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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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PAWLET — The Pawlett Historical Society and Rupert Historical Society will co-host a talk, “The Great Bennington Battle and Vermont,” with acclaimed historian Howard Coffin, at 1 p.m. on Sunday, July 5, at the Pawlet Town Hall, 122 School Street, Pawlet.
The surrender at Saratoga of a British army under John Burgoyne, now almost 250 years ago, has long been called the decisive battle of the American Revolution. But perhaps Burgoyne was doomed after the Battle of Bennington, a bloody day of fighting along the Vermont border that happened two months before Saratoga?
Coffin will discuss the history-changing Burgoyne campaign, focusing on the dramatic battle of Great Bennington—a Vermont battle as well as a New York one. He will also review heroes John Stark and Seth Warner and the Vermont Constitution, itself about to turn 250 years old.
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A seventh-generation Vermonter, Howard Coffin is the author of four books on the Civil War: “Something Abides: Discovering the Civil War in Today’s Vermont;” “Full Duty: Vermonters in the Civil War;” “Nine Months to Gettysburg; and The Battered Stars,” as well as “Guns Over the Champlain Valley,” a book on military sites along the Champlain Corridor.
This free event starts at 12 p.m. with a display of the first coinage minted in the United States, and works by noted photographers Neil Rappaport and John Pelton from our towns’ Bicentennial events in 1976. Be sure to mingle after Coffin’s presentation for an ice cream social with Stewart’s Ice Cream. This event is accessible to all, and made possible by the Vermont Humanities Speakers Bureau. For details on the event, contact Rose Smith at 802-645-0306 or roseksmith1925@gmail.com. For information on Vermont Humanities, visit vermonthumanities.org.
QUECHEE, Vt. (WCAX) – Crews worked across the White River Valley on Friday to restore power and clean up debris after two EF-1 tornadoes touched down in Vermont, including one that swept through Quechee.
Joe Haynes stared over his yard in Woodstock, with chunks of his roof scattered across it, wondering about the next steps.
Reporter Connor Ullathorne: How long will this all take to clean up?
Joe Haynes: Oh, I have no idea.
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He said he’s lucky he and his nearby neighbors are safe and are not blocked in.
“Some of the trees were down. They’ll be down for awhile but they can make their way out,” Haynes said.
Crews in Woodstock continued clearing trees and downed power lines along Route 4. That’s where Tiffany Miller was working inside the Mountain Creamery when the tornado passed right over the store. Nobody was injured, but their new walk-in storage ended up in the trees.
“It’s definitely a big setback for us. We were getting ready to have it wired up tomorrow. So I mean we definitely have a lot of elbow grease and hours to put in to get back up to where we were,” Miller said.
She said she was happy to see how many customers have checked in on them.
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“It’s nice to see that no matter what, in some bad case– storms or indifferent– that we can still come together and be there for each other,” Miller said.
Farther east in Quechee, workers hacked away at trees and swept away debris along the golf course and roads.
“It’s crazy they want to see. Everybody cares about their community and all their assets and amenities, so it’s nice to see everybody come together,” Quechee Club General Manager Brian Kelley said.
Kelley said they were out early Friday, and many residents were shocked at the damage. He’s still hopeful the area can come together and support each other.
“We normally do about 200 rounds a day going into one of our peak weekends. We’ve got the balloon festival this weekend, so we have that population in town, so a little bit of disappointment but people have been great and supportive, and we’ll be back at it tomorrow,” Kelley said.
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Kelley said it should be a few days until they are back to full force in Quechee.
Many others across the region told us they’re now focused on getting back to normal.
Click here for the latest forecast from the WCAX First Alert Weather Team.
Members of the Vermont Packing & Trading team stand with the owners of Vermont Family Farms. Photo provided
NORTH SPRINGFIELD, Vt. – For years, limited meat processing capacity in Vermont has forced many farmers to sell their livestock out of state. A recent ownership transition at a meat processing plant in North Springfield aims to change that by helping ensure locally raised meats can continue to be processed, packaged, and sold in Vermont.
The Vermont Packinghouse (VPH), located at 25 Fairbanks Road in North Springfield, was recently sold in two subsequent transactions to a new ownership group led by longtime food service and distribution leader Louis Helbling.
The 50,000-square-foot United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) facility processes and packages beef and pork from small- and medium-sized farms across New England. The sale of both the business and the building marks a new phase of growth and stability for a key regional meat processing operation that has been managed by multiple entities in recent years.
Longtime Springfield businessman Mark Curran, of Curran-Birge, purchased the former Ben & Jerry’s manufacturing plant in 2013 with the goal of easing a major bottleneck for Vermont meat producers by expanding much-needed processing capacity. Curran and his former business partner Steve Birge worked with Temple Grandin, a renowned designer of humane livestock facilities, to develop a slaughter facility that minimizes stress on the animals.
The facility was operated by Minnesota-based Lorentz Meats from 2014 to 2020, and later by Walden Local Meat Co. from 2023 to 2026. Throughout that time, Curran maintained ownership of the building, carefully stewarding an asset he believed held long-term potential for the region.
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On May 29, Curran sold the property to a new ownership group led by Helbling, a veteran of food service sales, operations, and senior management. Under the newly formed Vermont Packing & Trading, Helbling is focused on expanding market opportunities for locally grown meats while creating jobs and supporting local farms. With a passion for the food industry, Helbling was drawn to Vermont’s specialty food culture and deep agricultural heritage.
“With Louis’ decades of work in the New England food industry, there is real opportunity to open more markets for local beef and pork producers outside of Vermont,” Curran said. “Another initiative will be to retain more of Vermont’s dairy culls from leaving the state and keep more value-added processing here.”
Helbling and his team will continue to work closely with Curran, Black River Produce – a distributor with deep ties to the operation – and the owners of Walden Local Meat Co. to ensure a smooth transition of both building ownership and day-to-day operations.
“We have all worked very hard over the past six months to keep VPH open and in a position to rehire a very talented and dedicated workforce as quickly as possible,” Helbling said.
With a new management team in place, the facility is entering its next phase of operations focused on future growth.
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Upgrades to the USDA facility are already underway, alongside efforts to expand cold storage capacity to meet growing regional demand. “Adding to the existing footprint with additional freezer and cold storage will give us the capacity we need to grow as a business and add to the local workforce over the next five years,” Helbling said.
He added that he and his team will continue working with Curran to revitalize the landmark facility and restore it as a source of pride for families, employees, and local farms.
“All of us involved in this journey are excited to be working and relocating to the great State of Vermont,” Helbling said. “We are operating and moving quickly to bring business from all over the Northeast to Springfield.”
Vermont Packing & Trading was formed after the April 2026 sale of the Vermont Packinghouse business and is seeking new partners and producers across the Northeast.
