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.
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.
I get what you mean, but I hate to have to point out the obvious… You’re up a mountain. When you drive back down, the car is going to regenerate the energy back into the battery, you might find that you recover a considerable amount. Was amazed how much I was getting back in my ID.3 just going down some very big hills in Belgium. And 70 miles is not a lot… It’s what, 120 km? I don’t know many cars that do less than 2.5-3 times that amount, and constantly regening down means you probably get a good quarter of that back
My battery is pretty modest… 58 kWh usable, and in the warm months that’s about 4 1/2 days going round-trip between where I live to Amsterdam. Maybe 60 km round-trip. In the winter take off a day. I do not get the charge at home as I am in the apartment as well, but it is easy to find a charger at my destination and plug in there. I think you’d be surprised how little it matters about the charging.
When you drive back down, the car is going to regenerate the energy back into the battery, you might find that you recover a considerable amount.
On the flip side, going up needs additional energy to begin with, so overall it’s bound to be less efficient than its typical mileage.
Edit: Adding this - EVs have a lot more torque from the start; they can climb up a mountain more efficiently than a ICE car since the ICE car needs to race the engine harder to gain more torque, thereby using more fuel than when on flat land.
So that’s the same in both EVs and ICE cars. At least with EVs, you’ll get some of that back when you go downhill, where the gas/diesel cars just continue to burn fuel you as you go down.
Again - back to range. 70mi is nothing; most modern EVs are 200+ miles, unless you’re buy a compliance Honda E or the embarrassing Mazda MX-30. Those should have never been built.
I think the main problem with the article is that, yes, most days we only need range for short distances, that’s where those numbers come from. But occasionally we have an appointment in the next city that’s over a hundred kilometers away and we don’t have time to charge the because we need to return with the same mileage. Like if we want to visit granny in a village a few hundred kilometers away with no charging spot anyway near.
So we don’t need hundreds of kilometers of range every day. But we need it occasionally.
Good for them. Until I can get a full charge from zero in 5 minutes, EVs are not an acceptable replacement for most people.
EV driver here. I’d be happy to have a changing point available wherever I go but so far it’s been a coin flip. Either occupied, broken, torn down or a different plug type. And if I finally get one, the login and payment process is painfully bad and takes 10 to 15 minutes to get going. If it works at all.
I get shit on every fucking time I say this. Forcing people to EVs is stupid as fuck. PHEV is the sweet spot to reduce emissions.
From a use perspective, yes. But do you really want to produce and carry around all parts needed for a combustion engine when you need it 10% percent of the time? It’s like constantly driving around with a trailer attached because you might need to sleep in it three days a year.
Not really. In practice it has zero effect on my daily commute. I might lose a few kwh due to weight but it’s nearly trivial. Engine maintenance might be 1-2k over 5 years and that’s well worth the ability to drive electric 98% of the time and not having an ounce of range anxiety. Far less cumbersome than adding hours to my traveling when I need range. I believe the vast majority of Americans probably fall into this use case.
The PHEV f150 is the perfect truck for most truck owners and believing folks are going to deal with 100 miles of range just ain’t happening.
What you say is right, but I’m not only talking about enrgy consumption i use but also during production. There is a lot of stuff you dont need for a EV-only car that you have to manufacture additonally and a lot of that stuff consumes significant amounts of energy and materials.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
This study is brought to you by greedy corporations in an attempt to justify shitty products for large sums of your money.
I think owning a commuter car with shorter range and renting anytime you need longer range makes a lot of sense. I don’t know why more people don’t do it.
Because it doesn’t make sense, if a rental car is $59 a day, and you leave town one day a month, an take 1 week of vacation, that’s 18 days a year, or $1062 extra cost per year, over the life of the car that’s $10-15k so unless the commuter car is at least $10,000 cheaper it doesn’t make sense.
And if you need it more than one day a month the math falls apart really quick, 2 weekends a month is $3k a year or at least $30,000 over the life of the car.
Your selective math is not doing you any favors and I’m not sure you fully understand what I’m suggesting. Do you know what TCO is?
I actually did this for a while and it worked out well for me. My divorcemobile was a very old and very used 1st generation Prius. I rented pickup trucks for vacations. I didn’t leave town 1x/month, not sure why that is a need. But this points out that everyone has very different scenarios and needs.
More recently I’ve took a vacation by train and rented a car at my destination which worked out well.
When the day comes where we can buy econobox EVs this seems like a viable solution to me. But it does depend on a person’s transportation needs.
once a month was a conservative estimate for me, and $59 is a low end car rental, I’m living in a small town if you cant get it at Walmart or the grocery store it’s 100 miles to the nearest city. also medical resources are limited so anything more then a GP visit or an ER means the same drive.
If you have an EV and regularly rent a car for longer drives it completely eats the TCO savings of an EV. https://nickelinstitute.org/media/8d993d0fd3dfd5b/tco-north-american-automotive-final.pdf
I don’t where you live but it’s over 200 miles for me to get to a passenger rail terminal.
