ARTICLE: You Need Way Less Range Than You Think

[Letas]

In the Extended vs. Standard thread @JoeUser posted something that caught my eye at the time...

Here’s the nuance to that. Anyone who has already bought two EVs is a different target market than those who have not bought one yet.
It is safe to assume someone who has owned two EVs is relatively affluent, likely a homeowner/has their own charging infrastructure. That is not the same life situation as a lower income individual looking at the Slate.

 

[Letas]

Let me start by saying my earlier snark was unnecessary. I apologize for that.

I understood the headline as referring to the average person (the generic "you”), not to you personally. The article’s data and examples focus on typical daily driving patterns, the average commute, and how much range is actually used on average.

I don’t think it’s the same as saying you don’t need to buy two shoes. The author explicitly acknowledges that some people do need a larger battery, for those who drive long distances frequently, have limited charging access, or want a single vehicle that can do it all. They also note that many households have more than one vehicle, so an EV with shorter range could fill one role while a gas car covers the longer trips.

I’m genuinely curious where you feel the critical thinking or data interpretation falls short. To me, the numbers line up with what I’ve seen personally, and a large chunk of the article is quoting Recurrent’s study rather than making its own claims. I think the bigger question is whether 95% of use cases should drive design and marketing, or whether the market should keep prioritizing those what if scenarios.

I apologize for my snark too- didn’t get a good lunch

Where this falls short though - I’ll elaborate.
Average miles driven per day is not a good metric to base your needed range on, IMO. Assuming the car in question will be your primary/only vehicle. @AZFox nails it by saying it’s a great second vehicle, I agree. I’m looking at a perspective of someone who buys 20-30k cars. One car, for all their needs. I don’t think you can discuss the Slate at the mass level while ignoring that notion, especially as multi-car ownership is dropping, as well as home ownership. That’s a market you cannot afford to ignore.

Averages are great for a lot of things, but in this case you need to go deeper. Standard deviations is an easy and more accurate way to look at it. If I drive 20 MI a day to work, 5 days a week, but then every Saturday I drive 200 mi round trip, and Sunday, I watch football and park my car, I’m driving 42 miles average, but the Slate is inadequate for one trip a week.
Now obviously that’s an oversimplified example, but I think it shares the point well. You can’t “bank” unused capacity from days that fall under your average.

Maybe you visit your parents every few months. Maybe in summer you travel to two weddings. All of those add up. And I think it’s silly to ignore the restrictions imposed- they are real.

Additionally, I touched on it earlier, but the average first time homebuyer is now 38 y/o. In my experience in apartment living, EV charging infrastructure is scarce, even in a city with high adoption of EVs. Not to mention the challenges of parking a second car in an apartment.

In short- the battery range is restrictive to many buyers. And we can offer all kinds of workarounds, but they all boil down to hassles at least, inadequate at most.

Apologies if this doesn’t make sense; currently on a 250 mile drive 😂

 

[Dorbiman]

I apologize for my snark too- didn’t get a good lunch

Where this falls short though - I’ll elaborate.
Average miles driven per day is not a good metric to base your needed range on, IMO. Assuming the car in question will be your primary/only vehicle. @AZFox nails it by saying it’s a great second vehicle, I agree. I’m looking at a perspective of someone who buys 20-30k cars. One car, for all their needs. I don’t think you can discuss the Slate at the mass level while ignoring that notion, especially as multi-car ownership is dropping, as well as home ownership. That’s a market you cannot afford to ignore.

Averages are great for a lot of things, but in this case you need to go deeper. Standard deviations is an easy and more accurate way to look at it. If I drive 20 MI a day to work, 5 days a week, but then every Saturday I drive 200 mi round trip, and Sunday, I watch football and park my car, I’m driving 42 miles average, but the Slate is inadequate for one trip a week.
Now obviously that’s an oversimplified example, but I think it shares the point well. You can’t “bank” unused capacity from days that fall under your average.

Maybe you visit your parents every few months. Maybe in summer you travel to two weddings. All of those add up. And I think it’s silly to ignore the restrictions imposed- they are real.

Additionally, I touched on it earlier, but the average first time homebuyer is now 38 y/o. In my experience in apartment living, EV charging infrastructure is scarce, even in a city with high adoption of EVs. Not to mention the challenges of parking a second car in an apartment.

In short- the battery range is restrictive to many buyers. And we can offer all kinds of workarounds, but they all boil down to hassles at least, inadequate at most.

Apologies if this doesn’t make sense; currently on a 250 mile drive 😂

You offer some great points. Averages can be (and often times are) misleading.

