Range anxiety is overblown. Electric vehicle owners only use 13 percent of their battery capacity a day, on average.
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Every car owner has a delusion that one terrible day a very bad thing will happen and they will drive 400 miles away from it and be saved.
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People worried about that have never actually had to evacuate.
It's not just evacuation, it's a sudden illness or death in the family that means that I have to drive 7-12 hours on very short notice, which has happened to me twice in the last 5 years. I daily drive an EV but to pretend that I don't sometimes need more range than it has and can easily compensate for (lack of charging infrastructure in rural areas, charging adding 4 hours to a 12 hour drive unless you drive a 50k+ car or a tesla) is ridiculous. Tbh I think the 260 miles of my bolt is more than enough for me if it charged like a Tesla/Hyundai and there were more chargers in West Virginia
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The website works without a login. Nevertheless, I've created a screenshot of a route from Madrid to Paris, 1260 km, with four charging stops, adjusted for a Hyundai Ioniq 6 LW AWD.
The longest charging stop takes 18 minutes.
That's pretty disingenuous, the Hyundai ionic 6 is either the second or third fastest charging (km/minute) EV on the market and costs twice as much as the most affordable non-chinese EVs. I'm an advocate for mass ev adoption, but to pretend that real issues don't exist hurts the movement. Battery capacity doesn't necessarily need to increase imo, but all cars need the charging speed of Hyundai/Tesla or better before these types of trips are reasonable.
In a 2023 Chevy Bolt here's what the same trip looks like:
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If we had a better rail system, I wouldn’t have to worry about range. I can use the city bus or bike in town but I like to travel and it’s inconvenient to have to stop at very specific refueling places for 30min to an hour and a half.
Ive had an EV for the years and recently bought a class b van for road trips. I vastly prefer charging the EV to filling gas in the van. With the van getting gas, walking my dog, and my own potty break are all serial and involve moving the van after getting gas.
With the car, I can plug in and do all the other stuff while it's charging. I have to stop roughly every 2 hours anyways.
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I am not making an account to test if this works.
You don't need an account.
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Yes but there a giant but. Yes the range is only an issue on a motorway. Yes the services are getting better fast and yes you can charge while grabbing coffee, BUT:
- the coffee breaks add up so the travel time gets significantly longer. For me it's about 30%. What was a 7h drive in a ICE car turns into 10-11h drive in an EV
- the infrastructure is not as reliable. You may get a charging station every 50 km but it's not uncommon for them to be out of order. If I see a long stretch of road with just one charger I will simply not take it. If I have to rely on a single charger when going somewhere I will definitely be anxious about it
And don't even get me started on how inaccessible the charging infrastructure is. Just managing all the apps you need to access different networks is a huge pain in the ass. Planning your trips is complicated and require yet another apps. You also need extra money to access it as it's very common for the charges to block big amounts of money to let you charge (Repsol in Spain locks 70 Euro which is insane. You can stop and buy gas for 5 Euros but if you want to charge your EV you need to have 70 Euro on your card, if you don't you're fucked).
So yeah, you and me can manage it with couple of extra coffee stops and playing around with apps but I really can't imagine older people learning this and I'm not surprised a lot of people don't want to have anything to do with it.
I used to be able to drive nonstop for a full tank of gas. I think I managed about 8 hours in my Mazda 3 once.
But these days between me and my super anxious dog, I'm stopping every two hours. By the time I put in half a tank in my van, let her go potty and then I take my break, it's often longer than I sent parallel processing with my car (EV).
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I don't drive 11h often, once/twice a year maybe, but the 30% is more or less constant for me because:
- You can't always charge 20-80. You don't just magically find a charger when the battery hits 20%. Very often I have to stop at 30% or more because I will not get to the next charger
- Often I don't sit in my car looking at the charging progress. As you said, I get out, go to a bathroom, get some coffee, eat a sandwich. It nice to have something to do during the stops. But because of this 20 min stop something changes into 30 min stop
- Often I have get off the main road to get to a charger. Sometimes I have to enter a small town. This easily ads another 5-10 min to the trip
- Very often the charger doesn't work right away. Oh, I didn't use this this app in some time. I got logged out. Ok, get the password manager... My card details changed, I have to update this. My pre-paid card is out of money, need to recharge it. Another 5-10 minutes gone. Or it's a new network and I have to register. Or something doesn't work and I have to call the help line.
On routes that I drive very often this is not an issue. I plug-in, charge for 20 min and drive on. But those are usually 1-2h trips. On long routes, far away from home something almost always will happen to add extra time to the trip.
As for reliability I always check the apps but I often plan the route 1-2 days ahead and you can't be 100% sure something will not break before you get there. In the 2+ years I was driving I saw chargers that were reporting as active that refused to charge, chargers that died right as I was charging and even the entire infra of a charging network collapse as I was about to charge (even their website went down. I called and they told me it's an outage and it will be fixed "soon").
I'm very happy with my EV. I'm just saying there are still issues with longer trips. If you don't do long trips that's awesome. If you do range anxiety is still a thing. I can deal with it but I understand people who don't want to.
