EV Range
In the US, the average miles driven per year is 13,500 or 37 miles a day. According to the US Department of Transportation, only 0.5% of trips in the US are longer than 150 miles. What EV range would work for most folks? The average miles per year by age group is shown below:
- Age 16 to 19–7,624
- Age 20 to 34–15,098
- Age 35 to 45–15,291
- Age 55 to 64–11,972
- Over age 65–7,646
Average miles driven per year by state — CarInsurance.com
Note: Most of the examples for this discussion use Tesla as the brand has 60% share of EV market and they offer the most detail on their plans and current performance. However, all of the vendors have vowed to meet and soon exceed Tesla performance so the data will soon be commonplace.
If you purchase an EV with an effective range of 200 miles and charge at home, you could just plug in at home, go to sleep and wake up with the EV charged and ready to go. Just like you do with your cell phone. 5 seconds to plug in and you are ready to go in the morning.
Sometimes you might use a public charger, but it will be rare. For example, you take a 50-mile trip to a city, drive around a bit and for a total one way trip of about 60 miles and your estimated EV range remaining is 140 miles. Would you want to add fuel for the 50 miles journey home? Perhaps not. But if the trip was 120 miles and you had 130 miles left for the trip home, you would use a public charger.
I have owned two Tesla’s for 2 years, travel 20,000 miles a year and have used public charging 12 times. One model had 250 miles of range, the other 350. In my case 12 days out of 730 days or 1.6% of the days used a public charger. It turns out that this is more than most EV owners use public charging. Most satisfy 99% of their charging requirements by plugging in at home.
Really cold weather or really hot weather (think Canada or Norway for cold) and how you use the battery pre-conditioning will affect your actual range. So will your acceleration, the more you use the zip, the lower your range. Just like a gas vehicle. Your typical trips, occasional long trips, local weather all can determine your optimal EPA range. My range of 250 miles for my first Tesla with 12 months of use and 20,000 miles had no issue at all for Washington state weather in Olympia Wa. I used public charging for about 10 minutes each time on 9 separate days. I bought a second Tesla because I wanted one with a bit more zip.
As of November 2021, Norway sales of zero emission EV equaled 64% of new car sales, expected to reach 98% in 2022. Gas and diesel only vehicles have fallen to only 8.5% of sales. I guess for most folks in Norway, the range of EV’s is ok in extreme cold, but many might be purchased with the higher range options. Gas is $8 / gallon in Norway and their hydroelectric power is cheap at 0.138 / kWh so the purchase decision is a bit different then here in the US with $3 or $4 dollar per gallon gas and $0.125 per kWh in the US.
https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-norway-november-2021-sales/
Ok we love to travel, why is the DOT finding vehicle trips longer than 150 miles to be rare, less than 0.5% of trips? Simple, many of us hop on a plane and rent a car for that trip to LA or SF or Orlando.
Essentially, think about how you drive and how often you would need to charge with 200 miles of range each day. If those events are rare, you likely don’t need to worry about public chargers, there will be enough. When you see public chargers, how often are they available, with no lines of people waiting to use them. The lines are light because about 85% of EV owners charge at home and rarely use a public charger. Those that do use a public charger only are mostly high-income folks who bought the EV for a fun to drive experience, are not worried about the cost of public charging and cannot easily access at home charging at their apartment building. Or they don’t drive much, say 15 miles a day, and don’t mind charging once every 13 days for 20 minutes.
For 200 miles of range, can you get that with an EPA range estimate of 200 miles? Not really and there are a few reasons for this. First the EPA range assumes a mix of city and highway driving. It also assumes you are not driving with maximum acceleration from the stop light or in extreme cold with hot cabin temperature setting. Driving for the EPA range assumes light acceleration, about the same as you do with a gas car to maximize your range. But typically, folks with a zippy EV want to zip. Plus, the 75 mile per hour steady driving on the freeway reduces range as does very cold or very hot weather. And after 100,000 miles of use there is a slight decline in range. The average EV battery range will decline 10% after 160,000 miles. Assume you will have 80% of the EPA range as a rule of thumb.
https://www.motorbiscuit.com/how-many-miles-will-a-tesla-last/
Ok, 200 miles a day would need an EPA range of 250. If you set the end of charge to 85% to maximize your battery life and if you are driving the US average of 13,500 miles a year, you only add 37 miles a day with your home charge, on average. So, you would have at least 212–37 or 175 EPA miles left at end of a typical day. If, on some days, you drive three times the average, you still have 101 miles left “in the tank”.
Or drive with light acceleration and drive with a light requirement on your cabin temperature, both will extend range. That is set the air conditioning to 76 degrees, not 69 in hot weather, set the cabin temperature to 65 degrees in cold weather. Most folks won’t need to do either. When I drove to maximize range, my fuel cost per mile went from $0.025 per mile to $0.022 plus I never stressed over range so full speed ahead for me.
Let’s say you do want to take a road trip of 400 miles. With today’s high-speed public charging you would need less than 20 minutes to charge 120 miles and would do this twice. Use the charging at your hotel to top off for your visit and repeat the two stops of 20 minutes each for the drive home. Is that ok with you for a 7 hour, 400 mile trip each way?
The highest performance super charger adds 200 miles of range in 15 minutes. This is for a Tesla, other vendors are close behind in their fastest rate of charge, and likely all will meet or exceed this rate soon.