The only thing I'll add is that chargers are ubiquitous, and more are coming online every day (and that's before even looking at what Walmart and Ionna are doing). I don't think stopping to charge for 30 minutes is a big deal, for those one or two trips per year that you need to drive 200 miles. It's easy to add that into the trip during a lunch break. I don't think having to charge mid trip is an issue unless you're planning to drive an outrageous distance on the standard size Slate battery, or if you have something like a 1st gen Chevy Bolt with 50 KW DCFC. If I can save $4000 (guesstimating) by opting for the standard size battery, so that a couple times per summer I stop for half an hour while I eat lunch, that's a no brainer.

What you said about apartment living and access to charging for non-homeowners makes perfect sense though. Pure EVs would be a hard sell for me if I was still living in an apartment and didn't have guaranteed access to a 120 outlet.

 

[cadblu]

Nice to see open apologies on the board.
Can’t we all just get along? 🙂

Thinking about our refueling behavior with conventional gasoline vehicles; we basically fall into two categories;

1- refueling when your tank is almost on empty
2- topping off when it’s convenient to do so, low price, no lines, etc.

Category 1 lifestyle people are usually pressed for time, seemingly running errands all day long. Running your tank to near empty is no big deal since fueling stations are ubiquitous.

Category 2 lifestyle people feel most confident seeing the tank at least 3/4 full.

Now ask yourself which category you fall into. How will this change with an electric vehicle?

Based on my experience, owning an ev will likely change your driving and charging habits to cat.2.

 

[KevinRS]

I agree. If your occasional trip is ~200 miles, standard battery slate is reasonable, you just charge once in the middle. If your occasional, not rare trip is 300 though, that's when you need to at least be looking at the extended battery if you don't have another transportation option.
On charging, and apartment dwellers, that's a whole separate issue. In some areas, there is a push to add charging access to apartments, but some areas there isn't. If you can't charge at home or work, and there isn't another nearby option, EVs may just not be viable for you.
Once walmart rolls out their chargers, they may be a viable option if either you live or work near one, or a ~weekly charge there would keep you going. Lots of people end up spending an hour or more at a store like that every week anyway.

 

[atx_ev]

The Extended-or-Not battery thread got me looking fairly deeply into this.

I agree with the article's title, even to the point of swinging my mind back toward choosing the Standard Battery option.

Importantly, my Truck will be a second vehicle and I can charge nightly at home. YMMV for other circumstances.

If your Truck is a second vehicle the dilemma an be reduced to a small poem.

If you need to go far,
Drive the other car.

Before someone posts a Contrarian Edge Case, I realize those exist.

TL;DR: I will need way less range capacity than I originally thought.

Im down to 6000 miles/year these days since I work at home. For family outings we take my wifes car. I going to try to go purely blank slate.

I will want a hitch (for bike rack) and a tonneau cover for secure bed storage.

she has 60 miles of PHEV range and that is enough. We actually force the car to use gas sometimes so we can turn over the tank every few months.

 

[E90400K]

Two comments.

(1) if the average car owner drives just 40 miles a day, why do ICEV have fuel tank ranges of 350 to 450 miles?

(2) looking at EV range use data by EV drivers is the wrong approach to figure out why less people are converting from ICEV to EV. The ICEV range use data should be used to determine why ICEV drivers are not converting to BEV.

 

[Dorbiman]

Im down to 6000 miles/year these days since I work at home. For family outings we take my wifes car. I going to try to go purely blank slate.

I will want a hitch (for bike rack) and a tonneau cover for secure bed storage.

she has 60 miles of PHEV range and that is enough. We actually force the car to use gas sometimes so we can turn over the tank every few months.

I was thinking about a hitch too. But I think I’ll end up putting something like this in the bed with the tailgate down

 

[Dorbiman]

Two comments.

(1) if the average car owner drives just 40 miles a day, why do ICEV have fuel tank ranges of 350 to 450 miles?

(2) looking at EV range use data by EV drivers is the wrong approach to figure out why less people are converting from ICEV to EV. The ICEV range use data should be used to determine why ICEV drivers are not converting to BEV.

The answer to your first question is because it’s easy to do so. Making a larger gas tank is trivial, so there’s no reason not to.

EVs can be plugged in every night, meaning you have a full “tank” every day. If you drive less than what you can recover each night, then max range doesn’t really matter for day to day use

 

[KevinRS]

Why do ICEV have a gas tank with 350-450 miles of range?

Because it would be a hassle to stop at a gas station every couple of days.

