Realistic daily range of an electric vehicle
blog.forret.com
blog.forret.com
But 115km each way (230km round trip) 5 days per week is a problem. We should not be doing this, at least not in individual cars. That electric car is still creating a lot of particulate pollution from the tires on the road, not to mention its contribution to general traffic.
The focus should be on how to reduce the commute distance (or eliminate it as often as possible), and to build/use efficient mass transit systems.
So much of our intellectual and financial energy seems to be directed toward overclocking the horse and buggy - with diminishing returns. At some point it's time to step back and rethink the greater system. (I believe that point was 20+ years ago, when it became clear that cities would continue to become the population growth centers.)
I hear this a lot, but how much pollution is it really? It surely doesn't register on any municipal particulate measurement station.
I'd like narrower lanes, bump outs raised intersections and crosswalks to slow traffic. Reduce curb cuts and driveways to cut down on conflicts - thinking Dutch style access streets and alleys that connect to the less interrupted travel lane.
The added benefit of lower speeds would make it safer for bikes and pedestrians and reduce auto crash fatalities.
Slower steady speeds would reduce stooa go, dropping noise and particulate emission from acceleration.
And brake dust, which includes a lot of metal
Also to give a personal anecdote, in my Volvo XC60 PHEV, I've just had the inspection done and after 24k miles the brake pads are 5% worn. That's insane for a 2.2 tonne SUV with 400bhp. If it wasn't a PHEV I can guarantee that the pads would be nearly worn by now.
This is not true. At least for Teslas, the brake pedal only controls the friction brakes (they are hydraulically coupled). Same with a Chevy bolt. Unsure on other EVs
Almost every other EV (and hybrid) on the market does blended regen with the brake pedal. Regen is applied when you first press on the brake pedal. As long as the pressure is mild to moderate, regen is used. If you press hard (as in emergency braking) the friction brakes are engaged. When you get below about 10mph the friction brakes are also applied as regen is minimal at that speed. The result is that these cars will do regen whether you are using one pedal driving or not and their brakes will wear much less often.
I’m not sure why Tesla doesn’t do blended regen. Early one the manufacturers didn’t have the algorithms tuned and you could feel the transitions but that has not been the case for several year. It seems that Tesla just never bothered. They seem to expect you to only use one-pedal driving and some people do.
One think to watch for if you only use one-pedal driving, your friction brake pads can get rusty from disuse. Then when you do press on the brake pedal, the brakes may grab or may not decelerate as quickly as expected. Some people find that their brake pads are actually frozen from rust and don’t work at all. It is a good idea to once in a while use those friction brakes to scrub off the surface rust.
So with regen I get variable braking, but I get a reward (more range and less brake wear) if I plan ahead enough to make it work. However if there is surprise or immediate need for more braking then the brake pedal is there. So it's pretty much the best of both worlds, once you get used to it.
I generally drive only using regen, because I can tell. If you remove the feedback it's going to be harder, especially since the level of regen available can radically differ based on temperature and level of charge.
So do you want regen to be invisible? Or do you want better range, efficiency, and brake wear?
It looks like this:
https://www.swedespeed.com/cdn-cgi/image/format=auto,onerror...
On a Tesla you just lift the throttle, and if that's not enough you are aware of it, and change your driving patterns accordingly.
With a mixed setup, how do you know when and how much the brakes are involved? Doubly so when it's too cold, or the battery is too full for regen.
Of course it's depends on how you drive, but if you are not getting 100k miles out of your brakes the problem is not the car but the driver.
This is just false. If you get 100k in your non-EV before having to replace at least your front brake pads, you must be racking up highway miles.
I can’t find an English wiki article, but here is German
It's definitely preferable to grinding brakes to slow the vehicle both because of the reduced wear/pollution and extended range gained from the small bit of charging that occurs.
EVs are a couple hundred pounds heavier in average than an equivalent ICE car. In terms of road wear, it's still a rounding error compared to industrial trucks.
