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
You also literally just said you had to replace your battery, the capacity readouts the vehicles give are often not correct. It’s literally impossible for a car or phone or anything that uses rechargeable batteries to know true capacity loss without a full discharge (ie car stop/phone shuts off ect.) and is charged to 100% capacity. Unless you do that capacity lost can only be an estimate based on expectation of degradation and total usage with an added curve on boltage levels.
You had it replaced at 5 years under warranty, so it had less than 100k miles on it and you were 3 years away from having to pay out of pocket even if you managed to go the 8 year warranty without hitting the 100k mark. Your car had a $12,000 failure after just 5 years (or dangerous issue that had to warrant a new battery) but you’re defending the thing because it got replaced under a federally required warranty. Good job, my guy.
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.
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.
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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.
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.
Oh wow. I like totally forgot that everyone in the country lives in an expensive and large, dense city that they almost never have to travel outside of. Silly me.
That only works well for people in about 40 cities in the country. The average home cost in San Fran right now is $1,200,000. The average home cost in a place like Blue Springs Missouri is about $300,000. So tell you what, give me $900,000 to make up the difference and I’ll move to San Fran and stop bitching about public transport not being viable on a national level, because most of the country can’t afford to live in that type of city. Apparently unless you’re homeless. You have way more people living on the streets.
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
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 went with a plug-in hybrid and it feels like the optimal solution at this point in time. I get enough electric range to cover my commute and local driving (i.e. maybe 90%+ of my driving) and gas for when I need more range. I barely burn gasoline and the battery is on the smaller end so it didn’t take so many resources to manufacture. The downside is having the complexity of both IC and EV drivetrains within the same vehicle, but so far it’s been pretty low maintenance (about 6 years so far).
Another happy PHEV driver here. It’s really the best of both worlds as the charging infrastructure is built out and vehicle costs come down. Wife went 700 miles last fill up because she travels to the country once a week. If we stayed in the city we’d be well over 1000 miles before filling.
This is such a bone-headed approach. Averages are meaningless. People don’t have one car for short trips and a different one for long trips.
You’re worried about range but did you know that range is only a problem for 3% of the journeys you make? Just stop visiting people, going on holiday, or travelling for work and it’s fine!
OP: Your car should only get you to work and back because what else are you good for?
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.
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 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.
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Good for them. Until I can get a full charge from zero in 5 minutes, EVs are not an acceptable replacement for most people.
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Sounds good! I’ll check back with EVs in 10 years.
I drive every month over 1100km one way and then few days later back home. It’s almost impossible to do it with EV
But that makes you:
1.) not an average motorist, in no country 2.) not really the target group for current EVs
There will never be a perfect solution for everyone, but that doesn’t mean that most people couldn’t just switch to an EV without any problems at all
We have a PHEV with a paltry 26 mile range for a family of 5 but that still means we go over 700 miles on a tank before filling because my wife works 5 miles from where we live. See how we aren’t the same?
Data from thousands of EVs shows the average daily driving distance is a small percentage of the EPA range of most EVs.
It just boggles my mind that these people can’t understand that no one cares about maximum range as it pertains to their daily commutes.
Maximum range only matters when you’re traveling away from home.
Also not accounted for: the myriad of factors that affect maximum range like temperature, wind, elevation, external cargo, internal cargo weight etc. etc.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
Upton Sinclair,
Yeah. Average trips most days amounts to not needing much.
But that’s just most days. To be a replacement for a vehicle it has to also handle the rest of the days, and if it can’t, that means you’ll have to have two vehicles instead of just one, and one of them will have to be an overpriced 1,100 pound giant battery, or an ice vehicle.
In other words, saving the planet with ev’s means you’ll have to own more vehicles.
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.
What do you mean with batteries will fail?
I mean just that.
The internal chemical structure of Li-ion is only designed to work for a limited number of charge/discharge cycles. As the chemistry is stressed out, the internal metals begin to form dendrites (or in more simple terms, spikes) internally.
We have reasonable estimates for how long this takes, but everyone’s battery pack is different. And the process is invisible (you have to cut open & destroy a battery to figure out how much of these dendrites or whatever have formed). So the best we got are some computers slapped on the outside of the battery pack that measures temperature, voltage, current, and time to guestimate the effects from the outside.
As cells fail, modern BMS systems will reroute power away from degenerated cells. Its not that the problem was solved per se, its that modern battery packs have a bunch of extra cells waiting in reserve to pretend that nothing has happened to the end user. But this process eventually breaks enough cells that the whole pack fails and inevitably needs replacement.
Exactly when depends on how many cells were left in reserve, how much “fast charging” you do (which is extremely harsh on the internal chemicals), the temperature of the pack under use, and any aggressive driving you might do that heats up the pack more than usual.
Its… really complex. There’s a lot of research going on right now to try to stop these dendrites from forming.
EDIT: In any case, Consumer Reports reliability surveys on various parts of say… a Toyota Prius Prime or other PHEVs. Go look at them all, see what parts fail. Its the battery.
Here’s GM Volt. What’s the problem? Oh, the EV Battery again, and looks like the EV Charger is also terrible cause GM must have messed that up too.
But yes, its the electrical parts that are more complex and prone to failure in almost all of these cars.
Here’s Chrysler Pacifica. Oh boy, lots of parts of this vehicle is terrible. But as predicted, the EV Battery is among the worst of parts again.
