A Mini E vacation

No more road rage

By FRITZ MAYER

BETHEL, NY — When Don Young pulled off Route 17 onto 17B, his car told him it had a range of only about four miles left. It concerned him because his destination was Bethel Woods, which was about 10 miles away. But his car is special. It’s an all-electric Mini E, and one of its features is that when the driver takes his foot off the accelerator, the batteries start to recharge from the momentum of the vehicle. Because of the topography of the land between Monticello and Bethel Woods, when he pulled into the parking lot, he had range of 13 miles left.

Young was in the middle of a four-day tour around New York and New Jersey, recharging his car mostly at the home of fellow Mini E travelers who are, like him, taking part in a field test of the vehicles. There are 450 people taking part in the trial, with seven of the vehicles being driven by employees of Sullivan Renaissance.

So, how did Young come to be chosen for the project? He filled out an application that was many pages long, with a wide variety of questions. After he’d been at it for 90 minutes or so, he got an error message saying that the information could not be downloaded at that time. “The screen said you have two options, you can click off and you’re out of the running, or you can wait anywhere between eight and 12 hours, and we’ll try to fix the problem,” he explained. “I said, ‘Ok, I’ll wait.’ About a minute later, a message came on that said, ‘Congratulations; you answered that question correctly.’”

He was one of thousands who applied to be part of the program, and being accepted earned him the opportunity to pay $850 per month for a lease for the vehicle. But he thinks it’s well worth the money. He doesn’t pay for gas, and because he has a solar panel at his house, he doesn’t pay for the electricity to drive the car. The Mini E company pays for any repairs and insurance.

Young, a former actor, circus clown and now a ferry boat captain on a route that runs between Shelter Island and the North Fork of Long Island, said that since he’s been driving the quiet Mini E, his road rage has disappeared. Also, he sometimes looks down on those fellow drivers who are behind the wheel of huge gas guzzlers, but he said he’s working to try to control that attitude.

He said he didn’t start out to be an electric vehicle evangelist, but he is quickly becoming one.

Young said he believes, as do many other electric car enthusiasts, that the country would have moved in the direction of electric cars much earlier had it not been for the opposition of powerful interests. Specifically, in 1996, General Motors was producing a limited number of electric cars, which were leased in California, in a program that was ultimately killed.

Several factors played a role in the demise. In one, the oil company Chevron gained a controlling interest in the company that made the batteries for the cars and, according to critics, prevented them from going to the market because electric cars would create competition for gasoline-powered ones. Ultimately, GM took back all the leased cars and destroyed them.

But now, Young predicts, there will be electric cars available to the general market in the next year or so. Among the other car companies working on electric vehicles are Ford, Nissan, Mitsubishi and Mercedes. For a look at some of those in development, go to www.hybridcars.com/electric-car.

Young said, “I think it’s going to happen; it’s the wave of the future. And to be able to help spread the word a little bit is really important.”