3 ms·

As an American and a Texan, range bloat can definitely be a thing, but urban densities vary wildly in the US. My daily commute is on average ~30 miles round tri

by ajford 6y ago

As an American and a Texan, range bloat can definitely be a thing, but urban densities vary wildly in the US. My daily commute is on average ~30 miles round trip. But if I add a stop or two, that can quickly slew to 50-60 miles if I have to go downtown. And that's living relatively close to city center (~8mi outside downtown). I had a Nissan Leaf and the range anxiety was real. I actually couldn't commute to downtown for work, and settled on taking my Leaf to a nearby Park & Ride and rode commuter bus line the rest of the way. My wife drives a 2017 Volt now, and it's night & day compared to the Leaf. I'm personally ok with the trade-off of carrying a redundant power source for the convenience of never worrying about range again. Aside from a couple of months where we had an issue with our Level 2 EVSE, we primarily use the battery on it. But it is also our road-trip car, given that our other vehicle is getting towards the realm of unreliable for long-distance driving. While I wouldn't consider 200mi "local only", I would venture that anything under 100mi is, until destination charging is far more common. At least in the USA (outside the East & perhaps West coasts). Looking at multiple public charging maps, I can't get between Austin & San Antonio Texas without at least 100mi of range, and that's cutting it close. The scale difference between USA & European countries is rather large, and most people can easily lose sight of that and make statements like 100mi is easily long-distance for Europeans, when most Americans would consider 100mi to be local. I've known people who's daily commute approaches that.

WorldMaker 6y ago
> The scale difference between USA & European countries is rather large, and most people can easily lose sight of that and make statements like 100mi is easily long-distance for Europeans, when most Americans would consider 100mi to be local. I've known people who's daily commute approaches that. That's why I made sure to include the word "continental". A Nissan Leaf with 100mi/charge in Europe could start in Northern England travel down to Southern Italy (via the Chunnel and France, etc) then back up to Norway because the charging infrastructure is there (and has been built up remarkably in the last 5 years or so from maps I've seen). It might not be the most pleasant trip, but it's more than possible. Range anxiety is as much a problem of infrastructure as it is what a car is capable of on paper, and range bloat pretty much insures there's no magic mileage that an EV could get to satisfy "every buyer", but infrastructure can get there. In many cases, too, infrastructure is already there. So many Americans still hear EV mile range and assume they need to do all their charges in a "pump model". Home charging changes the equation and not enough potential EV buyers understand that yet. So many of the people wanting "300mi" or "500mi" as some magic number where they can't imagine having range anxiety don't yet have an intuition for how home charging feels.

by ajford 6y ago

WorldMaker 6y ago

> The scale difference between USA & European countries is rather large, and most people can easily lose sight of that and make statements like 100mi is easily long-distance for Europeans, when most Americans would consider 100mi to be local. I've known people who's daily commute approaches that. That's why I made sure to include the word "continental". A Nissan Leaf with 100mi/charge in Europe could start in Northern England travel down to Southern Italy (via the Chunnel and France, etc) then back up to Norway because the charging infrastructure is there (and has been built up remarkably in the last 5 years or so from maps I've seen). It might not be the most pleasant trip, but it's more than possible. Range anxiety is as much a problem of infrastructure as it is what a car is capable of on paper, and range bloat pretty much insures there's no magic mileage that an EV could get to satisfy "every buyer", but infrastructure can get there. In many cases, too, infrastructure is already there. So many Americans still hear EV mile range and assume they need to do all their charges in a "pump model". Home charging changes the equation and not enough potential EV buyers understand that yet. So many of the people wanting "300mi" or "500mi" as some magic number where they can't imagine having range anxiety don't yet have an intuition for how home charging feels.