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Electric cars are too expensive, some people say. Well, that may be true in some cases, especially if a customer wants a pickup truck with a big battery like a Rivian or Ford F-150 Lightning. However, for a lucky few, the price of admission to the world of electric car mobility may be substantially lower, if they happen to live in Vermont or Colorado.

Vermont has become one of the most proactive states in America when it comes to addressing the onrushing climate crisis. That’s because it has been ravaged time and time again by floods that have caused massive destruction. The Green Mountain State, unsurprisingly, has a lot of green mountains, and in between those mountains are steep valleys. Under normal conditions, when it rains in Vermont, the water runs down into those valleys and into Vermont’s rivers, which carry the water away in due course to destinations further south.

The problem is, over the past ten years or so, Vermont has experienced heavier than normal rains on a regular basis, rains so heavy that they have overwhelmed the cities and towns in the valleys below. Often, those rains are from the tail end of hurricanes that move northward, dumping their cargo of moisture as they go. A decade ago, Bill McKibben was home in Vermont when one such hurricane devastated his hometown. He wrote about how rising temperatures in the atmosphere contribute to those heavier rainfall events in his book Oil And Honey way back in 2013.

The mechanics of the problem are really quite simple. Warmer air holds more moisture than cooler air. More moisture means heavier rain. What is not so simple is reducing the human activity that increases the average temperature of the atmosphere — burning fossil fuels. One of the consequences of the floods Vermont has been experiencing lately — including earlier this year when the remnants of Hurricane Beryl dumped six inches of rain on the state in a matter of a few hours — is a sharp increase in the number of flood-damaged vehicles. Cars don’t react well to being underwater, so many of those cars have to be scrapped.

Vermont Expands Electric Car Incentives

Vermont already has one of the most aggressive programs to help residents switch to electric cars. Called Replace Your Ride, it provides up to $6,000 to EV buyers, but there is an added bonus. If the buyer trades in an existing gasoline- or diesel-powered car, there is a sweetener of an additional $5,000. Combined with a federal tax credit of up to $7,500, that allows Vermonters to knock a total of $18,500 off the price of an electric car, but there was a catch until recently.

To qualify for the $5,000 incentive for trading in a conventional car, that vehicle had to be at least 10 years old, in working condition, and currently registered and inspected. But because of the number of flood-damaged cars after Hurricane Beryl, the cars no longer need to be 10 years old. The state now says, “For Vermonters impacted by the 2024 flood events, vehicles totaled by the flooding may be scrapped, regardless of age.” The vehicles don’t have to be in working condition or even able to start, Kelley Blue Book reports.

If you want to buy a used electric car instead of a new one? Vermont still has attractive purchase incentives for those customers as well. The new car bonus doesn’t apply, of course, but the $5,000 for scrapping a flood-damaged car still does, plus low-income Vermonters may qualify for an additional $5,000 bonus when they buy a used electric car. Combine that with the federal used EV tax credit of $4,000 and the total comes to $14,000. The federal credit only applies to cars priced at $25,000 or less, so if all the criteria are met, a low-income Vermonter could be parking a $25,000 used electric car in the driveway for just $11,000.

Colorado Dealer Offers $19 A Month Lease On New Nissan LEAF

Colorado is another state that is offering aggressive incentives to people who decide to switch to an electric car. The state has adopted a number of strategies to slash its carbon emissions by 2030. Since emissions from the transportation sector are a major contributor to the state’s total emissions, Colorado has put a number of strategies in place to help get cars and trucks with lower emissions on its roads.

Those strategies are working. In the second quarter of 2024, registrations of battery electric vehicles rebounded to 16 percent of all vehicle registrations after a slight dip in the beginning of the year, according to a report from the Colorado Auto Dealers Association. Over the first half of 2024, the total electric car market share in the first half of 2024 is up nearly 5 percent from a year earlier.

Tynan’s Nissan, a dealership in Aurora, Colorado, is offering a 24 month lease on a Nissan LEAF for $19 per month after taxes and dealer fees. The customer must pay about $2,400 in sales taxes and dealer fees up front, but then the Colorado incentives plus an incentive from Xcel Energy can provide up to $8,100 in benefits. In a lease, that amount is applied to the value of the lease, not the total price of the car. “That is definitely a contributing factor to why you can get such inexpensive leases,” Matthew Groves, the CEO of the Colorado Auto Dealers Association, told Colorado Public Radio. “The flexibility is something that does not exist in other states, and that has largely been a product of our cooperation between the industry and the government.”

The $19 a month lease at Tynan’s Nissan is for a base model LEAF, which has a range of only 149 miles and the now outmoded CHAdeMO charging standard. That car may not be the first choice of many drivers, but may be ideal for some, especially when the cost of motoring is less than what a golf cart would cost.

The EV lease deal went viral online after a YouTube channel featured the special in early July, kicking off a wave of coverage on auto blogs and TikTok accounts. 184 customers have since taken advantage of the offer and 117 are waiting for more cars to arrive at the dealership. Because the Colorado electric car incentives enable dealers to structure bargains around publicly funded discounts, a wave of cheap lease deals on battery-powered cars has popped up across the state. As a result, Colorado now competes with Washington for the second highest EV market share after California. In response, carmakers and dealers have pumped cars into the state, increasing supply and cutting vehicle costs.

