for having us on or so first question what is the biggest difference technically technically wise between a gas and electric car well the primary difference between a gas electric car is right because this is the fuel source and actually there's a couple different types of electric cars that i can talk about for a moment there's an all electric car which has no gasoline engine and doesn't take us lean is only powered by a plug that it has where you get electricity from the grid and has a battery that powers the car there's also a plug in hybrid vehicle that has that same technology but also has a gasoline engine as a backup to extend the range of the vehicle  so the i think the technical differences are not that significant in fact when you're driving an electric vehicle it's not super different from driving a gasoline vehicle there's a there are some other some nuances that create a pleasant driving experience  driving electric vehicle but the sort of mechanics of how it works or not are not substantially different but the how many different models of there that's interesting there so yeah there's a there's a maybe a couple dozen different electric vehicles and of the lower cost vehicles that are very affordable and we can talk a little bit about that later on in terms of maintenance how would the biggest difference so yeah there's a there's a couple different differences  there are moving parts or less less trips to the less trips less service trips are necessary there's some other benefits of from regenerative braking where charging the battery actually slows the vehicle down there's less wear and tear on the brakes so have not had any maintenance in this in the initial six month period but case coast there are some interesting interesting now james in terms of the environment how does of the town and i large component of it comes from from vehicles for households more almost half of your carbon footprint is comes from driving so evey's really give a potential to reduce that a lot in terms of greenhouse gas emissions so you're at from one compared to average midsized new car the reductions in c o two emissions that cause climate change are more than half so just by changing the vehicle you can cut the transportation emission emissions down by over half if you have an older or less efficient vehicle then the those are reductions or even even more so now i would assume a lot of people want to  ask how long does one charge last in terms of driving there is so you know the range of the vehicles is varied and again there do you have these vehicles that will go on the electric three hundred fifty three hundred eighty miles so all in all i've got you know well over four hundred miles of range as much as i need there are some the latest test lows can go over three hundred miles on one charge and then the you know maybe the the low at the lowest end range you get majority of trips that people make on a daily basis can be accomplished with ranges that are actually far below even the lowest range of the commercially available vehicles if people are commuting to work or driving around town should have no problem you know you kind of use it like your cell phone you use it during the day you plug in to night it's ready to go and power you through through the entire day so for folks who are commuting into boston or you know greater boston should be pleasant and less expensive driving experience for the vast example by my volt will take about ten or eleven hours to charge on the one now which is fine if i get an overnight it's ready to go but if i had that kind of level two charging or fast charging it would take about half that time so if you have a larger battery and you drive a lot or you just want you know to be able to charger your car quickly and conveniently you can upgrade to a level two and part of this drive electric program is going to help people get that fast charging at home so they'll be some incentives and rebates on those twenty to fifty percent of the cost of that equipment will will be rebated by the by the to the what has been the public response to electric car so far so i think that the data shows that i'm engaged with a lot of folks on electric vehicles that people who experience them really like them so the challenge has been that people just are not aware of all the benefits of electric vehicles they think that they're expensive and slow and clunky and really the opposite is true in all those cases there  especially with the incentives that we have on the federal and state level are very cost competitive they're certainly cheaper than a traditional car of a similar price since there are these incentives that bring that price down they're cheaper to operate and they're actually quite fun and fast to drive there they have the electric motors generate instant torque so you get basically instant acceleration they're very fast off the line the car that i had before my chevy volt was a traditional hybrid prius  maybe a little sluggish off the lines night and day with the volt and then you just the other experience of driving them they're very quiet to drive you can have a nice conversation there's no engine noise when you accelerate they give you a lot of acceleration but it's very quiet creating this program to help build awareness at least among residents around electric vehicles like i said people who drive them love them and it's just a matter of kind of breaking down that barrier there's just been a challenge at the audi manufacturers and the dealers haven't invested a lot of resources in promoting them so it's very it's actually a little bit difficult to learn about them if you're not actively seeking them out so you know we're going to go through the i think it traditional kind of s curve adoption of new technology get your early adopters and then you know reached the early and late majority and get people as more people have them you'll see more people get them those people see their neighbors and friends and neighbors and family driving them and get to experience them will will will start to get that the uptick of adoption  also the prices continue to come down right now they're made cost very cost imperative by incentives but over time as those incentives go away the actual cost of the batteries will come down and they'll be you know then as expensive as a traditional combustion engine vehicle and then even cheaper and i think the projection is that cost parity is going to happen sometime within the next decade and then you'll see you know just pure economics without any federal or state incentives those vehicles will be cheaper and they will almost always be cheaper to operate especially as gas prices