You Need Way Less EV Range Than You Think: Study
You Need Way Less EV Range Than You Think: Study
A new study shows that EVs have more than enough range to take care of our daily driving in the U.S.
Data from thousands of EVs shows the average daily driving distance is a small percentage of the EPA range of most EVs.
For years, range anxiety has been a major barrier to wider EV adoption in the U.S. It's a common fear: imagine being in the middle of nowhere, with 5% juice remaining in your battery, and nowhere to charge. A nightmare nobody ever wants to experience, right? But a new study proves that in the real world, that's a highly improbable scenario.
After analyzing information from 18,000 EVs across all 50 U.S. states, battery health and data start-up Recurrent found something we sort of knew but took for granted. The average distance Americans cover daily constitutes only a small percentage of what EVs are capable of covering thanks to modern-day battery and powertrain systems.
The study revealed that depending on the state, the average daily driving distance for EVs was between 20 and 45 miles, consuming only 8 to 16% of a battery’s EPA-rated range. Most EVs on sale today in the U.S. offer around 250 miles of range, and many models are capable of covering over 300 miles.
I don't need a scientific study to know that most days I'd need my car for a significantly lower driving distance than the few long-range outliers.
The problem isn't a logistical of "Wow! Turns out I can commute with an EV because I don't drive 400 km to work each day! Thank you Mr. Scientist!" but a financial one. The large majority of people can afford one car, if any, and this one car has to work for everything. Do you think people are happy investing in a 20k or more EV when they still have to rent a car to visit their familiy over holidays?
If it's just for the sake of driving around town daily, EVs need to get significantly cheaper to be interesting for people with normal incomes.
These studies come from the wrong angle to convince anyone. Average isn't what people are concerned about. It's getting to grandma's house, who lives 150 miles away.
However, that isn't insurmountable, either. 250 mi range with some charging infrastructure upgrades can cover almost all of North America just fine. Yes, even when it gets cold. Plenty of EVs on the market can do this.
Get more charge stations out there, and tell the industry to stop making only $45k base price SUVs for EVs.
Data from thousands of EVs shows the average daily driving distance is a small percentage of the EPA range of most EVs.
It just boggles my mind that these people can't understand that no one cares about maximum range as it pertains to their daily commutes.
Maximum range only matters when you're traveling away from home.
Also not accounted for: the myriad of factors that affect maximum range like temperature, wind, elevation, external cargo, internal cargo weight etc. etc.
People need to seriously consider 40mi range PHEVs.
Toyota Prius Prime, Ford Escape PHEV, and others have "EV-mode" buttons that drive exclusively on electric now. Meaning you could keep the gasoline for "emergency use only", even as you enter highway speeds. (Older PHEVs would turn on the engine because they didn't have this mode-selector button).
This is such a bone-headed approach. Averages are meaningless. People don't have one car for short trips and a different one for long trips.
You're worried about range but did you know that range is only a problem for 3% of the journeys you make? Just stop visiting people, going on holiday, or travelling for work and it's fine!
Yeah. Average trips most days amounts to not needing much.
But that's just most days. To be a replacement for a vehicle it has to also handle the rest of the days, and if it can't, that means you'll have to have two vehicles instead of just one, and one of them will have to be an overpriced 1,100 pound giant battery, or an ice vehicle.
In other words, saving the planet with ev's means you'll have to own more vehicles.
OP: Your car should only get you to work and back because what else are you good for?
No I don't. I don't have a charger at my apartment and I'm not going to wait for a charge on a daily basis at a public charger for one of the more city focused EVs. I won't buy an EV that doesn't have the range of a "normal" car and I'm not alone on that.
I'm 70 miles from the slopes. There's no charging at the lots and the last thing I want to do after 6+ hours of skiing is to stop and wait for a charge on the way home. That means having to have at least 140 miles + some extra to get around done the next day before hitting up a charger.
The averages are one thing, but a car that meats an average need will have limitations on even frequently occurring exceptions. The average falls short of a round trip to the airport even. If a car can't get me to and from the airport in a single charge then I can't choose that car.
The article rightfully recognizes at the end that this really isn't an issue of reeducating the customer. This is a matter of providing a product that meets the customers expectations.
But that cross-country trip I make every few years! Am I supposed to like borrow a regular car or something?
I want to buy electric when my ICE vehicles die in 10-15 years. But if I were in the market for a car today, I wouldn’t purchase electric. The fuck am I supposed to do when I visit my family 200 miles away from home? In the winter, when battery performance sucks, and with a loaded car and 4 passengers?
I went with a plug-in hybrid and it feels like the optimal solution at this point in time. I get enough electric range to cover my commute and local driving (i.e. maybe 90%+ of my driving) and gas for when I need more range. I barely burn gasoline and the battery is on the smaller end so it didn't take so many resources to manufacture. The downside is having the complexity of both IC and EV drivetrains within the same vehicle, but so far it's been pretty low maintenance (about 6 years so far).
This study is brought to you by greedy corporations in an attempt to justify shitty products for large sums of your money.
We drove 4260km last september with a tesla model 3 standard range in 7 days. Mostly used superchargers and the car decided most of the charging stops. We had a small child with us so the car was always charged up faster than we were ready to continue the journey. We also slept in the car for 5 nights of the 6 nights.
So yeah at least in the fennoscandia area there is absolutely no point for most people to have a huge battery because charging stations are everywhere.
The car was also a joy to drive especially on the narrow and twisty Norwegian roads.
The problem is that something that works for me 90% of the time ends up completely fucking me the other 10%. That might be manageable, but the thing is that the easiest way to manage it is to just get a vehicle with more range.
No, I'm pretty sure me and most everyone else have a pretty firm grasp on how far we need to go regularly, dude bros in jacked up F350s that live in the suburbs notwithstanding..
My minimum is, using only 60% of the battery (like you're supposed to), 100 freeway miles after 10 years of ownership. I won't use it like that regularly, but car that can't go 100 miles between stops isn't worth owning.
Doing the math, that works out to about 200-250 EPA range. I'll settle for the lower side of those numbers and stress the battery on long drives, but I'd rather not.