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.
Basically this. My commute is a little over 40 miles. If I got a leaf (which my dad used to have, so I know it well), I could get there and back. Unless I had to make an additional stop on the way home. Or run a significant errant on my lunch break. Then it might get squiffy.
But, okay, maybe I have a spouse I can ask to run errands and stuff for me. Then I just have to worry about when its hot or cold enough I need to run the AC or heater, in which case my range goes down to 60 miles. Good thing that only happens 11 months out of the year.
Edit: I also live in an apartment. I’m sure nobody will have an issue with me throwing a cable out of my bedroom window on the second floor and snaking it across the parking lot to my car.
Don’t forget you’ll lose like 1.5% of your overall battery life like every year.
Then, don’t worry. If the battery needs replaced it will only cost you…$8,000.
My battery got replaced at 5 years old due to a warranty issue
Before that I had lost a grand total of 1.6% battery capacity, and I charged almost exclusively through fast chargers
Battery degradation is massively overexaggerated
If we built good regional/national/international transit, a lot of the longer range issues could be fixed. Some people may still need more range/more storage but high speed rail could get people farther more effeciently than their EVs and be suitable for many trips.
US transit that could efficiently take you to every city you may need to go to in the US would be absolutely insane to try and pull off. It’s great for countries the size of one or two of our states, but try to imagine what a transit network to get you from Clarksville Iowa to Clinton Missouri would actually look like. It would need to be insane.
But it’s not that insane: the key is to use each transportation for where it’s good, rather than make the same mistake we did with cars and apply it everywhere.
- we could connect probably 80% of the US population with high speed rail at a similar effort to other developed countries
- accept that personal vehicles are the best choice for a small portion of our population
Currently one of the reasons we’re stuck is one side expecting to always need a car and the other wanting to take their cars. But there’s a medium where we could all be happy, where most trips are transit and no one is left without options
China has done it pretty well, and there’s no reason we can’t too. It’s just our car and oil lobbies would rather people spend stupid amounts of money on driving everywhere than literally any other form of transit.
I live in SF and bus/train everywhere and it’s fantastic. Never have to look for parking, I get natural exercise in my daily routine through walking, and I’ll spend at absolute max $1100 a year for unlimited transit rides which might cover the insurance cost on an okay car. There’s no excuse for the shitty transit system we have in the US.
Would it make sense to rent a car for those longer journeys? I know I’m not in the wasteland of car dependency that is the US, but I don’t own a car because it would just sit around costing money 99% of the time. I rent a car for the 1%.
Edit: I don’t know what is so controversial about me saying this, this is anecdotally true for me. I didn’t say it’s fine for everyone.
Nah, renting a car on top of whatever you’re already paying for the short range car is expensive. Hundreds of dollars for even a couple of days.
Even if you only need a car for those long trips, that’s a huge expense on top of the travel costs (hotels, food on the go, gas, etc).
I’ve had to rent a car to go up to northern states to visit my or my wife’s family a few times, and it’s crazy how expensive it is. I drive a little subcompact because I actually like small cars, but you can’t pack two adults, a kid, and all their luggage into one little hatchback.
I can kinda see someone that lives with good, cheap public transport in a city saving enough on not owning a car (insurance, licensing, etc) to make it feasible if they aren’t renting more than once or twice a year, but even that can blow the balance if it’s an extended rental.
The cost of a week in another state via the rental, just for the car was more than the car payment, insurance, and approximate maintenance costs for my car for the month. Mind you, I do have a very cheap to insure car that didn’t cost much (13k), so the balance for most people isn’t as extreme.
Plus, you can’t rent without a credit card reliably, if you want to go out of state. A credit card isn’t exactly impossible for everyone, but it’s still a limiting factor for enough people that renting anything like that is impossible.
I had some wonderful experiences about rentals in Denmark. I tried both car-sharing from Copenhagen Airport, and a traditional rental out of a very small airport on a peninsula.