Seriously, a Model 3 is ~500 lbs heavier than Honda Accord, and a Model Y is significantly heavier than a Model 3.
But to your point, a bmw 430 is also around 500 pounds heavier than a Honda Accord. Nobody sees a BMW and freaks out about tire wear. But people seem to hyperfixate on any small negative of EVs.
At the heaviest weights, yes, but the heaviest Accord weight and the lightest 430i weight are only 148 lbs apart... and the Model Y can weigh in almost 400 lbs heavier than the heaviest of 430i's.
> Nobody sees a BMW and freaks out about tire wear.
You mean, so long as it's not an EV? ;-)
Seriously, nobody freaks out about a BMW 430i's tire wear, because that of the branding of the car. It's like freaking out over coffee increasing your heart rate.
> But people seem to hyperfixate on any small negative of EVs.
We're obviously talking to different people. At least the folks I know talk about how crazy heavier cars keep getting across the board (case in point: https://www.capitalone.com/cars/learn/finding-the-right-car/...).
The non performance models are similar as well, the current BMW 3141-4023 pounds (the AWD are of course on the heavier side, and the Tesla model 3 is 3814 pounds.
That means you deal twice the damage by increasing weight by only 20%. Seems in line with electric car weight difference.
A typical garbage truck has 2 or 3 axles. Let's assume 3 to be conservative. A fully loaded garbage truck weighs around 50,000 pounds. That's 16.6k pounds per axle, vs a Tesla Y's 2.2k pounds per axle.
Doing the math, a single garbage truck does as much road wear as ~3,300 teslas.
My guesstimate is if they can increase the energy density of batteries by 30-50% the weight penalty will disappear. Some of the reduction is the weight reduction of the battery and some is due to cascading effects on the rest of the car.
Complaining about the 9000lb EV hummer makes for some great circle jerks among the demographics that hate people who drive normal hummers but the road basically doesn't care about them.
I don't personally think it's realistic to expect everybody/all people (who mainly work for a living/work hard) to ask them to give up the luxury of spending their hard earned money on being able to transport themselves (to and from their job) in something other than the comfort of their own car. I think you're suggesting "we should all be doing public transport, it's more efficient."
You aren't wrong, but there's a human/emotional element/aspect here.
A car to me is a personal, climate controlled cocoon, where I can turn on whatever music I want, have a coffee or a snack, and escape for the 30 minutes or however long it takes to reach my destination...without the chance of being bothered by anyone else, much less any of the other belligerents that you are sure to find on public transit from time to time.
I will continue to own and drive my own car for this simple fact...
In the summer bike is nice alternative, but during bad weather there's nothing comparable to the comfort of car.
Please remember not everyone lives in bay area with long commute and mild weather all year long :-)
A 15min commute as you have is a different situation (much better!). Nobody is trying to take away your car. I realize that it is often framed that way in US media, as if the options are public transport OR private cars. I have a car in the Netherlands which I use for some trips where public transport is not the better choice. But when possible, especially when going from one major city to another, public transport is such a nice luxury. (It also means I can go have fun at that late night party and never face the decision of whether to drive somewhat inebriated or not.)
But yes, if we try to complement them, not just ban, this is very reasonable. I also travel by train quite often because it's simply very convenient compared to car.
They can still crash into you. Belligerance also exist behind the wheel, and it can can kill you.
I get it might not be exactly the same, but walking/biking/Public Transiting with headphones in for a period of time is all that and more. And with the exception of a bike, you can do all of those things without having to sit in traffic...
I think GP's point is that it's more about space than about travel. Walking, or being on a public transport with headphones on, doesn't replace that - it's at most a very poor substitute.