If I have a 400 V 50 kWh battery and charge at 400 V 50 kW, won’t it be charging at 1 C? Like you could use the Nissan leaf as an example but it’s dishonest since it’s the worst type of battery cooling, air, which makes the cells die prematurely.
Tesla is one of the more failure prone brands. Hybrids are a bad solution since it won’t address the problem fully, and only serves to lengthen the ICE industry.
Hybrids are a bad solution since it won’t address the problem fully
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
There’s no perfection in engineering. Just a series of compromises. Anyone who is an absolutionist is going to have a bad time in engineering, policies, and politics.
Using fossil fuels in ICE is a waste of resources
… chrysler what are you doing
That Chrysler Pacifica is one of the few electrified solutions with 7 comfortable seats.
Despite that terrible reliability, its one of your best family-van options if you care about electrification at all. You just gotta grin and bear it.
You chose GM and Chrysler as your reliability targets…………
A 40mi PHEV battery is getting a lot more wear put on it from going 0-100% than a 300mi battery that’ll bounce between 50-80%
I chose Toyota first for a reason. The other two are just common PHEVs that came to my mind.
In all three cases, the Battery Pack is one of the least-reliable parts of the car. Even for notoriously unreliable cars, the worst part remains the battery.
I’m not kidding when I say that the battery pack is one of the most complex and least-understood parts of EVs, Hybrids, or PHEVs.
EDIT: Wanna go Honda? Guess what part was least reliable again.
I’m sorry but this just sounds like trying to justify a potentially already-made PHEV purchase more than anything by cherry-picking strange bits of data.
Try Hyundai or Tesla instead of picking literally the worst brands lol
Batteries are absolutely not more complex than an internal combustion car. They’re newer, but not more complex.
Why is it that all the batteries are the things that fail in these designs?
And why is it that the gasoline engine lasts for a decade or longer, with very few repair issues? In fact, when was the last time you heard of an old car where the engine needed to be replaced?
When old cars break down, its the suspensions, the belts… radiator (those things rust / break surprisingly often), etc. etc. Its not really the ICE parts that break down.
Check engine lights, oil leaks, coolant leaks transmission leaks, timing belts, timing chains, thermostats, water pumps, compression leaks, vacuum leaks, catalytic converters, oxygen sensors, ignition coils , spark plugs, spark plug wires, distributors, fuel pumps, fuel filters, fuel leaks, cracked block, thrown rod, warped crankshaft, scorn cam shaft, cam phasers, differentials, transmission problems and on… and on…
These are just SOME of the repairs that are common to ONLY gas vehicles and you won’t have any of these problems with an EV.
These are just SOME of the repairs that are common to ONLY gas vehicles and you won’t have any of these problems with an EV.
And yet…
You can theorycraft all you want. I have hard stats.
You don’t have any stats. You have a link to a consumer reports article based off a survey…
Let me show you how flawed that is:
I’m going to hold a survey of my household to see how many people say you are wrong.
The results are in! 100% of the people surveyed said you’re wrong!
Not my experience.
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.
If you took the cost of gas engine and had a bigger battery instead, you could make it home without burning gas. How often do you travel more than 250 miles round trip? For me, that’s only once or twice a year.
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.
As a model 3 owner of 5 years, your math is just wrong and charging is a minor inconvenience if you have a level 2 charger at home or work. I went the first 3 years with no home charging.
All the complexity of a gas engine, plus the cost of a battery.
We’ve been building hybrids for decades with no observable decrease in reliability.
What happens when you don’t use the gas engine for months
These operating modes are accounted for by the OEMs. They pressurize the gas tank to improve longevity. They’ll periodically enter “maintenance mode” to waste gas as necessary. Most people just drive around with a very small amount in the tank until they need it.
You’re trying to solve a problem that the article shows doesn’t exist for 99%
The article is wrong and stupid. Its most certainly exists for anyone who ever travels outside of their daily commute. Which is virtually everyone.
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.
There are thousands of every car that requires repair every year. What’s your point?
There are more parts and systems to break on a hybrid than a pure gas or pure EV.
You’re just circling back to an argument I already addressed. Come back when you have something new.
I want to buy electric when my ICE vehicles die in 10-15 years. But if I were in the market for a car today, I wouldn’t purchase electric. The fuck am I supposed to do when I visit my family 200 miles away from home? In the winter, when battery performance sucks, and with a loaded car and 4 passengers?
Stop half way, charge for thirty minutes and smell the roses? We’ve been programmed to all be type-A drivers, where the journey is just a burden. I drove 600 miles in my EV, made three stops I wouldn’t normally make along the way and saw some new places.
This is a nonstarter. Stopping for 30min to charge is not acceptable for a majority of people.
When we drive long distances, stop time is minimized. Fill up gas, while someone goes to get food while others go to the bathroom. The stop is done in under 10 min and we are in the way.
If I have to stop twice per direction, that’s an additional 40+ min on my drive. No fucking thanks.
Remember how I said we were all programmed to be type-A drivers? I rest my case.
That’s fair, but I have no desire to make the trip take longer. The trip is the price to pay for the destination. Driving sucks, so I want it to be over as fast as possible.
I get it. Some people are willing to enjoy the journey. I am not. I suspect I’m not in the minority here.
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.
In my experience, it is more like 50% of the time.
