Overcoming EV Range Anxiety
In recent years, the electric vehicle market has expanded to meet the needs of a much larger segment of the population. This is good news for a lot of people, but the decision to buy an electric vehicle can in many cases come down to a single issue – electric range. Nicknamed “range anxiety” or “charging anxiety” it’s the EV version of running out of gas, with the difference being you can’t just walk to the next intersection, buy a gallon of electricity, carry it back to the car, pour it in and start driving again. Still – in most cases “range anxiety” comes from old information, or in some cases, outright myths. So to help get the correct information out, we put together this guide.
Range Anxiety VS Charging Anxiety
The idea of range anxiety first arose right when mass-market EVs were first being introduced. It was a reasonable fear at the time due to limited infrastructure, but as more time passed, the reality of EV ownership has become much clearer. Range anxiety hasn’t gone away completely, but there are a number of factors that contribute to it not being nearly as big an issue as it once was. For starters, millions of EVs have been sold in the US at this point, and people simply aren’t having range issues in any significant quantity. We can see them driving around for ourselves, and see that their owners aren’t having problems getting where they’re going.
The EVs themselves have also greatly improved, with most EVs now coming with the kind of range that you used to only find on the highest-end electric cars. 300 miles on a single charge is no longer noteworthy, and it takes something more like 400 miles to stand out. You can see this even in budget EVs like the Nissan Leaf, which has more than doubled its range rating since its introduction, even for the base model. Charging infrastructure is also much more wide-spread than it used to be, with hundreds of thousands more public charging stations having been installed over just the past few years.
We now come to charging anxiety, which is related to range anxiety, but still distinct. This is the idea that, once your EV battery level does get low, you won’t be able to find a place to charge, because charging stations will be occupied, vandalized, or out of commission for some other reason. Anyone who has driven a car for any significant amount of time has encountered these kinds of problems with gas pumps, so it’s easy to see where this anxiety comes from. But like range anxiety, this is far less of a problem now compared to when EVs were new. We already mentioned the greatly expanded infrastructure, and obviously more charging stations means you’re more likely to find one that’s working and unoccupied, and makes it easier to find another one in the event that there’s something wrong with the first one.
Additionally, more chargers are DC fast chargers now too, which means that cars don’t need to sit and charge for anywhere near as long. Take the example of the Porsche Taycan, which can go from 10 to 80 percent charge in just 18 minutes. Less time at the charger means less likelihood of a charging station being occupied when you get there. Lastly, that increased range in modern EVs also means that the frequency with which people need to use public chargers has decreased, and the vast majority of EV charging can be done at home overnight.
Other Electrified Options
It’s possible that an EV still isn’t right for you, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t other ways that electrification can give you improved fuel economy and greatly improve performance. Conventional hybrids are now a tried and true alternative to an entirely gasoline-powered vehicle, and they will give you a noticeable bump in fuel economy. But an even faster-growing segment is plug-in hybrids, or PHEVs. These have a bigger battery than a conventional hybrid, so that electric power can give you even more of a boost in power and efficiency. Many models have enough battery life that day-to-day driving doesn’t need to use any gasoline at all. But since there is a gasoline engine too, even if you run out of battery charge, you’re not stranded. While a PHEV won’t completely eliminate the need to ever visit a gas station again the way an EV will, it will still make those visits a lot fewer and further between. It’s easy to understand the popularity of PHEVs.