The point is to be able to hide from other people - to have some minimum personal time, in a personal space, free from nagging and expectations of your spouse, children, friends, co-workers and bosses. Driving in a car to work enables this, because for the duration of your commute, you can ignore everyone's calls and requests guilt-free. It's the law that says you can't pick up a phone on the road. It's dangerous. You're also not driving for fun, you're driving to/from work. Nobody can have any expectations of you during that time. Yes, commute in traffic is torture. That's a feature. It gives you plausible deniability.
I may be breaking some unwritten fight club rule by spelling it out loud. Sorry. Also, I don't drive - to work or otherwise. But to the extent what I described above is a major part of car ownership, more and better public transport won't help, because it doesn't address this major part.
Long ago I briefly shared an office with an "old guy" - an expert in a particular topic which gave him more freedom to behave strangely and not get fired. His strange behavior was to spend half of his lunch hour at his desk, leaned back, mouth wide open, napping. That was traditionally not acceptable behavior in a professional environment, but he apparently decided it was for him. So he did it. While it was a bit of a shock at first to the other employees, eventually we all became accustomed to it and even kept our voices down in the hallway outside when we new it was his nap time.
The point is that we have the freedom, even if it seems scary, to make some decisions about how we want our lives and how to get the balance we need. I am only just starting to learn how to do this.
The commute drive solo time is clearly not the same quality of solo time as many other options (choose your favorite).
When I had young children and a busy house, and my normal full time job, the bathroom was my solo space. Unsurprisingly, people didn't seem too interested to come bother me when I was in there. So I would read entire books while seeking solitude. Instead, it is conceivable that I could have just gathered everyone and made some agreements about what we all need, including sometimes privacy and quiet. Granted, a toddler will not respect those agreements, but the spouse can help ensure it works most of the time.
I love your bathroom example, because it speaks to the same need as the "car commute solo space". You say:
> it is conceivable that I could have just gathered everyone and made some agreements about what we all need, including sometimes privacy and quiet
And the same is be true of me (having small children too), and of the aforementioned commuters. We could. But, for some reason, we don't. Can't explain it, but the very idea feels truly scary. That's why the comment upthread resonated so well with me - I don't drive, but I understand striving to get "solo time" in a way that doesn't have to be justified directly, but instead is a plausibly deniable side effect of some external necessity (like having to commute to work).
This would probably make some people uncomfortable, but one fantasy I can imagine which might be nice is to have private transport capsules. We could own our own capsule and decorate/style it to our liking. It has common exterior form factor, with power, plumbing, etc. connectors.
We go from home to the nearest capsule station (where ours is in automated storage). We schedule picking of the capsule so it is ready for us upon our arrival. We set the destination, hop in, and the delivery system takes us for a ride. Hell, with a nice private capsule you could sleep, watch movies, work, even have "fun" with a partner. The system (ideally) ensures you arrive at your desired capsule station end point, whereby you exit and set your storage option.
This would take more space than current public transport (a lot more!), but it would take less space than a typical individual car, not to mention less roads as the exchange systems would be optimized and operating in three dimensions.
Anything that's giving you a per-person riding experience is not going to perform as well as batching a bunch of people together for a common ride.
Distributed systems that have to coordinate multiple moving parts are more prone to breakage, and single points of failure.
Not to mention the infrastructure that's required to build millions of what it sounds like are indivdiual train cars (albeit, much smaller), and the tracks required to get people to where they're going.
You're reinventing the train, but worse there... (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvvA_GToc0M&ab_channel=AdamS...)
Better would be to make train cars with seats that have better isolation for people traveling in small groups. But honestly, I think we're overestimating the number of people that need this. And there's a small possibly they could still be serviced by a small car in a world where 80% of people are able to use other services.
I totally get this, and I was in the same situation for many years (the young children period of my life).
However, imagine that instead of a 1hr commute, the commute was 30 minutes. Now your day has 1 hour "free" that you could choose to spend doing something for yourself. Maybe it's gym time, or maybe a music practice room in a building near your office, or yoga in the garden of the office rooftop.