For most people they will charge at home nightly or as needed, so you don't need a week or more of capacity.
I get gas around every 8-9 days. I plan to plug in the slate nightly, programmed to charge when rates are lowest.

 

[atx_ev]

I apologize for my snark too- didn’t get a good lunch

Where this falls short though - I’ll elaborate.
Average miles driven per day is not a good metric to base your needed range on, IMO. Assuming the car in question will be your primary/only vehicle. @AZFox nails it by saying it’s a great second vehicle, I agree. I’m looking at a perspective of someone who buys 20-30k cars. One car, for all their needs. I don’t think you can discuss the Slate at the mass level while ignoring that notion, especially as multi-car ownership is dropping, as well as home ownership. That’s a market you cannot afford to ignore.

Averages are great for a lot of things, but in this case you need to go deeper. Standard deviations is an easy and more accurate way to look at it. If I drive 20 MI a day to work, 5 days a week, but then every Saturday I drive 200 mi round trip, and Sunday, I watch football and park my car, I’m driving 42 miles average, but the Slate is inadequate for one trip a week.
Now obviously that’s an oversimplified example, but I think it shares the point well. You can’t “bank” unused capacity from days that fall under your average.

Maybe you visit your parents every few months. Maybe in summer you travel to two weddings. All of those add up. And I think it’s silly to ignore the restrictions imposed- they are real.

Additionally, I touched on it earlier, but the average first time homebuyer is now 38 y/o. In my experience in apartment living, EV charging infrastructure is scarce, even in a city with high adoption of EVs. Not to mention the challenges of parking a second car in an apartment.

In short- the battery range is restrictive to many buyers. And we can offer all kinds of workarounds, but they all boil down to hassles at least, inadequate at most.

Apologies if this doesn’t make sense; currently on a 250 mile drive 😂

The average annual miles driven per vehicle in the US is around 12,000 miles, with a standard deviation of approximately 3,500 miles, according to information from various sources. This means that most vehicles (roughly 68%) will fall within one standard deviation of the mean, which is between 8,500 and 15,500 miles per year.

 

[atx_ev]

Two comments.

(1) if the average car owner drives just 40 miles a day, why do ICEV have fuel tank ranges of 350 to 450 miles?

(2) looking at EV range use data by EV drivers is the wrong approach to figure out why less people are converting from ICEV to EV. The ICEV range use data should be used to determine why ICEV drivers are not converting to BEV.

they are typically around 350. It is set to that so the average person has to get gas about once per week. With an EV you can charge daily.

 

[cadblu]

I don't pay attention to anyone telling me " what I need." Did you ever hear anyone complain; "gee, my house is too big, I have too many closets, too much storage....." Well you get the idea.

Why then should we accept a lower range vehicle which restricts your lifestyle? It just makes sense to opt for the larger battery. No one will ever complain "wish I got the standard range" Slate.

 

[RetiredOnPaper]

My concern is the way range is advertised. Your "new out of the box" range will not be your range in a year. certainly not your range at temperatures below 50F. Based on my Model 3; 7 year battery condition (100K Miles). Range 94% of original, Winter driving at 0°F 30 miles range decrease per 100 miles. So I would expect that the Slate under the same conditions with the Standard battery would give you about 100 miles. Also keep in mind that the charging network will be much better (more available) in 7 years. I could live with that. However, if I lived in an apartment without a reliable plug in at night option...I would go with the larger battery. Of course these are pouch batteries, and that may change to above assumptions.

 

[E90400K]

Exactly, most people are fixated on comparing the EV range to a gas car's range, even though they don't top off the gas every day or even every other day, while with the EV it's as simple as plugging in when you park, for cheap at home, or if you are lucky, for free at work.

Drivers of ICEV don't top off every day because they can recover the full fuel tank range in 5 minutes. There is no need to top off the tank. The time difference to top off the tank vs refill the tank from near empty to full is 2 minutes.

On an EV road trip the rule is stop at 20% battery SOC and recharge to 80% SOC because it's (a) best for long term battery health, (b) it's the fastest range recovery of the battery charging curve. That takes detailed planning vs. ICEV which really takes little planning other than watching the fuel gauge (or wait for the low fuel warning) and looking for a gas station.

So, given the choice based on over-the-road refueling time difference between ICEV and EV, the ICEV owner (to be converted) wants 350 miles of range from his EV when he uses it for long distance trips.

Trying to use average EV range use percentage data is pointless because EV owners either bought an EV that meets their daily use case or have accepted (or adjusted to) a limited range lifestyle. The data that needs to be analyzed is how ICEV drivers use their cars with respect to their refueling habits.