4 ms·

Most electric car owners never charge other than at home, while they are sleeping. The "I need to take my car across the country on a whim" theory of car owners

by jwatte 9y ago

Most electric car owners never charge other than at home, while they are sleeping. The "I need to take my car across the country on a whim" theory of car ownership isn't /actually/ a thing for most people, and "range anxiety" was engineered by the petroleum industry. Put an outlet at every parking spot for topping up while you work or shop in a more remote location, and you'll solve the problem for 95% of all urban cars. (If your commute is > 80 miles, you have a bigger problem!)

totalZero 9y ago
> "range anxiety" was engineered by the petroleum industry. Can you substantiate this claim? It seems a little Alex Jones-y without any evidence to support it. My understanding from reading the Wiki page is that this phrase popped up 20 years ago in a newspaper actually talking about a GM-made EV. Frankly the chicken-and-egg scenario between charging infrastructure buildout and EV takeup is a very well-known dynamic of the market for this technology. There was a time about ten years ago when many market participants were diving headfirst into EVs, but rapid-charging infrastructure was totally nonexistent and EVs didn't come anywhere close to the range of gas-powered cars, no matter how much you paid.
- jdietrich 9y ago
  The auto industry has spent billions of dollars promoting a completely unrealistic image of motoring. When was the last time you saw a car commercial where someone was stuck in traffic on their commute? The median car journey in the US is just over 12 miles each way. 93% of households drive less than 100 miles on any given day. Current electric cars have more than enough range for the vast majority of users the vast majority of the time, but people have been trained by marketing to place excessive weight on abnormal journeys like road trips. The majority of households have more than one car, so it would make perfect sense for them to have one electric car for routine journeys and keep an ICE car for those rare longer journeys. People who do actually take the plunge and go electric consistently report that they charge much less often than they thought they would need to, especially away from home. If we had a realistic sense of how we actually use our cars, EVs could achieve >50% market penetration without any infrastructure at all.
  - prostoalex 9y ago
    > 93% of households drive less than 100 miles on any given day. But it’s not the same 93% of households driving short trips every single day, while 7% of households drive long-haul day in and day out. I might commute to work and back for less than 100 miles every single work day. But every weekend or so I might take a longer trip - short getaway to the beach, mountains, skiing resort, wine country, theme park, national park, relative out of town - you name it. What am I supposed to do for that weekend or two? Take an Uber to Yosemite? Show up at Avis/Hertz and request to be raped on prices for a hot holiday weekend?
    - jdietrich 9y ago
      I didn't argue that all car purchases should be electric, just that a very large proportion of households could use one even without any fast-charging infrastructure. As I said, the majority of American households have more than one car. Your usage is highly atypical - most people don't actually take long road trips very often. EV technology and infrastructure might not be ready for your needs right now, but it's more than good enough to replace a huge proportion of ICE cars.
      - prostoalex 9y ago
        Yeah, that advice makes sense for a multiple-car household (that actually describes my real-life situation, although ironically I prefer my Model S over wife’s hybrid SUV for longer road trips). For single-car households people would still seek comfort in the fact that even if they have one long trip a year, they’re covered. And the costs of ownership of a compact gas/hybrid vs compact electric still lean in favor of the former.
  - gwbas1c 9y ago
    My household has an electric car in a conventional car. Your opinion is a fantasy. If there was no public charging infrastructure we would have been stranded many times. Owning an electric car oftentimes means rather extensive coordination with my wife on the one day a year where both of us need to travel a long trip. That's the one day a year that we absolutely have to have charging infrastructure. On extremely cold days in the winter my wife occasionally had to stop at a Chili's to top up on her way home. Without public charging she would have been stranded. Don't even get me started about the time that we had to move and live in a vacation rental for a week. The grounds in the outdoor outlets were faulty. Electric vehicle Chargers verify the presence of a working ground, so I had to hunt through the rental property to find the best outlet and use a long extension cord. So if you think electric vehicles will work without public charging infrastructure, you're delusional.

by jwatte 9y ago

totalZero 9y ago

> "range anxiety" was engineered by the petroleum industry. Can you substantiate this claim? It seems a little Alex Jones-y without any evidence to support it. My understanding from reading the Wiki page is that this phrase popped up 20 years ago in a newspaper actually talking about a GM-made EV. Frankly the chicken-and-egg scenario between charging infrastructure buildout and EV takeup is a very well-known dynamic of the market for this technology. There was a time about ten years ago when many market participants were diving headfirst into EVs, but rapid-charging infrastructure was totally nonexistent and EVs didn't come anywhere close to the range of gas-powered cars, no matter how much you paid.

jdietrich 9y ago
The auto industry has spent billions of dollars promoting a completely unrealistic image of motoring. When was the last time you saw a car commercial where someone was stuck in traffic on their commute? The median car journey in the US is just over 12 miles each way. 93% of households drive less than 100 miles on any given day. Current electric cars have more than enough range for the vast majority of users the vast majority of the time, but people have been trained by marketing to place excessive weight on abnormal journeys like road trips. The majority of households have more than one car, so it would make perfect sense for them to have one electric car for routine journeys and keep an ICE car for those rare longer journeys. People who do actually take the plunge and go electric consistently report that they charge much less often than they thought they would need to, especially away from home. If we had a realistic sense of how we actually use our cars, EVs could achieve >50% market penetration without any infrastructure at all.
- prostoalex 9y ago
  > 93% of households drive less than 100 miles on any given day. But it’s not the same 93% of households driving short trips every single day, while 7% of households drive long-haul day in and day out. I might commute to work and back for less than 100 miles every single work day. But every weekend or so I might take a longer trip - short getaway to the beach, mountains, skiing resort, wine country, theme park, national park, relative out of town - you name it. What am I supposed to do for that weekend or two? Take an Uber to Yosemite? Show up at Avis/Hertz and request to be raped on prices for a hot holiday weekend?
  - jdietrich 9y ago
    I didn't argue that all car purchases should be electric, just that a very large proportion of households could use one even without any fast-charging infrastructure. As I said, the majority of American households have more than one car. Your usage is highly atypical - most people don't actually take long road trips very often. EV technology and infrastructure might not be ready for your needs right now, but it's more than good enough to replace a huge proportion of ICE cars.
    - prostoalex 9y ago
      Yeah, that advice makes sense for a multiple-car household (that actually describes my real-life situation, although ironically I prefer my Model S over wife’s hybrid SUV for longer road trips). For single-car households people would still seek comfort in the fact that even if they have one long trip a year, they’re covered. And the costs of ownership of a compact gas/hybrid vs compact electric still lean in favor of the former.
- gwbas1c 9y ago
  My household has an electric car in a conventional car. Your opinion is a fantasy. If there was no public charging infrastructure we would have been stranded many times. Owning an electric car oftentimes means rather extensive coordination with my wife on the one day a year where both of us need to travel a long trip. That's the one day a year that we absolutely have to have charging infrastructure. On extremely cold days in the winter my wife occasionally had to stop at a Chili's to top up on her way home. Without public charging she would have been stranded. Don't even get me started about the time that we had to move and live in a vacation rental for a week. The grounds in the outdoor outlets were faulty. Electric vehicle Chargers verify the presence of a working ground, so I had to hunt through the rental property to find the best outlet and use a long extension cord. So if you think electric vehicles will work without public charging infrastructure, you're delusional.