 20-40 minutes and you can expect to stop every 2.5 to 3 hours.

David: For the first six weeks, I charged from the wall socket using the supplied cable, it took about 24 hours to charge that way, then I got a Chargepoint Level-2 home charger and now it only takes 4 hours. The charger cost about $600.00 to buy, and installation was around $1,400.00. We really don’t take road trips. We have driven to NYC and back on a single charge. If we had to charge on the way, we would look for Level-3 chargers, which would charge in about 15 minutes.

Tara: At home I charge on an outdoor 120-volt outlet while parked in my driveway. That adds back about 25 miles of charge overnight.  When I need to add charge more quickly or on road trips I use level 2 and 3 chargers all over the place. I look at what's available on my route or near my destination using the “PlugShare” app, which also lets you see if people have been complaining that a charger is out of order or has a great restaurant or park nearby... It's like Yelp for EV chargers.