Chris Bolt

One of the winners of a business competition at the Syracuse Tech Garden is now offering Drone Pilot training that could unlock great potential in the growing industry.  Only a small part of the SkyOp course is teaching you how to fly… the bigger gain is the learning the technology’s potential.

An event that highlights 'gathering together as a community', with music and culture will fill Hanover Square in Downtown Syracuse July 28th and 28th.  The Stage of Nations Ecofest organizers hope the event is entertaining and healing. 

Several people here in Central New York who have or have had Lyme disease stood with Senator Schumer today calling for federal health officials to stop dragging their feet on help for treatment and prevention.  Martha Conan says her case went undiagnosed for a decade.

“In 2001 I started getting symptoms and I didn’t know what the heck they were.  And not until 2012 was I diagnosed with Lyme disease.  That’s how long it takes and I don’t want anyone to have to suffer like that.” 

One Syracuse mayoral candidate has a vision for the city’s west side to address poverty and improve education. Syracuse native Alfonso Davis is seeking the Democratic Party nomination.  Davis has made a priority of easing socio-economic troubles in poorer neighborhoods, coming from poverty himself.  He empathizes with frustrations people on the west side might feel.

What’s it like to drive an all-electric vehicle?  What are the impacts – positive and negative – on the environment with such vehicles?  How much does it cost…all things considered? 

WAER’s Chris Bolt had a chance to answer these questions first-hand during a test drive with a Chevrolet Bolt E-V this week.  Chris’s quest was to find out if an all-electric vehicle could be your only car.

Older all-electric vehicles seemed o-k for people with short commutes – a 40- or 50-mile total battery range was fine to get to and from work, maybe a trip to the store.  With extended range vehicles, maybe things have advanced to really fit your lifestyle…so it was time to hit the road…

One concern many people have about owning an electrical vehicle is, could it be your main or only vehicle.  And we’re going on a road trip to test that out.  Obviously the question is a bit different depending on your lifestyle.  So we have a trip planned to go to Old Forge, which is 95 miles away, and we’re leaving with an estimated charge of 240 miles on the Chevy Bolt.  This is a long-range EV, and we’re going to see just how well the mileage tacks during a trip like this.  We might be able to relieve people’s biggest concern about owning an all-electric, which is range anxiety.

The Chevy Bolt E-V I’ve been driving indicates 240 miles on a full charge…you can get a little more by using the regenerative braking, or a little less driving aggressively or uphill.   The mileage takes a hit in cold weather and when you use the heater…but there is a system that keeps the battery warm and safe in our cold winters.

So we have arrived at Old Forge and the mileage meter says we have 133 miles of charge left, after traveling the 95 miles from Syracuse.  That means we have plenty of power to get back home.  It did use up a little more of that estimated mileage than we actually traveled.  

For long-distance travel, of course you’d need to charge along the way.  During this test drive I was surprised at the time it takes to charge – you get 25 to 30 miles per hour of charging at a commercial level 2 charging station.  Level 3 chargers would give you about 160 miles of charge in an hour…but there are only a few out there.