As I say, I did share that same feeling when I was doing the normal commute/family thing. But it still points to a problem. We should be able to find or make the time and space to have a cocoon of calm or whatever we need and still have a life+family+work. I don't think that a small side-effect of solo driving in traffic which provides something like that cocoon is at all the right way to get the life balance we need.
Societies don't need to ask citizens to choose a given mean of transport; they can route their choices them by making some means more convenient and other ones less.
Increasing car costs and reducing lanes/streets/parkings, while making the public transport more frequent/extensive/comfortable, will make citizens choose public transport (or more sustainable means) themselves.
On the other hand, when cities are developed (in certain cultures or at least areas) with private transport in mind, and it can be hard or impossible to redesign for public transport.
I'm reading that as, "we don't need to ask, we can just make them do it." Which to me is pretty arrogant.
Big eu cities are expensive to park cars. Not inexpensive. Some cities such as Stockholm are banning commuter cars.
From the US-centric view, society (or rather, energy and automotive companies and their lobbying) has made the decision to put all the focus on cars, and to even put intentional negative spin against public transport.
It seems to be slowly changing in some states or a few cities within some states. And yes, it does seem to be very different depending on which way an area leans politically. The "red" (Republican) areas are vehemently against public transport and frame it as the government trying to take away people's rights to go where they want (in their own cars).
Unfortunately for the areas trying to put energy into public transport and non-car alternatives, there is a vast amount of corporate finance and influence that works against it at all levels of govenerment.
It was never "asked" in first place; there was a large discussion on HN around the article about automakers driving the policies (https://www.vox.com/2015/1/15/7551873/jaywalking-history).
It's also not forcing anybody; it's a shift of conveniences. In a hypothetical situation with fantasy metrics, making a city 2x as comfortable for sustainable means (bikes, motorbikes, public transport) and 0.5x as comfortable for cars will not force anybody to use the former - people who love their time in the cars will still be able to.
(I stress that this applies to cities where logistics make a restructuring possible, which is not the case everywhere)
I think the answer lies in things like e-bikes, mopeds, and motorcycles. Rail as a high-speed backbone and an e-bike for last-mile sounds close to ideal - especially if I can charge the bike while on the train. Bike lanes ought to be the rule rather than the exception. Bike racks and moped/motorcycle parking spaces (ideally - again - with outlets for charging batteries) could and should be ubiquitous.
It's not about taking away people's cars, it's about making public transit so good (and building cities/neighborhoods that you don't need a car in), that you don't want to take a car, because it's less convenient.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muPcHs-E4qc&t=569s&ab_channe...
I think this quote really nails it: "A developed country is not where the poor have cars, it's where the rich use public transit"
It's also worth noting that car driving is the worst kind of positive feedback loop (not a positive thing). Cars need Parking, which makes it harder to put things close together, which makes you need to drive places to get there, which makes you need parking. And cars are much bigger than humans, so the amount of space needed for cars, also increases much bigger than it would for humans.
EVERYDAY CITY DRIVING - I drive whenever I need or want, without ever worrying about range. If I notice the expected range has dipped below ~60 miles, give or take, I plug it in at home at the end of my day. I'm delighted that I never have to go to a gas station, which reeks of all that smelly/poisonous/explosive stuff.
LONG TRIPS - I charge to 100% the night before, get on the road, and stop to charge only if/when the software tells me I should. The longest trip I've taken is ~325 miles, and it requires only one 15-20 minute stop to get 150+ miles of range at a supercharger (I grab a snack and go to the bathroom). Whenever possible, I try to stay in/go to places with destination charging, so I can plug the EV and find it fully charged by next morning.
EVs can be great if your commute is less than 30mi one way, but that doesn't make them good for road trips. At least in the US.
As for commuting, your 30 miles number is way low. Even if you accepted this article's ridiculously low 50% as true, most modern EVs (think 300 mile range) would still be fine for a commute that's 75 miles each way even with no charging at work. And that's way further than most people commute (to put it in perspective, living in Philadelphia and commuting to Manhattan would be 75 miles each way).