got to rebound but even today they're much cheaper to operate you know releasing automakers introducing more and more electric models reflecting that probably trend for the future yeah every major auto manufacturer is really invested in electric future so they're all coming out they're going to electrify most of their fleets over the next ten years you'll see that it's into many more options with more range and and more family size vehicles but i will say the vehicles on the market today are excellent and that you  know that's a great question i think it varies for folks i think a lot of people today who are the early adopters are attracted to the environmental aspects i think to say that was that was true for me but that i learned about all the other benefits of the you know the cost of operating it is nice that it's much less expensive and when i went to investigate actually acquiring one because of my of environmental a my viral goals to find that the you know the state incentives can you know there's multiple vehicles that you can get and lend lease for less than two hundred dollars a month just taking and basically with a net zero down taking the states more easy rebate putting that as a down payment being reimbursed for that in a couple months you can get a very affordable lease that's you know with surprising to me to get a vehicle that you know how to thirty five thousand dollars of us r p for one hundred eighty five dollars a month with basically you know net zero down after i got that rebate was very surprising to me and it's been very inexpensive to fuel for belmont residents it'll be the new power of the car through the light electric with all the electric rates will be about the equivalent of a dollar fifty per gallon of gas lot of interest in belmont from the local environmental community we just had a very successful solar eyes campaign and sort of building on the momentum from that but we've also heard of a lot of people who for whom the environment's not their major concern but they're just sort of tech people who like the weight of technology and just think it's a fun exciting car to have so there's people coming from both sides of it for sure though how's it been received in the areas where you of course  implement this program yeah it's been very well received so we have one one other municipal utility that we're working with my company say to on this on this program that's in braintree with their with their electric partment called build and i would be in that program just for a month and a half we've  almost doubled the amount of electric vehicles in the in the town and it's been very well received i've been on a number of test drives myself and seeing that sort of transformative experience of people getting behind the wheel and really understanding wow this is a you know a better product that wh have today and cheaper and good for the environment is is has proven to be effective people are test driving the cars and then they're going out and buying and leasing them so that's been that's been great to see and i think you know we're talking to more and more utilities and communities about the environmental benefits of of of promoting electric vehicles in their community and i think we'll see more and more traction traction there and belmont lights motivation similar to grain trees as you know not only the environmental aspect definitely a win but but embracing new technology being supportive of creation of transportation you know being able to have people switch from giving them money to support foreign oil and  oil companies to support their electric power source their local electric power source is good for a number of reasons but also helps keep keep the economics of the utility there look utility healthy keep rates low  improves reliability by by pushing a lot of that demand in off peak hours and then we can talk a little bit about how belmont light is encouraging folks to charge overnight and also just as you know doing that people a great service by exposing this this the benefits of electric vehicles where they may not of found out otherwise and you know we know that that most people don't know about the benefits so that's another another service belmont light is providing just a curiosity how long is this technology been around vehicles there's sort of there was a maybe a false start on the location of transportation perfected correct right exactly then then we kind of went through this transition really had really really the prius leading the way to a kind of non plug in hybrid vehicles and that allowed the automat factories to learn a lot about how the batteries operate to make those more efficient get down a learning curve on batteries so that you could actually get enough capacity into a passenger vehicle affordably so that you could have an all electric vehicle and it's just been over the last five or option for people who just are vehicle enthusiasm maybe not necessarily environmentalists and the you know you that's that's also happened over the last five six years and now we're really at a place where the technology is is getting mature there are a lot a lot more options and more coming than a traditional vehicle there's nothing there a little bit heavier because of that battery so they might perform a little better in the snow but most of them are front wheel drive cars there's a couple all drive models on the market but the thirteenth and at six thirty in the evening at the high school in the high school parking lot and then again on saturday afternoon saturday the fifteenth from two thirty to four thirty so i vehicles from a number of different dealerships will be there for test drives and local e v owners some of them will have their own cars there as well and be available to share information and tell people about them interested and if you're you know helping us build awareness so they're they've they've already are donating that resource to the program bosu people be concerned with beside haven't been able to charge the car at home to find stations elsewhere in the for five hours for a full charge get maybe ten twelve miles an hour of charge and that's probably not how you're going to charge a vehicle it's nice if you're at a supermarket to plug in to get a few miles of the almost always those are free so you get some some free free miles and then there's the what's called d c fast charging and that can give you like eighty percent of your battery in like twenty minutes so if you're doing long distance trips that's going to become increasingly necessary to have if your electric vehicles going to be your only vehicle this fast charging network is going to become increasingly