The car share was awesome. I got a brand-new Mercedes CLA, 200 HP petrol engine luxury coupe. I checked if I can hop over to Sweden with it, and apparently I could. The pickup was an app, I just had to call so that my account and licence was approved for driving in Denmark. Took me longer to find my way out of the garage than the whole process. It ended up costing me around 60 EUR, but if I would have brought my own car the trip would have been nearly the same, because the car share company paid the Øresund bridge toll for me.
I then got stranded later at this tiny airport in the middle of nowhere. There was a chain rental place there (maybe SIXT?), with a big friendly guy attending it. Again, took me 15 minutes from finding the office to sitting in the driver’s seat of an Opel Mokka. And I don’t have a credit card at all, and my debit card is weird because it’s a bit different from all the others in the EU on account of it being from the NL.
I am just saying this since it sounds like a PITA to rent in the US then, it’s totally different from my experience.
That said, I do rent quite a few times, but mostly car shares for small trips, mostly between big cities. Costs me 10-50 EUR a time with fuel and the insanely expensive parking included, depending on if I go between cities or not. I would need to do a lot of that for even a small car to make sense, I would need to rent a ton. I’m looking at a new job that would need me to commute internationally (admittedly it’s only 250 km) almost daily, and it still seems like a train pass makes more sense, it’s better with time, I can sleep or work while travelling, and it’s a third of the cost of even a small car.
Again, this is not bashing, just saying how different it is between over there and over here.
I think I have a similar situation personally. I can use public transportation for 90% of my travels and resort to high-speed trains or rented cars for the rest.
It works out fine, but I’d consider getting an EV just for the increased flexibility and comfort, if there would be some alternative. Which would be a simple-as-possible battery on wheels either way, but for it to be attractive as a short-range only vehicle it would has to be dirt-cheap. I’m not paying 10-15k for that, new or used.
That’s why I waited until 2019 to get an EV. If I was still married, I’d have gotten one earlier and used it strictly as a commuter. But being single, I needed at car that could also handle occasional road trips up to 12 hours or so. The Model 3 fit my needs and has been the only car I’ve driven for almost 5 years now.
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.
Bingo. We bought a PHEV with a smaller 26 mile battery because 1) that’s more than enough for our daily range, 2) when we need to travel or do a lot of errands in a day we have the range to do it, and 3) it’s much cheaper than a full EV of the same size (7-8 person vehicle).
I’m fine with an EV that only has a 100 mile range. Im just not willing to pay more that $15k for it. It obviously can be sold for that much. I don’t need a seat warmer or even powered windows, just a box with windows.
I would have seriously considered this when I was married. That’s a perfect choice for a two car family. I already had the smaller, more efficient, cheaper car for my commute, and splurged on the other car so the whole family would be comfortable on trips. Same thing.
Of course now that it’s just me, and only one car, that car has to cover almost all of my use cases.
Now that kind of thinking will get us in trouble. How will the wealthy CEOs and shareholders make money?
Honestly this would be an ideal car option. I own a hybrid now that gets between 45-50 miles with a 10 gal tank. Paid 28k total. I plan on using it as my long distance traveler and an EV as my daily driver, once prices come down.
This. Ffs why doesn’t this exist. A friend of mine bought a used Leaf. They are pretty cheap and he barely drives anywhere. Perfect for that situation.
Because the industry focused on the segment of the market that makes the best margins, not the most volume. Then they started prices at $45k, but only made five of them. All the ones you could actually buy were premium models that added at least another $20k.
A bunch of people buy them on 10 year/20% APR loans, but even that market is only so big. They’re then left with a bunch of excess stock. Headlines run about how nobody wants EVs as if the industry didn’t create this mess for themselves.
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).
All the complexity of a gas engine, plus the cost of a battery. Just so you can use the range once or twice a year? What happens when you don’t use the gas engine for months and then go to start it with gelled gas? You’re trying to solve a problem that the article shows doesn’t exist for 99%
All the complexity of a gas engine
Batteries are more complex. A 200lb battery is less complex than 1000lb or 2000lb battery.
EDIT: I’m an electrical engineer. I can prove to you the complexities of a modern EV Battery. Or do you think 400V systems composed of parallel transistors, battery-management systems, and a whole slew of literally fucking computers estimating the internal-state of the thousands of individual cells that compose a modern EV is a “simple” task?
