Driving Long Distance in an Electric Car

Friends of ours have children and grandchildren who live in the New York City area and they often drive there.  They can make it in about 7 hours in their SUV.

Now that everyone is talking about electric cars, I was wondering how long it would take them to make that drive in an electric-driven vehicle (EV)?

Though EV batteries are getting bigger and better, it is currently best to only count on them for 250-300 miles between recharges.  New York City is 360 miles away.  So, it is probably best to think about driving to New York in an EV over two days and not trying to make it a one-day trip.  You wouldn’t want to run out of juice in the Lincoln Tunnel right at the end of your trip.

Currently it takes 8-10 hours using conventional sources of power to “fill-up” an EV.  So that would mean driving east to Binghamton, staying over-night, recharging the car and then heading on into New York the next day.  Who wants to do that?

I bring this up because sometimes people want you to think that the conversion away from gasoline- driven cars will be an easy thing.  It may be easy around a big city where you never drive more than 100 miles per day.  But, around here, things get more complicated.

There are a lot of differences between electrically driven cars and those with internal combustion engines.  An electric car has no big engine or transmission.  It has no exhaust system.  Yet, it does have a battery that weighs 1200 pounds that needs to be constantly refilled, and you could be left stranded.

Someday they might make a battery that will go 1,000 miles between “fill-ups,” or perhaps they will develop a technology to fill a battery in a matter of minutes instead of hours.  But, for the foreseeable future, it looks like long distance trips by electrically-driven cars may be problematic.

Another option might be to have electric cars rented instead of owned.  You could then drive a car to Binghamton, trade it in for a fully charged car and then head on into New York.  It would sort of be like a modern day “Pony Express” where every so many miles you get on a fresh horse in order to keep the mail moving.  But, would people actually adapt to that?  We are used to having our own car.

When you think about it, our gasoline driven cars are really quite efficient.  Where else can you put 90 lbs. of fuel into a 14-gallon tank and have the energy to propel you down a road for about 300 miles?

I don’t know about you, but I think that it is going to be awhile before people start driving electric cars from here to New York City or beyond.  I wouldn’t give up your gasoline car quite yet.

Rolland Kidder 

The other day, early in the morning, as I drove east on I-86, a spectacular vista appeared as I neared Exit 12. The clouds were low, in the distance fog had settled over the Conewango Valley, and yet I could still see the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains off in the distance down past Clarks Corners.

It made me realize again just how beautiful the drive is along I-86, the Southern Tier Expressway.

When it comes to this road, I go way back to the days when it was still a “pipe-dream.” There was a Route 17 Association which for years had been lobbying Albany for a four-lane highway. The old Route 17 was primarily a two-lane road that meandered all the way from Westfield to Harriman, New York down close to the Hudson River. At Binghamton it turned into a four-lane artery but, even here, it was restricted by cross roads and occasional traffic lights. It was a long, slow way to get downstate and to New York City.

What finally changed things was the passage (in large part through the efforts of Senator Robert Kennedy) of the Appalachian Regional Commission Act that brought federal dollars into the area which could be used for infrastructure projects, including highway construction. It took many years but, gradually, the expressway that we now call I-86 began to creep west from Binghamton to Corning, eventually to the shores of Chautauqua Lake and then finally, the last section, to I-90 near Erie.

There were a lot of people who deserve credit for the road but I will mention just one, Bill Hennessy. Bill had grown up in Wellsville and finally became Commissioner of Transportation for the State of New York. It was Bill who saw the “big picture” and wanted the road to be a scenic and spectacular highway as it wound its way through the Southern Tier.

Think of the vistas we now have. There are close-up views of the Allegheny River near Salamanca. There is the incredible view on either side of the Alfred-Almond Pass as you come off the high point of the highway in Allegany County. Then, there is the winding descent eastbound as you come down from the pass over the hill at Howard, just west of Bath—special, “awesome” might be the over-used word.

Then there is probably one of the most spectacular highway views in the East, the Visitor’s Center off the eastbound lane overlooking Chautauqua Lake near Bemus Point. When you drive in, you don’t at first see the Lake but the view of it emerges as you park your car and then it fills the whole horizon. The view is incredible with nearly the whole south basin of the Lake stretched out in front of you.

There is another whole story of how the road got to this particular place—at first planned for being closer to the lake, local opposition pushed the right-of-way further up the hill. (It also gobbled up a lot of John Cheney’s farm, which he wasn’t pleased with.) But, when it got here, you have to give the State DOT engineers (and likely, Bill Hennessy) credit—they saw the view and planned the overlook that we now have.

As visitors and truckers pull into this stop, I can envision that a few of them have said: “Someday, I am going to come back and live in this beautiful place!” The premier vista on Vista Highway, right here in Chautauqua County. It is one of those places that makes you realize that you are lucky to live here.

Rolland Kidder