Despite their growing popularity, consumers in New York and nationwide still face misconceptions about electric vehicles.
One of the most pervasive is about colder climates reducing battery efficiency, which many energy and environmental agencies have resoundingly found false.
Kate Kruk, president of the New York Capital District Electric Vehicle Association, said given the evolution of EVs since they first hit the road, people can benefit from EVs any time of year.
“Most modern EVs have such advanced battery management systems it kind of minimizes that impact,” Kruk pointed out. “You can use features a lot of electric vehicles have called preconditioning, which can ready your car so the car is already warm when you’re ready to go so it doesn’t reduce that range as much.”
From Kruk’s own experience as a longtime EV driver and upstate New Yorker, she feels an EV is better equipped to tackle the region’s snowy winters, because an EV’s battery runs across the bottom of its chassis making for better weight distribution on slippery roads. With a gas-powered car, most of the weight is in the front with the engine which can make it harder to control on the snow and ice.
Aside from driving capabilities, EV’s pose many cost, health and safety benefits for consumers. Though it has translated into increasing consideration to buy an EV, there is still some reluctance to purchase one.
Kruk argued the biggest challenge is in a driver’s mind, given so many have only traveled in fossil-fuel-powered vehicles.
“Once we get over that general kind of anxiety, it can play out and hopefully we can start to be a little bit more open to different ideas,” Kruk contended. “Something, again, only knowing or only coming from a background driving in a fossil fuel vehicle, range anxiety is very real and it becomes a challenge to get people over that hump.”
The election could test the country’s love of EVs. Former president Donald Trump claims Vice President Kamala Harris will implement an EV mandate to cripple the auto industry, though the claim is false. Kruk added no matter the election’s outcome, there will not be much of a change in the country’s adoption of EVs.
“The ship has sailed,” Kruk emphasized. “I think we’re ready to move forward especially knowing that the United States can be and should be a leader in e-mobility and technology.”
