Hancock, New York, is far from Los Angeles, California. Even more spiritually than nautically. If the electrician’s union-card-carrying regulars at our hotel bar or the down-by-the-river, ritualistic fish smoker were an indication, we were certainly not in the Golden State where last year’s competition was conducted. Yet, running our annual Performance Electric Vehicle of the Year test was easier and greener than ever, thanks to the New York Power Authority and a smattering of late August rain showers.
The fleet was bigger this year, adding an additional competitor for a total of seven, plus the reigning champion of PEVOTY 2023 and long-term tester Kia EV6 GT. Matching eight cars to eight testing editors should have been a breeze but, well, you know who laughs when we make plans. Even harsher, we weren’t simply landing at LAX, stepping into a frame-wrapped battery pack of our choice, and heading to Angeles Crest. No, we pointed our compasses over 150 miles due north from JFK, LaGuardia, and Newark, landing in the hushed Upper Delaware River region.
Associate editor Lucas Bell was the first to arrive, having made the long haul behind the wheel from Detroit, skirting two of our nation’s Great Lakes. Digital director Aaron Brown was punctual as ever in our Tesla-provided Model 3 Performance and I, associate editor Emmet White in the BMW i5 M60, wasn’t far behind, either. The rest of the crew—editor-in-chief Dan Pund, executive editor Mike Austin, editors-at-large AJ Baime and Matt Farah, and senior editor John Pearley Huffman, filed in after, bringing along the new Porsche Taycan Turbo GT, a Lucid Air Sapphire, Acura’s ZDX, the riotous Hyundai Ioniq 5 N, and Ford’s Mustang Mach-E Rally.
Compared to our slew of electrified testers, idling in a McLaren 750S represents the comparative fuel burn of a heavy Boeing 767 waiting for takeoff. The contorted and discontented act of sitting in rush hour, tri-state traffic is only balanced by knowing our EVs weren’t losing range as we hurried up to wait some more. By the time everyone arrived in Hancock, not one editor had to stop and charge out of dire necessity, even those who took lengthy detours en route. This set the tone for testing, as charging was never a major issue across the great State of New York.
Scouted days earlier by Aaron Brown, the road-test days started and ended right off of State Route 17 in Hancock, letting us run a windy reservoir loop and return back to a healthy set of EVolve NY DC Fast Chargers and Tesla Superchargers. We’d learned our lesson in trying to run cars back and forth from the charger to the testing grounds last year, so it seemed only right to be based out of a charging bank that backed up to Hancock’s city hall. Even better, all eight of the available Electrify America chargers functioned well, with the two 350-kW examples rapidly juicing our ragged testers between sessions. The eight Tesla Superchargers were in high demand, too as a parade of Models S, Y, 3 and Xs stopped to slurp. Yet, no one fought over who was next, as supply and demand were closely matched.
This glorious bank of well-maintained, gas station adjacent chargers weren’t placed in sleepy Hancock by accident. Instead, our chosen chargers were a prime example of New York State’s ongoing plan to beef up infrastructure across the sprawling state. John Markowitz, the New York Power Authority’s head of eMobility, spoke to the quality of our experience.
“This is such essential infrastructure. Like, we need to put this in, even if it’s not heavily traveled year-round. That was a strategic objective for us,” Markowitz said in a charger-side interview with Road & Track. “[Gas stations] are seeing this transition and they’re not sure they want to invest in this yet. But now there’s a state program. We’ll pay them a little money to be on their property. They’ll still sell lots of coffee.”
Known as the EVolve NY program, the state is heavily invested in activating 400 DC Fast Chargers across busy travel corridors by 2025, in part thanks to $175 million in federal funds allocated to New York from the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) Program. The state initiative was set up to cover New York from the Capitol region to the City and Long Island to Lake Eerie and, by this point, is largely in place. Adding on a four-charger bank in North Hudson and a six-port charging setup in Rensselaer earlier this summer, the New York Power Authority says it has 174 chargers statewide at 43 sites. Reliability appears to be relatively strong in New York—a maintenance technician appeared on our testing day in a Chevrolet Silverado EV to clean the charging ports. Coincidence? Maybe.
Associate editor Lucas Bell felt the difference on his trip from Michigan as he crossed into the Empire State.
“Crossing the border into New York brought some much-needed relief. The network of Electrify America units should land every 50 miles or so around major highways, ensuring you’re never too far from a fill-up,” Bell wrote in his long-term test of our Kia EV6 GT. “That sort of availability makes a huge difference to confidence levels. I stopped driving the Kia at a crawling pace and started exploring some roads away from the strict A-to-B route.”
Our test didn’t end in Hancock, however. From there, we made our way north toward New York Safety Track near Oneonta. The transit leg from Hancock to Oneonta was around 60 miles of dilapidated red barns and then dark highway miles in which charging was not a concern. Again, in giving due credit to the planning by digital director Brown, our hotel was positioned catty-corner from a set of EVolve NY and Tesla chargers, this time totaling out to six CCS-equipped plugs (four 150 kW and two 350 kW) and eight NACS plugs (all 250 kW).
The rest of our charging journey was tepid, as back-to-back nights of Buffalo Wild Wings meals across the street allowed for simultaneous grubbing and charging. Our electric vehicle test wasn’t free of the nuisances EVs provide—charging for the day ahead took up much of the previous evenings—but it wasn’t that hard. Dip your card, plug it in, and then vegetate on your phone inside. This could’ve been avoided if we had been able to leave the cars on some Level 2s at our Courtyard Marriott hotel, but unfortunately, there were none. Otherwise, the biggest drama of all came when the Porsche repeatedly refused to connect with EA and EVolve chargers, a problem Porsche PR cropped up to the car being a German market model. Eventually, the Taycan Turbo hooked up to its power source and pulled ample kilowatts.
Progress happens slower than we humans would like. Our PEVOTY misadventures were limited this year, likely a symptom of some careful planning, but we’re comfortable saying the cars and the infrastructure are better, too. That’s a relative statement in Road & Track’s year-over-year assessment, reminding us that fighting for space with residents of La Crescenta, California, is not pound-for-pound comparable with the charging population of Delaware County, New York. But it is heartening to see an electric infrastructure system done right. It is going to take some to get it absolutely right, but New York State is setting the right example.
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