Why Range Anxiety for Electric Cars Is Overblown

[OKIsItJustMe]

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/602174/why-range-anxiety-for-electric-cars-is-overblown/

[font face=Serif][font size=5]Why Range Anxiety for Electric Cars Is Overblown[/font]

[font size=4]A new study says that today’s electric vehicles can handle almost 90 percent of all car travel in the U.S.[/font]

by Catherine Caruso | August 15, 2016

[font size=3]Electric vehicles promise to free us from our dependence on gasoline, but there’s a catch: most models can’t travel as far as their internal-combustion counterparts without recharging. As a result, whenever widespread adoption of electrics comes up, the conversation almost always turns to “range anxiety.”

New research suggests the concern is overblown. By analyzing people’s driving habits across the country, Jessika Trancik at MIT and colleagues found that currently available electric cars could replace 87 percent of the personal vehicles on the road and still get us where we need to go (and back again). Assuming battery technology improves in line with government estimates, by 2020 up to 98 percent of vehicles could be replaced.

You don’t have to pony up for a Tesla, either. In their analysis, the team used performance metrics for the Nissan Leaf, which starts around $29,000. According to the researchers, the Leaf’s range averages 74 miles per charge, which includes a buffer of 10 percent of charge left in the battery, though that depends on things like whether you often drive in heavy traffic and how hard you tend to lean on the accelerator.

…

Replacing 87 percent of vehicles with Nissan Leafs would, predictably, have a huge impact on fuel consumption. The researchers say it would slash our national gas-guzzling habit by 61 percent and have a dramatic impact on carbon emissions. If batteries improve in line with expectations laid out by the U.S. Department of Energy’s ARPA-E agency, those numbers would increase to 98 percent replacement, which would account for 88 percent of our gasoline consumption.

…[/font][/font]

[shadowmayor]

1. As my kids and their friends love to say

Duh - the whole electric cars don't have enough range BS story is weird. Most folks drive well under 100 miles round trip to work and back, and most electric cars go much farther than that on a charge. America might be the most math-challenged group of edjumacated idiots on the planet.

[stopbush]

2. My son is leasing a Fiat 500e, which is an electric car.

What doesn't ever seem to be calculated in mileage range is the fact that you use a lot of battery life by running the AC, or listening to the radio, or turning on the headlights. The mileage range on the Fiat immediately drops 10-15 miles if you use the AC. Everything electrical draws direct power from the battery. Listen to the radio AND run the AC? Your mileage range is cut by at least a third.

My son's round trip to work is 16 miles, to school, 20. His battery life rarely gets down below half as we charge the car overnight every night. But there have been times when he wished he had a hybrid car, like when our main car is in the shop (it's out if warranty, so no loaner from the non-dealership mechanic) and we need to use his car for taxi service.

What you don't have is the option to make a trip over 40 miles or more one way, because you may not have enough battery left to get home. Most drivers really don't like that lack of capacity - it cramps ones style. And - let's face it - life throws curveballs on a daily basis. The best-planned use of one's electric vehicle can come a cropper if something comes up that necessitates driving further than one had planned if there's no option to recharge.

At present, hybrids are a much better way to go. The fully electric car is a great option if it's the third car in the driveway, and a good option if it's the second. What it isn't is an option as the only car in the driveway.

[Warpy]

3. I'd definitely get a hybrid out west

where distances between towns can be enormous. While the Tesla would get me up to Taos with battery life to spare, it wouldn't get me back without a charge and there are few charging stations out here.

My electric scooter had a needle gauge to show the charge left in the batteries. None of my trips ever drained it completely, not even when I was using the headlamp. Range anxiety disappeared pretty quickly when I realized just how far a 20 mile range would get me.

[whatthehey]

4. Stop trusting the guessometer

I drove a Leaf for 2 years and I'm on my 3rd with the S. The range calculations on both are bad and that's true of all EVs if you read the forums, but the smaller batteried ones like the Leaf and no doubt 500e are truly laughable. I'd see range go from 80 miles to 65 if I accelerated quickly, then stay there for 10 miles as I drove normally. That silly double digit drop on AC is the same. Range estimates are pretty worthless. watch the bars/segments remaining and work from that. The old heaters on the original Leafs pre 2013 were indeed bad although not as bad as the GOM numbers and rarely necessary even in Midwest winters thanks to good seat heaters and steering wheel heat, but even then the AC did little to nothing, and radios/lights draw so little power basic math shows they do not affect range noticeably.

There are only two ways to know what range is in an EV. One is long experience and awareness of conditions, which gets you an estimate, and one is an OBDII dongle and a reader app.

[stopbush]

5. Last week, I had the Fiat in for recall updates on the computer.

While they were at it, they recalibrated the battery/estimated mileage indicators. The estimated miles now charges only to the low 90s, rather than around 103. Our experience with the car over the two years we've had it is to trust an 80-mile range per charge. I wouldn't push it beyond that.