I personally do charge my Ioniq BEV to 100%, and I often drive it to, say, 6%. In summer, I get a range of 220km, and in winter 160-180km, depending on temperature and number of cold starts (cold starts seem to trigger a battery warm-up). SOH is still at 100% after almost 3 years.
Availability can be seen in many charge-apps miles before you get to the location, so if you see it at 75%+ capacity, select a different location.
Got into France, north of Troyes in Enyaq, last 20km in battery. Only chargers there in 30km perimeter are Freshmile 22kW chargers, which won't charge my car (can't start session, car refuses charger, tested 3 of them). Was able to save myself in local PSA dealership, which got their own charger and gave me 20km more so I can get to Troyes to Ionity charger.
What is extremely annoying is
* This is a large network, yet not compatible and there is no way to figure that out.
* The car was actually trying to lead me on those charger via its own internal navigation, so even somebody who was creating this map believed that those chargers are compatible, yet they aren't.
* I could never get into such situation with gas. In the most extreme case, I could have just use funnel to get the gas into the tank if hose would not be compatible with my car.
So the fact that there are chargers around you means nothing at all if you don't know if they are working and are compatible without your car.
It fortunately never happened to me personally.
On top of that, the "E" will mean I still have around 100 kms of range, maybe more if I start driving slowly. 6% on EV is like, 20 kms?
There's some rational logic in the article and comments but there's also some nonsense.
You can try following trucks closely on highways, the reduced drag does wonders.
If you have a Tesla, really watch that gas pedal. Strong acceleration is fun but super bad for range.
Why don’t you start with 100% if you want to go to Paris in one go?
>>Imagine your daily commute is 115 km (e.g. Roeselare-Brussel
That would be an extremely unusual commute to be doing by car in Europe, people do it but it's very rare. If you're going to be covering over 1000km a week(!!!!) Then get a good diesel, not a brand new EX90.
If I ever buy a house it'll be to actually live life in it, not to nickel-and-dime some poor college student.
I expect that you throw your old car away whenever you get a new one?
I doubt it, because
> Drive it until it’s primary worth is scrap.
But that means selling it for scrap, which is still not "throwing it away".
Besides, a car that's 30 years old is still worth more than scrap, and even then, scrapped cars are still sold for money.
So, no, there are very few people either throwing or giving their cars away after driving it for however long it lasted.
Those who buy used cars keep their cars longer, and are willing to pay more for a car they think will last longer.
Plus the other estimates are correct. The range drops if it’s too cold, or if it is too hot, or if you use any of the features that the car advertises, or if you’re driving on a freeway, or if it is a stop and go traffic, or if you gain elevation, or basically if you use your car as a car.
Don’t get me wrong, I still love my car and I would never drive an non EV again, and a non Tesla EV at the moment. But calling out the marketing bs is totally fair.
When you’re in stop and go, you actually use a lot more energy to go from 0->X but do not regenerate back enough when you come down to 0. On the other hand, maintaining a steady 25mph uses a lot less energy as compared to 0->X. Again, this is based on the Tesla energy usage data that they themselves show in car.
> The range drops if [...] you gain elevation
That's true, but unless you're driving inexorably up into the Himalayas, you're going to come down that hill. EVs have a magic trick they can play in that situation. :)
In point of fact regenerative braking makes EV's equivalent range penalty in hilly terrain much (MUCH) better than any fuel-burning vehicle.
> There are two reasons: charging performance and battery longevity. Most of the time you should only charge an EV to 80% because charging rates slow down dramatically past the 80% mark. And two, the long-term health of your vehicle’s battery pack is improved when kept below 100%. > [witricity.com](https://witricity.com/newsroom/blog/the-80-rule/)
Aren't they in the middle of outlawing them?
The freeways are clogged every morning going towards Brussels and every evening leaving Brussels.
