How much range do people need before there's no longer range anxiety?
People used to complain about 200 miles not being enough then Tesla released 300 miles then they said that's not enough either.
People used to complain about 200 miles not being enough then Tesla released 300 miles then they said that's not enough either.
I don't see why gas-electric hybrids, with say, 20-50 miles of electric-only range aren't more popular. That would eliminate the vast majority of fossil fuel usage [1], and avoid this problem entirely. It also seems a lot cheaper than loading a car with hundreds of miles worth of batteries.
So EV will see mass adoption as soon as people can top up at a "charge station" in under 3 minutes and get 200+ mile range - because that's what people expect from "a car". The public doesn't care about the evolution of implementation details like gas vs electric.
The beautiful part is that once home charging is no longer required, people will be happy to charge at home! We are an adorably irrational species.
Alternatively, there is a revolutionary path: autonomous vehicles. If AI-EV offered completely hands-off transportation, no driving or maintenance required, people would happily ignore any perceived transition costs. However, this path seems unlikely in the near future.
The problem isn't that people are unhappy to charge at home now, it's that if and when I need to travel more than 200 miles without stopping at home, I need supporting infrastructure (and planning to find it) or to use another vehicle.
There probably are sockets closer, but it's not as simple as "park and charge", but either "lobby the building management and get sockets installed" or "find a hacky solution with long cables".
As best as I can tell, Priuses are essentially an incremental evolution towards this. Check out Prius Prime vs the regular Prius. I imagine the main reason it's less popular is because of the higher price but they'll probably become more popular over time as Toyota works on bringing it down.
For people who can get away with charging at home & work, it's fine. For people like me who do stuff like 170 mile trips to Tahoe often, I won't be able to have an electric car without "range anxiety" any time soon.
I don't have an electric car, so I was surprised when I recently discovered that one of the local gas station chains has an electric charging station in the rear of every one of its stations. That's probably 30-40 locations in this small city from just one outfit.
Another odd thing I see more and more of is mobile EV charging stations in strip mall parking lots. They're these long trailers topped with solar panels that show up at Target and supermarkets and stuff at the far end of the parking lot, where you can hook up your vehicle.
They seem to be itinerant, so I'm not really sure how that business model works.
The main issue is one of cost, a secondary issue is style. Tesla's are expensive, but other automakers will fill the gap, with cheaper cars. Unfortunately today all electric cars except tesla are uniformly ugly.
I think people are ready for an electric car for daily commuting, but the cars need to be in the $20K range, 200 miles, and not look like crap.
Also keep in mind it doesnt make sense to sell an existing car to buy an electric car, so there is a 8-15 year lifecycle for people to ditch their old cars.
Fact. And the reason is that many people that buy electric/hybrid cars are like vegans -- they want everyone to know about it. The Prius is a horrible monstrosity of visual appeal but it sells because people like to be seen being "better" or "more woke" than their neighbors -- while a Honda Civic hybrid looks exactly like a Honda Civic. That's the only explanation for the almost universally ugly and "distinctive" profile of electrics and hybrids. Even with other hybrids with similar specs (and less "distinctive" designs,) they didn't see anywhere near the sales numbers as the Prius. A Ford Fusion Energi can only be discerned from a normal Ford Fusion by a badge on the door, even if it gets better mileage than a Prius. But the Energi only sold about 15,000 copies in 2015, vs the Prius’ 200,000 or so.
An all-electric Suburban without adequately noticeable badging would earn the condemnation from more "enlightened" parents waiting in the school pickup line.
Tesla doesn't have to be ugly because a Tesla already looks fairly unique (although borrowing heavily from Maserati..) https://www.mikewardmaserati.com/2018-maserati-ghibli-vs-201...
so at my destination I need to account for distance back to the nearest super charger. Fortunately for me the nearest at one destination is fifty miles but another is little closer. That knocks off 100 usable miles right there. Since the recommendation is not to charge to full except on long legs of your trip that will leave me about 150 miles of local driving.
What I think is going to be fun is that we already look back at the beta generation of sub 100 mile range EVs as unacceptable and the crop of 100-150 mile range EVs will join them soon. Within 5 years or so I bet 200-250 mile range EVs will be seen as quaint at the upper price points but mainstream in the 20k price range.
However EV range increases face many hurdles. the first is range is weight. 310 mile range packs in the 3 are just shy of 1100 pounds. Charging them to full with current SC tech is still an hour. At home at 32amp it is 30 miles of range an hour and damn if that cord gets very warm. Homes can reasonably be expected to step up to 48amp but after that requires rethinking how we build homes. On the road it will require systems beyond the Tesla Supercharger system but that involves its own problems of heat.