Yes, the mileage estimate is pretty worthless. The battery indicator is a better guide.

We do have any number of recharging stations here in SoCal, so if you work at a place that has such a station you're in good shape. Parking garages in LA are starting to feature recharging stations as well.

[eppur_se_muova]

7. There's a third method --

run it dry.

[caraher]

10. I agree that the hybrids make more sense for current conditions

I have been impressed, however, by the range estimates my Volt displays. Evidently GM took a far more conservative approach to batteries and range estimates and it shows. I can run the air conditioning and get 40+ miles of electric range routinely vs. the "spec" of 36 miles for that generation of Volt. The estimates seem to be adaptive (I got the car used, and the estimated range on a full charge rose from what it had been under its previous owner - driving habits count!)

Living in a rural area, I can go weeks between sips of gas provided I'm just running local errands, but anytime I want to go to a real city I will burn gas (60-100 miles round-trip, typically).

[kristopher]

11. How much would you estimate the annual reduction in petroleum amounts to?

I enjoy hearing it expressed in terms of total miles per gallon of gas. I know it isn't representative of total energy used, but I see it as a good expression of how far we can move away from petroleum in personal transport..

On a separate point, the folks at FERC are pretty excited about the role of EVs in grid management and storage. The indirect benefits of EVs to the electric production sector's transition away from carbon are far greater than most realize.

[caraher]

12. Not sure for me...

The previous owners drove almost 30,000 miles in their 3 years and the Volt gives an "MPG" number that treats the electricity as "free" miles. Their average was 135 "MPG" over that time, meaning they'd used around 220 gallons of gas or about 70 per year.

If the comparison is with a 40 MPG-class vehicle, one year's driving (10,000 miles) would take 250 gallons, so the annual savings would be about 180 gallons each year

The car came from a Detroit suburb, and it's probable most of those miles came on a daily commute that was within the all-electric range. I expect that I'll be taking the occasional long trip of maybe 600 miles round-trip (maybe 3 times a year) which will entail mostly gas miles (I'm getting a bit over 40 MPG in gas mode), lots of under-20 mile trips that will use no gas, and every week or two take a 60-90 mile round-trip that will be half or more gas-powered. Since I last hit the trip odometer I'm in that same 135 "MPG" range (a smidge higher), but I suspect it will be more like 80-100 averaged over a year (I've taken no long trips since that reset).

It would have been more rational for me to get a Prius given the kind of driving I do and where I live. But it's a big improvement on my previous car (27-20 MPG) and I love the concept of the vehicle. And the Volt is evidently pretty resistant to battery "droop" - the software prevents performance-draining charge and discharge levels, and the engineers designed in a lot of thermal management features to prevent the worst of the battery performance horror stories I hear from use in extreme climates).

Of course, the biggest gains to be had are behavioral. As I told a group of high school students, a minivan getting 20 MPG with 6 passengers is getting 120 passenger-miles per gallon, so that handily beats 6 people each driving their own 50 MPG hybrid! (Not to mention walking, biking, public transport...)

[kristopher]

15. I don't know about the Prius....

We've had one for about 3 years and for us it delivers right at 50MPG consistently. I'd priced a Volt at the time, and it's final price would have been about 10% more than the Prius. I regret the decision now. With our sedentary, country-ish lifestyle I'm sure we'd very, very seldom need to visit the gas station.
Don't get me wrong though, we love the Toyota and I'd recommend it to anyone in a heartbeat. I just meandered out to Yuma Az from Delaware (5K round trip) and in addition to the mileage, the car was a real pleasure to travel in.

PS - Thanks for the intervention.

[Daemonaquila]

6. It's not, for Texans and others who live in rural areas with long commutes and frequent long travel.

I have wanted to buy an electric car. It's not even a remote possibility for me. I would have to have a very expensive electric car for short trips (30 miles each in several directions) for such things as work, grocery shopping, and so on. A shopping trip for clothes and many other things, as well as a weekly volunteer gig, is a 60 mile trip each way, plus whatever driving happens in town. I often put on 200+ miles on some of those trips. At that point, I'm looking at having to maintain a gas powered second car.

Add to it trips to multiple courtrooms 200+ miles away, sometimes multiple times per month, volunteer educational trips at least that long, and occasional trips to parents' and in-laws' homes, as well as some longer range educational trips of 1,200 miles each way, and "range anxiety" is not just a feeling, but a harsh reality.

Then there's towing. Not something that electrics excel at. Nor do they excel at going off-road into ranch land, bogs, etc.

I also was looking into getting an electric motorcycle. Those are even more useless to me except one rather expensive model I really liked but can't afford to add as a relatively local (30+ miles in any direction) runabout.

If you live in NYC or another large city and barely ever leave, you probably should consider an electric car. But for those of us who spend long hours on the road just in-state, as well as needing other capabilities, "range anxiety" should not be pooh-poohed. Paying for a 2nd or 3rd car plus maintenance and insurance adds up a lot. We need ONE car that will do it all.