important but if you use your car to commute and do your trips around town there's really not a huge use case for kind of that level to public charging it's nice to have i don't know but perfected there is there certainly innovation there they're able to get that the cost will come down over time so that you don't need all these you know ten thousand dollars of incentives as it goes on i wonder is there a downside to drive an electric car good the great question i mean i think that the thing that people that comes to mind for most people is the just the limited range for their vehicles and their couple ways to get around that there's studies that show that you know the vast majority ninety percent of trips that you make on a daily basis can be accomplished with the range far below what is the lowest commercially available range there's also these plug in hybrids i have the chevy volt i like i was mentioning before i get over five hundred miles of total range oh i drive almost all the time on the you know fifty five miles i'm getting on electric and then when i need to go to connecticut or new hampshire or down to the cape snow problem so if you if you don't have access to another vehicle at home which which many folks do you can go that sort of plug in hybrid option if you're if range is a concern if you do have another vehicle at home get a get a vehicle that you can use for your commune your daily your daily trips around town or you have a better more pleasant less expensive driving experience and if you need to go to the cape up to the bouncy can take your take your other vehicle you know how with some of these different models very yeah there's quite a bit of variation there is the kind of you know just the kind of technical variation of the hybrid versus the all elect there's lots of variation on on price and sort of luxury versus not luxury but generally i've i've tester of and most of the commercially available evey's they all perform very well there were there were really none that i you know thought were not wouldn't have met my needs are not you know a better driving experience than the traditional gasoline vehicle but you know there's today there are not that many of the that have you know six or seven passenger capacity you have to go into the kind of upper price range to get that so most of them are kind of you know four or five seater sudans there's some hatchbacks and that's that's over time that will that will improve you'll get some more more affordable family size vehicles but yeah i think there's you know there's a typical variation with a couple of mark gaps today that will disappear over time in terms of the environment we know glow because the emissions cost efficient what else could the benefits are one thing just in terms of local air quality there is no tailpipe so there's no none of the emissions coming out of the car for local air pollution or things like asthma and then but then the other main component is the climate change benefit from them sometimes people wonder about th there more environmental impacts from making the electric car and there are a little bit more from putting in the battery but that ends up being more than offset bad within the first year of typical driving and then from there on out you're just saving on emissions compared to what you would have with a gasoline car so it's really an overall win that way or another and another indirect benefit is that as we get more electric vehicles charging at night makes it easier for the electric grid to incorporate more renewable energy which is already coming online things like wind that are producing a lot at night a lot of people have evy then that's a whole bunch of storage capacity for renewable energy if that is an point gasoline is never going to be come more or less environmentally damaging but the if you're charging in the grid the grid is something that is evolving in the we are getting more and more doable on the grid so over time you're you'll have fewer and fewer carbon emissions going to cities etc you know boston etc yeah i mean it's a little bit more challenging in a more urban environment where there are a lot of tenants and multifamily buildings had to really benefits you to be able to plug your vehicle in at home  but over time i think you know cities who have aggressive climate change goals are embracing electrification of transportation you will see more adoption would you see this technology go in with the  twenty ten fifteen years or so but i think is one of the big things that's going to happen in that ten year period is you'll reach that crossover point of cost parity so you know worldwide where there aren't you know we'll need the incentives to hav parity with with gas vehicles and then they'll be a big inflection point the range will the range will be there people will learn and trust the technology and i think over time you're going to see in this twenty year period there will be start to be an inflection point where the majority of cars sold will be electric and fight it the way that they they would any progressive environmental technology but but you know at the end of the arc of history we will get there so this point any closing belmont household switching over your driving to two electricity's with the single biggest thing you can do to reduce your carbon footprint and it's such a big chunk it's about a third of the town's overall emissions so tackling vehicles is really something we need to do and it's it's an easy thing to do that because evey's are so much more efficient than than gasoline vehicles we can get a really big reduction just by changing the kind of kind of vehicle so that's one and i would say the goal of this this program is to build awareness we really want the residents to experience driving a vehicle so if you come out to one of those ride and drive events that be great even if you're not shopping for a vehicle feel free to take advantage of the home test drives we want people to be able to talk about the vehicles and to learn about how they drive but also learn about the incentives that the twenty five hundred dollars state rebate and the seventy five hundred dollars tax federal tax credit want people to know about those and be able to tell their friends and neighbors and if they run into someone who is in the market they can they can you know speak from experience about having having driven one of those cars so definitely come check out th thirty and saturday the fifteenth from two thirty to four thirty both at the belmont high school parking lot but if you if those times don't work for you as gabe said go to our website and we'll be having these come to your door test drives