While the sticker estimates of range are probably advertising, and the % battery to range meter you get in the app / dashboard is junk, the drive estimates are spot on.
When you enter a destination, it will tell you very precisely how much energy it will take, accounting for every current condition, including temp. This must surely be data driven because it is alarmingly good. So your day to day use will not involve these guessing games, imho
"What are you going to do if the battery runs out in the middle of nowhere?" they ask.
"The same thing you will do if you run out of gas in the middle of nowhere: Call a tow truck." I reply.
I cannot get them to understand that they're asking the wrong question. The right question is "How do you ensure that you won't unexpectedly run out of energy?"
They don't run out of gas in the middle of nowhere because gas stations are everywhere. I don't run out of energy because the car does an exquisite job of tracking and predicting energy usage, as well as helping me find charging locations. It's an alternative (and IMO better) solution to the problem of running out of energy, but too many ICE drivers cannot conceive that there even could be another solution than "gas stations everywhere."
My understanding is that the preservation of the battery is built into the charge controller and you shouldn’t have to worry about it. In other words when your car says it’s fully charged it’s only “really” charged to 80% or some other cutoff as determined by the charge controller. I don’t drive a Tesla so my only point of reference is my Fiat 500e which doesn’t have as far as I know a setting to limit battery charging to a certain percentage and I would think most consumers just plug in overnight without thought to this.
I apologize for not bringing a link but there is a beautiful story of real world range that shows that Teslas are systematically over reporting their range. It was posted recently. The author should probably read it before generalizing...
The actual range you will use day-to-day is way less. That's what I wanted to point out.
It's not a Tesla thing, it's just battery chemistry. Virtually all EVs are being sold with NMC batteries which don't like sitting at 100%. We're starting to see a few LiFePO4 cars arrive on the market, which is a heavier but much more durable chemistry. Most of those are BYD cars, with a few other Chinese brands.
Ironically the most common iron phosphate car to be seen on western roads is... a batch of chinese-made Tesla Model 3 RWD's that reached the US market last year.
The fuller the battery is, the slower it charges. 10%-80% charge often takes same or less time than the final 80%-100%, so when road tripping it makes much more sense to make a few short top-ups than wait forever for last percent to trickle-charge.
I take this to mean that the author acknowledges GAS cars are also affected by cold weather. There's just no escaping thermodynamics. It's also like pointing out GAS cars' MPG is reduced by 20%+ in cold weather. While it's true, it's like pointing out a gotcha edge case for all cars. So the conclusion can also apply the same way to GAS cars. 'Next time you estimate the mileage, take a 20% discount!'
According to energy.gov[1]:
Cold weather and winter driving conditions can significantly reduce fuel economy. Fuel economy tests show that, in city driving, a conventional gasoline car's gas mileage is roughly 15% lower at 20°F than it would be at 77°F. It can drop as much as 24% for short (3- to 4-mile) trips.
[1] https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/fuel-economy-cold-weather....
Also, survival time in a stuck ICE in Winter is much higher.
Most of the effects it describes are only in effect while the car is warming up, and given that say, engine oil typically warms up to around 70C when operating, it's hard to believe that the difference between starting at say -10C vs 20C is really going to add up for anything more than a VERY short drive (one that, if you cared about fuel economy or environmental impact, you'd probably just make on foot).
Sure, if you have electric seat warmers and the like, that could add up, but one of the "advantages" of an ICE car is their inefficiency leads to lots of waste heat, so they can keep the car cabin warm just from that, without needing to use electric heaters at all (keeping the interior cabin warm is one of the primary factors that sucks up EV range in cold weather).
That would be my point. Most of the impact on the range of EV cars in cold weather is the impact of interior heating.
What the OP also omits is that you gain range during fair weather. My Bolt EPA rating is 255 miles, but I've gotten 303 miles in the summer and as low as 191 in the winter.
Great car, good space, level 2 driver assists and very efficient which offset the slow DC charge speed. Relatively lightweight for an EV at 3800lbs as well.