What are you using for route planning? It should have had you charge 10% less at the previous stop so you'd arrive at the current stop with 20% instead of 30%.
A 20% buffer is my high end. I generally prefer at least 10% buffer but that depends on conditions, speed, etc.
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That's pretty disingenuous, the Hyundai ionic 6 is either the second or third fastest charging (km/minute) EV on the market and costs twice as much as the most affordable non-chinese EVs. I'm an advocate for mass ev adoption, but to pretend that real issues don't exist hurts the movement. Battery capacity doesn't necessarily need to increase imo, but all cars need the charging speed of Hyundai/Tesla or better before these types of trips are reasonable.
In a 2023 Chevy Bolt here's what the same trip looks like:
You're right, I picked one of the fastest charging EVs. Your example of the chevy bolt is however one of the slowest EVs in terms of charging.
But you're right, I probably should have chosen a more "average" car. 1 hour of charging for this trip is really the "best case", other EVs need 2+ hours (or 3+ hours for older models).
What's really nice about this website is that everyone can easily find out how much time charging takes for a given route and car. And that is really why I posted the link here.
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Most people drive around their city.
People don't have range anxiety about driving around their city.
It's for the few times they need to be able to depend on a car to take them to the next city.
wrote last edited by [email protected]why? it' trivially easy to know how far the other place is and the car's average consumption
You'd only be justified if you are cutting it super short but I'd assume that would be rare
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Most people drive around their city.
People don't have range anxiety about driving around their city.
It's for the few times they need to be able to depend on a car to take them to the next city.
Yeah.
I like going camping sometimes.
Or on longer road trips.
Range is an actual issue. The fact that I'm in the city MOST of the time I drive doesn't mean I'm in the city ALL the time I drive. I don't need some article telling me range anxiety is overblown when it isn't on those days.
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I've never owned an EV but have been casually considering what it would entail. Like would I really need level 2 charging at home? I'm sort of thinking not at this point. The commute for me or my wife would be something in the 20 km round trip range. We don't live in a big city. Errands could increase that somewhat. But if let's say the charger could add back even 5 km/hr, which I think is a pretty conservative estimate. That should be plenty to handle our needs with overnight charging on 120V.
As for intercity, well, you'd likely be using some public fast charger right? So that's kind of a moot point as far as what you need at home.
I don't know if I'm missing something though in this analysis? Like I've heard winter driving affects range fairly considerably. And that's unfortunately also the time I'd be more tempted to drive over riding the e-bike everywhere. But even so, I doubt I'd ever exhaust the battery in my home town?
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What are you using for route planning? It should have had you charge 10% less at the previous stop so you'd arrive at the current stop with 20% instead of 30%.
A 20% buffer is my high end. I generally prefer at least 10% buffer but that depends on conditions, speed, etc.
I just use electromaps to find the chargers. And figure out the route myself. I don't know any reliable app to plan the whole route. Can you recommend anything?
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You don’t just magically find a charger when the battery hits 20%.
That can go both ways. You can go to 10%. You should be able to pretty easily find a charger somewhere between 5-20%.
But because of this 20 min stop something changes into 30 min stop
You can't do this AND complain about how long you're stopping. Presumably you're doing this because you want to, which can be fine, sure. Your phone tells you when the charge is done. If you want to spend less time charging, just choose not to do this.
Oh, I didn’t use this this app in some time.
All of this is 100% legit. Sometimes tapping the credit card doesn't work, or you have to use their fucking app to get the discount.
I also wonder about privacy. Which ones are recording my VIN when I connect? I'd really like the option to pay cash for a charger to be normalized without the charger recording my VIN. My car should be asking me before it shares any information. I don't know if it does, and would love to hear more on this.
often plan the route 1-2 days ahead
Is this a relic? In the middle of the US, I've found charging networks to be reliable enough to not need this. I picked what should be a terrible route on google maps, Clinton, Oklahoma to Ogallala, Nebraska, an 8 hour drive. I might plan that one a little more, but you probably don't need to.
Not all of what I mentioned happens always but sometimes you have an issue with the charger, sometimes you stop for a bit longer and it all adds up. I mean, I'm not making this up. I did the same routes multiple times with my ICE and electric car and charging easily adds 20-30% to the time. With bigger autonomy it would be less of a problem (you stop for longer by less often so all the little things are a smaller problem) but I think the article is trying to prove that we don't actually need bigger batteries (and I agree that 90% of the time we don't).
As for the route planning it's definitely not easy in Spain. I think right now it kind of getting to the point were you should be able to find a charger every 50 km but only on some highways. Very often the shortest and fastest route will take me through secondary roads but there's only one charger along the route and if it's not working when I get there I'm fucked. Last time I did a longer route I got to one charger and it simply wouldn't initiate charging (the app claimed it's working). I got to the next one (again, app claimed it's active) but all the fast chargers were disabled, only the slow one was active. The third one worked. Looking at your map I can see some places were broken charger could leave me stranded so I would definitely spend some time trying to figure out alternatives. If some day the chargers will work 100% of the time it will be a different story.