[tinrobot]

8. Range anxiety stops at about 200 miles with available fast charging

My RAV4 EV can get up to 130 miles per charge and I'm good with that for 99% of my driving. But the occasional road trip requires we use the gas car.

Once you get to 200 miles with fast charging, however, that all fades away. It allows someone to easily do 400 miles in a day, and that is about as far as I would ever drive in a day before booking a flight.

The bigger battery in a 200 mile car gives also you a lot longer vehicle life. An 80 mile Leaf battery could easily lose 20% and be a 64 mile battery within five years. A 200 mile battery would still have 160 miles after that amount of loss, and it would lose capacity less quickly because the battery would not be run to empty as much.

Very much looking forward to the 200 mile Chevy Bolt, which comes out this year, and the Tesla Model 3, which is promised for next year.

[NNadir]

9. Whence is the electricity, were this fantasy actually realized, going to come?

Last edited Tue Aug 16, 2016, 08:59 PM - Edit history (1)

Let me guess. Wall sockets.

Probably in the imagination of the people embracing this fantasy, the wall sockets will all be connected to magical solar panels and wind turbines, even though, after 50 years of wishful thinking, almost none of them are.

This will mean more fracking for gas, and ultimately more digging coal.

One thing is certain, converting fossil energy go thermal energy to mechanical energy, then to electrical energy, then back to chemical energy, and finally back to mechanical energy (with similar conversions when braking) is a thermodynamic nightmare. This is a necessary function of the second law of thermodynamics, which neither Congress nor the legislature of the State of California can repeal, since everyone of this conversions involve the generation of heat, and thus entropy.

An internal combustion engine requires only the conversion of fossil energy to thermal energy to mechanical energy. This is perforce a more efficient process.

In China, electric cars have been shown to cause higher mortality - from air pollution - than gasoline engines.

Environ. Sci. Technol., 2012, 46 (4), pp 2018–2024

The only way to make electric cars be slightly less obnoxious than all other cars - although cars of all types will always be environmental nightmares as they are distributed energy writ large - is to eliminate dangerous fossil fuels as the source of primary energy.

Unfortunately the pop mentality for doing that, making "too late" even later, hasn't worked, isn't working, and won't work, even though everyone likes to lie to themselves and pretend that their electricity comes out of a wall socket attached to a wind or solar turbine, although in general it, um, doesn't. The use of fossil fuels to generate electricity in this country is rising, not falling. The wind and solar industries in their totality, built over decades of cheering, don't match the growth in the use of dangerous natural gas in the last decade.

All those fracked fields will be with every generation after us, emptied of their gas, but not the toxins left behind.

Like most of the pop "solutions" to complex problems, it amounts to a shell game that will do nothing to slow the accumulation of carbon dioxide at rates now exceeding 3.00 ppm a year.

Eliminating cars in their entirety might help, but we won't do that either. Rather we'll pretend that there is such a thing as a "green car" although this is a clear oxymoron.

Have a nice day tomorrow.

[Finishline42]

13. A useful stat in this case

A useful stat in this case would be the percentage of EV owners that also have PV installations on their homes or are part of a community solar project.

[hunter]

14. PV might better be placed at work, where the car is most days.

There's a lot of solar going up over parking lots in our city. It's nice being able to park in the shade at our local college.

Maybe employers could recharge their employees' electric cars as an employee benefit. Free charging might also be a way to attract shoppers.

Of course it would be even better if employees didn't have to drive to work, and shoppers didn't have to drive to big box stores. Cars+solar+infrastructure is expensive and only possible in a high energy industrial society, and even then the only beneficiaries are those with higher incomes.

[NNadir]

16. Not even close to useful. Throwing trillions of dollars at useless solar...

...junk has been useless, is currently useless, and will always be useless.

This is because the solar industry has been, is, and always will be useless.

The solar industry is tiny on a planetary scale, despite all the crap going around pretending that it matters. I very much doubt that it's large enough to run all the servers and computers on which people chatter to each other about how wonderful it is. It doesn't produce even two of the 570 (or more) exajoules of energy humanity consumes each year, and this comes after more than half a century of mindless cheering for it.

Actually the world will not be saved by the billion or so people who now drive in automobiles being slightly less environmentally obnoxious by putting a solar array on the roofs of their McMansions that may produce the equivalent of a few tens of gallons of gasoline in a year or so for a few decades, if that, before turning into even more electronic waste. What really matters is the billions of people who lack even a latrine. The growth in carbon dioxide on this planet is very much tied to the fact that Chinese and Indians and other people whose per capita carbon dioxide output is 1/10 of what Americans utilize have not agreed to remain desperately impoverished while bourgeois and oblivious Americans embrace their useless fantasies that somehow they'll be "green" if they drive an electric car.

The only thing that the solar industry actually produces, and the electric car industry like it, is complacency. The rate of degradation of the planetary atmosphere is rising, not falling.