> the slow DC charge speed
AFAICT this is one of the major differences between the semi-affordable EVs like ours and the Tesla/Jaguar/Audi kind. The Leaf might well be the worst in this regard TBH, but I certainly wasn't going to pay 50% more (at least) just for faster DC charging which I rarely use anyway. It's just one part of the overall experience, not worth that much to most of us.
I am an avid cyclist. When I output 200W for an hour I can go 20-30km depending on the terrain. Maybe 15 if it's steep uphill all the way. Cyclists are not very aerodynamic. They sit high and have boxy shape. A small vehicle can be much more efficient (the reason recumbents beat standard bikes on a track).
It all seems so wasteful to me. It's true sometimes you need to carry load or more people, or go to very steep uphill, or maybe sometimes you really need to go fast. In vast majority of cases though, especially inside populated areas it's one person and a short trip. You carry your 2 ton metal box with you, use 20-30x more energy than a cyclist would and take so much space traffic jams are inevitable.
True innovation those electric cars. The very definition of missing the forest for a tree.
This is the reason the best upgrade speed wise for a casual road cyclists are tight clothes. This is also the reason you could be way more efficient if you construct a tear drop shaped vehicle. Illustration from Wikipedia: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drag_coefficient
https://insideevs.com/reviews/443791/ev-range-test-results/
Here's some "winter effect" info for different models.
https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/winter-ev-range-loss
I'd take that second one with a little grain of salt, though. I know that my 2022 Nissan Leaf SV+ gets more than the 175 miles they claim for summer (as long as I keep my speed down which is another factor OP seems to ignore). Haven't really given it a real winter workout, but I'd expect that number to be a bit higher than that table's 125 too. That's a very far cry from OP's claim of only ~110 miles.
Some might try to dismiss that as anecdata, but so is OP. Claims based on their one empirical observation, failing to account for known confounders and clearly wrong for a second sample, are kind of worthless. I'm not trying to propose any grand theory like they are. Find out the right numbers for your vehicle, routes, temperatures, and driving style.
If you typically plug in at home you should always be preheating the car before going out.
Realistic daily range is a bullshit phrase that assumes you will never have access to a fast charger. I understand realistic range, e.g. you can not go as far in cold, and daily range, e.g. you need to go 230km every day. I'm calling out how a combination of the two terms somehow excludes the ability to refuel when needed on that 230km commute. If you're going to be realistic, be realistic.
But at least in the US, pretty much any new EV you can buy has a rated range of 200 miles or more. More than 100 miles of commuting per day is a lot! Also, workplace charging is becoming more of a thing, and would effectively double your range without any additional inconvenience.
Ironically, the inefficiency of ICEV engines is what makes them less variable in their range. First, you get heating for free because the engine produces an abundance of excess heat. Second, since the engines are at best 30% efficient, the effect of things like drag and grade are far less noticeable in terms of fuel consumption.
(Saying that, if gas prices are a major concern then EVs could still be the preferred choice.)
Green hydrogen will be an eventual solution for those use cases.
They really should be reporting 50% of their ranges as standard. When people get slightly better than that, they'll be pleasantly surprised and it will result in much more customer satisfaction across the board.
ALWAYS underpromise and overdeliver if you want happy customers.
not if you have customers comparing you promise to competitions promise. In this case you will never have option to deliver anything
Everyone will be all over social media with videos saying how their car was rated for 300km but they got 400km out of it and EVs will start getting very, very positive reviews.
For reference, 125 miles is about Louisville, KY to Indianapolis, IN.
With the current 800V battery tech you need to spend 20-30 minutes charging per 2-3 hours of driving. It's not as fast as a pee-in-the-bottle cannonball run, but only about 10% slower than a normal ICE car trip time.
Check out actual times with https://abetterrouteplanner.com with a fast-charging car like a recent Tesla model or Kia EV6/Ioniq 5/GV60.