I think people overestimate the importance of range. It is important, but not in the way most people probably think. Consider for example a very long road trip

I think people overestimate the importance of range. It is important, but not in the way most people probably think. Consider for example a very long road trip, such as a drive from Los Angeles to New York which is around 2800 miles. Suppose Alice has a 200 mile range EV and Bob has a 300 mile range EV. Assume their cars both charge at 300 miles/hour. What effects will the range difference have on their trips? • If DC EV charging stations are too far apart the trip might not be feasible for Alice. • Assuming DC EV stations are not too far apart for Alice, then she will have to stop to charge more often. • Assuming both start fully charged, and during the trip they drive until 10% and then charge to 80% then Alice will drive 180 miles until her first recharge, and then recharge every 140 miles. Bob will drive 270 miles until his first recharge, and then recharge every 210 miles. • Alice will have to recharge 20 times. Bob will have to recharge 13 times. That works out to be a stop about every 2 hours of driving for Alice and a stop every 3 hours of driving for Bob. OK, that is a lot more stops for Alice. But lets look at the time spent stopped rather than the number of stops. • Alice first stops with 2620 miles left to go. Her car recharges at 300 miles/hour, which means she needs 8h 44m of total charge time. • Bob first stops with 2530 miles left to go. His car recharging at 300 miles/hour needs a total charge time of 8h 26m. Let's assume the each charge stop adds 5 minutes of delay beyond the actual charging time. Alice stops 7 times more than Bob so has 35 more minutes of delay. Add that to the 18 minutes more Alice spends actually charging and we have Bob gets to New York 53 minutes ahead of Alice. Suppose Alice's car could charge faster than Bob's? Say 500 miles/hour? Then she would only spend 5h 15m charging. That's 3h 11m less charging time than Bob. She'd still have 35 minutes of delay from more frequent charging but even with that she'd beat Bob to New York by 2h 36m. This suggests that for long road trips charging rate may be more more important than range, as long as range is sufficient to let you reach DC charging stations.