EDIT: Do you know what kind of degrees you need to design a battery-management system? To mass produce those circuit boards? And to do it all over again 2 years from now when all the chemistries change and therefore the internal estimates of each of these cells completely and drastically changes? No? Please stop pretending that “Batteries” are simple.
Case in point: it’s the battery that will most likely fail in ALL of the discussed designs here. Why? Because chemistry is incredibly difficult and hasn’t been solved yet. I do await for the future improvements in the EV battery pack that are sure to come over the next few years and decade… But let’s not pretend that anything is done R&D yet.
The gasoline engine? Okay we’re up to Atkinson cycle so that’s a bit different but was around in the 1800s anyway. Nothing is really new or complex here. The engines mechanics were understood nearly two centuries ago.
There’s a reason why gasoline engines are so reliable, while batteries keep having faults. Complexity has a lot to do with it.
What happens when you don’t use the gas engine for months and then go to start it with gelled gas?
If only computers existed and had timers that automatically burned off stale gasoline.
Also, just fill up 2 gallons or so to minimize the stale gasoline effect. You’ll only be filling up once or twice a month with all the EV driving you’ll be doing in practice.
You’re trying to solve a problem that the article shows doesn’t exist for 99%
No. The 800+ to 1500+ extra lbs of battery you lug around with a full 300mi electric car is what’s actually being wasted in practice.
Batteries are absolutely not more complex than an internal combustion car. They’re newer, but not more complex.
Sorry, fellow me/ee, disagree on complexity, having worked directly with both. Advantage of mechanical systems: theoretically predictable action, repeated endlessly so long as torque at the tires is req’d. Reality: tolerances in various parts open over time, resulting in a nonlinear decrease in efficiency and power. A symphony of hundreds of bolted joints, springs, tappets and valves, a sum of thousands of parts dancing while a complex ECU watches over the system. A single part or joint far enough out of tolerance will cause very, very expensive damage.
Battery powered vehicles: motor has full torque at close to zero RPM, all components in the control system are solid state, and software (always updateable) handles control decisions. Electric motor has 6 to 30 parts, based on whether liquid cooled or air cooled.
Hybrids have been out for over 20 years, and this simply isn’t an issue.
Furthermore, “a problem that doesn’t exist for 99%” is false because this article is just talking about averages. When you look at the average mileage driven per state, it ranges from 9,900 miles to over 24,000 miles per year. There is no one size fits all solution. Would you rather someone drive an old Suburban 100 miles per day or a Prius prime 100 miles per day? It’s that simple. These people aren’t going to buy a BEV until the segment is nearly ubiquitous, if ever.
I think people use the gas more than twice a year. For me, the electric could suffice for weekday commutes, but weekend trips end up requiring the gas.
I have personally avoided EVs in favor of PHEVs because I think charging all the time would be a pain. EVs like Tesla claim you get like 320 miles of range, but that’s on a full battery and they recommend only charge to 80%. So it drops to 256 miles. However even that is on the high end as driving at normal highway speeds, using AC or heat, in cold weather all kill the range even further. Tesla actually got caught exaggerating the range and canceling customer appointments over the issue. So, a realistic estimate there is probably more like 175 miles left. From there you probably don’t want to risk getting stranded and would need to find a charge with no less than 25 miles left. This gives an effective range of more like 150 miles out of the claimed 320. If you’re on a road trip, stopping every 150 miles for 20-40 minutes is going to be a pain.
I went well over 200 miles on my first road trip with the Tesla … on highway, with heat, and my speed demon teen exceeding 90 mph when I wasn’t looking
If you can use a charger at home, most charging is a non-event. Plug it in when you get home and it’s just always ready to go.
I’ve only ever charged on the road once. It was 15 minutes of walking around Walmart
Once or twice a year? Do you mean daily? We have a phev Prius and it is great. It is able to run EV mode to work, but the trip home requires hybrid mode.
There are 1000s of Priuses that require repairs every year, including the batteries that also go bad. So, all of the normal gas engine maintenance, plus the risk of a battery going bad too. It’s just basic logic.