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Every car owner has a delusion that one terrible day a very bad thing will happen and they will drive 400 miles away from it and be saved.
wrote last edited by [email protected]M-F I drive 20-40 miles a day, no biggie for an EV.
Weekends I may not drive at all occasionally, but more often than not I'm putting hundreds of miles on my car, sometimes over 1,000, depending on the task at hand.
I've considered getting a runabout like a Nissan leaf for weekdays, but even if it saves me 2-4$ a day m-f in fuel, the cost of the car plus the insurance premiums eat that savings up even with minimum coverage, and an old leafs sub 100 mile range will simply not suffice for my weekend adventures 3 out of 4 weeks a month, so keeping an ice with insurance would be a necessity for me.
If they come out with an affordable (sub $35k) EV that gets 400 miles on a full charge, that changes things for me.
Until that is available, ice it is for me.
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The Slate truck is probably your best bet if it comes out. It's the only modern vehicle that's claimed they won't have any tracking or privacy invasive modules installed, and just so happens to be a small, cheap, no-frills EV pick-up.
The slate is the first thing I've ever pre ordered in my life.
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The 1% trips are what people worry about, not the average trip. When you do make that dream road trip to the bckwoods...
I've considered this a bit.
I preordered the slate because I like the idea a lot. If it works well enough for most of my driving then I can rent a car for long trips and camping.
But even if I get it I think I it will be quite a while before I also get rid of my ice vehicle. The convenience of a 5 minute fuel up is just too nice.
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I just use electromaps to find the chargers. And figure out the route myself. I don't know any reliable app to plan the whole route. Can you recommend anything?
A Better Route Planner (ABRP) is generally considered the gold standard.
But that said 99% of the time I was using Tesla's chargers so there is little thinking involved. But I've white knuckled a couple of charging stops in ND, SD, MT.
Last summer i unfortunately got in an accident about 900 miles from home. When I went to pick up my car a few months later, I found out at my first charging stop that stupid Tesla disabled supercharging. Fortunately I had done the DIY upgrade to enable CCS charging and was relieved that they only disabled supercharging and not all DCFS.
I managed to get home but it was painful. 5 or 6 different charging networks all with their unique issues. I often spent more time getting a charge started than I would have spent charging on a Tesla charger.
When I got home, my local service center reenabled supercharging without having to do some HV voltage battery test at a cost of about $1600. That was not disclosed on the estimate they provided.
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why? it' trivially easy to know how far the other place is and the car's average consumption
You'd only be justified if you are cutting it super short but I'd assume that would be rare
When I'm driving across country i want to know that my car isn't going to die.
You ignoring this reasonable concern just shuts down valid criticism.
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Not all of what I mentioned happens always but sometimes you have an issue with the charger, sometimes you stop for a bit longer and it all adds up. I mean, I'm not making this up. I did the same routes multiple times with my ICE and electric car and charging easily adds 20-30% to the time. With bigger autonomy it would be less of a problem (you stop for longer by less often so all the little things are a smaller problem) but I think the article is trying to prove that we don't actually need bigger batteries (and I agree that 90% of the time we don't).
As for the route planning it's definitely not easy in Spain. I think right now it kind of getting to the point were you should be able to find a charger every 50 km but only on some highways. Very often the shortest and fastest route will take me through secondary roads but there's only one charger along the route and if it's not working when I get there I'm fucked. Last time I did a longer route I got to one charger and it simply wouldn't initiate charging (the app claimed it's working). I got to the next one (again, app claimed it's active) but all the fast chargers were disabled, only the slow one was active. The third one worked. Looking at your map I can see some places were broken charger could leave me stranded so I would definitely spend some time trying to figure out alternatives. If some day the chargers will work 100% of the time it will be a different story.
As for the route planning it’s definitely not easy in Spain.
It's getting even easier in the US with Biden's initiative to "Electrify America".
Oh wait, that's cancelled.
It's an interesting discussion, and I think all of it is valuable reading for people who might be on the fence or skeptical. And of course I'm not as familiar with Europe, but I expected you'd be farther along than Kansas when it comes to this green anything. On the other hand, our car culture in general is much larger, and highway culture in Kansas surely plays a bigger role than Spain.
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I've never owned an EV but have been casually considering what it would entail. Like would I really need level 2 charging at home? I'm sort of thinking not at this point. The commute for me or my wife would be something in the 20 km round trip range. We don't live in a big city. Errands could increase that somewhat. But if let's say the charger could add back even 5 km/hr, which I think is a pretty conservative estimate. That should be plenty to handle our needs with overnight charging on 120V.
As for intercity, well, you'd likely be using some public fast charger right? So that's kind of a moot point as far as what you need at home.
I don't know if I'm missing something though in this analysis? Like I've heard winter driving affects range fairly considerably. And that's unfortunately also the time I'd be more tempted to drive over riding the e-bike everywhere. But even so, I doubt I'd ever exhaust the battery in my home town?
I suggest this video from the youtube channel “technology connections”.
The key takeaway is that you can charge your EV with any household outlet, unless you drive a lot.