For anyone who wants one car and does trips the require more than one charging cycle 250+ is a requirement. Also, part of range anxiety just is not the range but the time it takes to replenish that range
It isn't enough when I need to find an outlet I can use legally--which will likely be NEMA 14-50 240V, if you can find one--and then spend an hour waiting for the charge to finish for every 20 to 30 miles I drove off my range. That's 8 hours. Lengthy, but doable for overnight. But I can't wait 8 hours every time I drive 4. My modal road trip is 700 miles, with an overnight at 420 miles (or 280 on the return). The current state of electric charging stations is such that I couldn't drive that trip with just "level 2" AC outlet charging.
If it's just a 120V outlet, it'll take 2.5 days to recharge 250 miles of range. The electricity will still cost much less than gasoline, of course, but road trips in the US can easily total thousands of miles. It's a big country, with lots of highways, crappy passenger train service, and airline service with increasing numbers of drawbacks.
DC fast charger networks are an absolute requirement to combat range anxiety. It isn't just how far you can drive at once, but how long it takes to refill your range. Your range circle shrinks as you drive, and you need to recharge before it gets too small to have a charging station in it. So you can't just drive out your full range. You still have to plan your hops between charging stations, and if those are 180 miles apart, any extra range below 360 miles won't make a difference, because you couldn't skip a charging opportunity otherwise.
But it’s also about about refueling (i.e. charging). Until a spot at a supercharger is as easy to come by as a gas station wherever you go, it won’t be the same. Not to mention having to wait 30+ minutes to charge, which can add up on a road trip.
You could do your own charging at home or at work otherwise.
It also hinders innovation. You can't produce batteries with innovative new form factors because nobody will be able to change them out at standard swap stations.
Finally, consumers would object to it. If I buy a brand new Model S I don't want to go to the swap station and give away my shiny new battery for someone's degraded high-mileage one that has an unknown probability of exploding or catching fire.
What I mean is, that problem is just one of thinking of it as purchasing a battery, which you wouldn't do if swapping them was common.
The battery is probably the most expensive component in the entire car, and is ultimately a consumable. People would forever be anxious about getting swapped out with a battery with more charge cycles on it than the one they had, ultimately affecting the potential lifespan/resale of the car.
Not an insurmountable problem, but a problem that adds a fair deal of complexity to managing the inventory at the charging stations. From what I’ve read, the software on the few Teslas that used this service didn’t understand the battery had been switched at all, and continued measuring battery health as if it was still the same original battery. I certainly wouldn’t have been keen on this idea at all unless the car correctly tracked these things.
People focus on the extra time spent charging on trips (which is real but not huge) and ignore the extra time spent filling up at the local gas station every week even when you’re not taking any trips.
That's sort of where I'm ending up. Not w/ electric vehicles, but with bicycling. I bike commute year-round & use it for most of my travel, but for the rare case when I need to use my car for longer trips it's nice to have. However, paying the cost of upkeep & monthly insurance for something I use so infrequently is starting to make less sense.
Space - Rear seats have been unbolted/removed in my SUV and a roof rack added for the climbing/camping/canyoneering/safety gear I bring. Perhaps there are rental places with roof racks, I've yet to see one.
Cost - Most rental places I've checked charge > $0.50 per mile if you are out of state or over a couple hundred miles (if they allow it at all). On a 3000+ mile trip I'd have $1500 in mileage fees. Don't be fooled when they say unlimited mileage - its like unlimited data for cell phones. If anyone has experience to the contrary where it isn't prohibitively expensive for a trip this length I'd love to hear it (keeping in mind I go down rough dirt roads so SUV/truck, not passenger car).
Comfort - Custom stereo and other things that you can have in your own car but not a rental. Also my car is modified so passenger seat can lay flat allowing one person to sleep while another drives, greatly reducing travel time.
Safety - I'm very familiar with the capabilities of my vehicle when I go down some of the rougher roads, or have to get through sand. Also how far I can push when the gas tank gets low.
I'm not opposed to the idea, it's just a hard sell. I'd love to have an electric car for commuting to work and just rent a few times a year that I need something bigger.
As a cyclist, I wish more of these services (Enterprise included) would have cars with bike racks on them. Car2Go did with their Smart-car fleet, but that was phased out.
You can sort of get this through Turo, but you don't get the network benefits (one-way rentals, easy replacement, etc.).