One of the benefits of such low-cost leases is that they allow drivers who might not otherwise try an electric car to experiment with the new technology for very little money. Perhaps they will enjoy the experience so much that when the lease is up, they will remain in the electric car camp. In that respect, these leases could prove to be a gateway to the electric car future for some Colorado drivers.

The Takeaway

What we can learn from this is that policies matter. The Nissan LEAF is enjoying a bit of a moment in Colorado because of those policies, while in Florida, Nissan dealers often don’t even mention them on their websites. Both Vermont and Colorado have dedicated themselves to policies designed to lower their carbon emissions, while many of their sister states are thumbing their noses at the specter of global heating because they prefer ideology over science. Soon we will see which strategy is better.

On July 16, Game Warden Jeremy Schmid got a call from the Stowe Police Department saying a bear had climbed a two-story deck at a condominium development near downtown and now found itself in the attic. Oh boy.

This was a new one for Schmid, even though he’s on the frontlines of human/bear conflicts in the Underhill patrol district he covers, which includes towns from Bolton to Cambridge, as well as Chittenden County and Grand Isle County when he’s needed. Game wardens, like many professions, are in short supply.

Unfortunately, bear invasions of homes are on the rise in Vermont. Jaclyn Comeau, the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department’s lead bear biologist, said in an email there have been at least 30 successful and attempted home entries by bears this year in Vermont. Ten years ago, Comeau said, there were only one to four reports a year.

Bear in the attic

When he arrived on the scene in Stowe, Schmid talked to the police officers, who confirmed the bear was still in the attic. Schmid consulted maintenance workers at the condominium to get the layout of the attic, which was empty, with only rafters and trusses and blown insulation − no people. Schmid had police evacuate the top two condo units where the bear was, as well as a neighboring unit.

“I ended up going into the attic via the condo unit where the bear was,” Schmid said.

Peeking into the pitch black attic with his flashlight, Schmid saw the bear in question lying down, facing away from him, next to the hole it had climbed through. He judged the bear to be about 175 pounds, a mature adult, based on how far apart its ears were. Schmid had no way of knowing whether the bear was male or female.

“It was warm in that attic, over 100 degrees,” Schmid said.

Schmid’s first idea was to hit the bear with a non-lethal rubber wildlife defense round, hoping it would climb down the opening it had used to reach the attic.

“That was not the case,” he said. “It ran across the attic, did a small loop and came back to where it was. I was 15 yards from it. It looked right at me.”

When all else fails, bang on the ceiling with your flashlight

Time for Plan B. Schmid decided to go into the condo directly below the bear and try to encourage it to come down by making its entrance hole larger to create an inviting exit hole.

“I was about to do it when I could hear the bear right above me, breathing,” Schmid said. “I decided not to do that.”

Instead Schmid began banging on the ceiling of the condo with his flashlight, directly below where he knew the bear was.

“I could hear it move around, getting restless,” Schmid said. “I backed up and saw paws come through the ceiling.”

That’s when Schmid started filming his video from behind the closed sliding doors of the condo. He had two maintenance people with him and told them not to move.

“Bears have keen eyesight,” Schmid said. “Us being below, even though we were inside it may have not come down.”

As the bear continued to descend, Schmid went out on the deck to make sure it got all the way to the ground. He had two Stowe police officers keeping everyone away. Once the bear hit the ground, Schmid hit it with another non-lethal rubber wildlife defense round to make sure it returned to the woods.

Of course it was a bird feeder that caused the whole mess

Why was the bear in the attic? Schmid said a bird feeder hanging from the deck ceiling was to blame, as is so often the case. Bears love bird seed and will go to great lengths to get it. Obviously.

“My thoughts on why it went into the attic are that it couldn’t comfortably reach the bird feeder from the railing so it climbed into the attic to reach down to the feeder,” Schmid said. “The feeder had gotten knocked down. I never saw it, to be honest. I learned from homeowners it was there. It was empty, supposedly.”

After the bear had safely retreated to the woods, Schmid met with maintenance workers and “folks that run the place,” to advise them to make sure all garbage and compost was secured, that everyone was locking their doors and windows, and that all bird feeders were secured and put away.

“Obviously that incident and video shows the extent of what a bear will do to gain access to a food source,” Schmid said. “My day to day is dealing with nuisance bears. The majority of these problems are human-induced, whether it’s not securing your garbage, not securing your compost, or feeding birds or other wildlife. It takes the community, and the state as a whole, to come together to try to mitigate this problem. These are all human-induced problems.”

Contact Dan D’Ambrosio at 660-1841 or ddambrosio@freepressmedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @DanDambrosioVT. 

A 23-year-old man faces a murder charge after police found his 82-year-old neighbor dead.

Darren Martell was charged on Thursday with aggravated murder in connection to the killing of Roberta Martin, according to NECN. Martell had been living next door to the victim in Enosburgh, Vermont.

Family reported Martin missing on July 17 after they went to her home to check on her, and she was not there.

Vermont State Police said Sunday that troopers found human remains in the woods near Martin’s home. An autopsy confirmed they were the 82-year-old woman, according to the report.

Police have yet to detail how the woman died.

According to the Saint Albans Messenger, authorities believe Martell broke into Martin’s residence and sexually assaulted the victim before killing her.

When her family arrived at the home, they found the air conditioning pulled out from the window and still running.

Martell was charged on Thursday while being held in jail. He had been in custody since Monday when he was arrested on a charge of lewd and lascivious conduct after police reportedly found him touching himself along the edge of a walking path near a school, according to NECN.

If convicted, Martell faces life in prison.