The rate of charging will slow down as you approach 100%. If you plug in and charge to 100% at home while you sleep, you won’t be waiting for the extra bit of charge. And if you only do this a few dozen or so times a year, your battery life won’t be significantly affected. But when you are on the road, the extra time could be a pain. Your vendor’s software will recommend when and where to charge to optimize your trip and minimize the time charging. Also, frequent (every week) fast charging will decrease the range at end of life more quickly.
Can you find a super charger for any brand? Tesla offers the largest number of super chargers, but other vendors are quickly adding to their fleet of fast chargers. In addition, Tesla has announced they will offer their charging stations to other vendors. You can check your locations and brands of interest for super charger locations on line. Also, most SW applications for charger locations will let you know how many chargers are available.
Here is a bit more about cold weather. Are we talking Norway, Canada, Washington, Oregon or California? Essentially you need to tell your Tesla when you are leaving so the battery can be pre-conditioned for optimal range and performance in cold weather. Range reduction at freezing and below can be more than 20% depending on how cold it is and is improved if you use a pre conditioned battery feature and set the interior cabin temperature lower. Also, you can get some that range back due to sub-freezing weather. Remember my suggested reduction of useful range compared to EPA range due to the inclination of EV drivers to zip, accelerate quickly? In cold weather, freezing and below, don’t do that. Tesla has a driving mode called chill. It limits the acceleration. You should do this in any case to account for ice on the roads. Also, wear a coat, and keep the interior temperature setting low. Of course, if your round trip is only 130 miles it won’t matter, the battery will have enough range.
Tesla Model 3 — Cold Weather Tips | by Tom Harrison | Tom Harrison’s Blog (tomharrisonjr.com)
To what degree does temperature impact EV range? | Geotab
What if you are an Uber driver and make many small trips a day but drive 50,000 miles a year, an extreme case. Assuming 5 days a week x 50 weeks or 250 working days, you would drive 200 miles a day. And most of that driving is likely on surface streets so the range would be maximized. A 250-mile EPA range could work for this extreme use case. Once in a while, you might be need top off the range with 5 minutes of charging at a public charger, but most of your fuel needs would be met with 5 hours of charging at home at night. In this case, the many small trips are likely to result in very predictable travel per day.
You can also purchase EV’s with 350, 400 or even 500-mile range. But if you are like most folks, the extra range will not be used or will be rarely used.
Compared to the number of gas stations, how many places are needed for public charging? My guess is 10 times fewer, or 10% of gas station locations. Of course, you still need the snacks that fund most gas stations profits. The government collected data on all trips and found only 0.5% are over 150 miles. So using a public charger about 365 days x 0.5% or a couple of days a year. Let’s ball park this as 5 days per year or less for folks needing charging away from home. Like your cell phone that you rarely charge outside of the home, your EV will rarely be charged outside of the home if you are a typical driver.
How often do folks stop at a gas station? US vehicles average 25 miles per gallon, and typically don’t fill the tank at home. Assuming the average miles driven per year is 13,500 so 37 miles per day and fuel needs of 37/25 or 1.48 gallons per day. Assume most fuel up for 10 gallons, that would suggest 6.7 days between refueling or 54 trips to gas stations per year.
EV trips to public charging about 5 per year, gas cars about 54 trips to gas stations. My back of the envelop guess is you will need 10 times fewer locations for EV public charging.
Not everyone can charge at home. For example, if you live in an apartment that does not offer a level 2 charging option to renters that would not be an option. Ideally this can be addressed with incentives and education of apartment owners on the relatively low cost of adding this option for renters.
Tesla offers 120, 000 mile or 8 year warranty on the battery. Most other vendors offer at least 100,000 mile warranty. If you are like most folks, when you purchase a new car, you expect to sell it before 100,000 miles. So battery replacement cost is not an issue. Why are manufacturer so generous with their battery warranty? For Tesla, the expected battery life is between 300,000 to 500,000 miles so they have little risk that a replacement will be needed. Tesla will replace the battery if it’s range is decreased to 70%. Given they are designed to exceed 300,000 miles both you and Tesla can be sure of a high resale value after 120,000 miles.
By the way, the Tesla model 3 body and drive train is designed to last 1,000,000 miles. The average battery degrades to 90% after 160,000 miles. So, if you wanted to keep the car a long time, it will last longer than a gas vehicle.
There are two types of batteries. One uses lithium iron and phosphate (LFP), the other uses lithium cobalt and nickel (LCN).
The LFP battery has an expected useful life of about 1,200,000 miles. The life of the battery is defined as when the storage falls off to 80%. So, a 250 mile rating would fall to 200 miles after 1,200,000 miles. The LFP battery has another benefit, you can charge to full charge every day and the range or capacity will not fall off any faster from charging to the maximum range. Of course, you likely won’t keep the car for 1,200,000 miles. But, when you sell it, the next buyer will be confident of a long useful life with little fear of having to replace the battery.
The LCN battery has an expected useful life of about 460,000 miles. And for day-to-day use, manufactures recommend only charging it to 85% of it’s capacity to maximize life. For folks who only take an occasional long trip (90% of the US population), this is not an issue. This battery has a higher energy density so more miles of range can be put in the same space. It is also more expensive and harder to find the materials to build the batteries in volume.
This means that for a low cost, high volume vehicle sales, the manufacture will likely choose LFP and likely limit the acceleration so the range of 250 miles can be met with a smaller battery. 0 to 60 in 6 seconds is about what you can find higher performance model Honda Civic or similar gas cars from Ford, GM, Toyoda, Kia…, and most gas vehicles priced around $25,000 have typical acceleration of 8 to 12 seconds to reach 60 MPH. So, for a $25,000 EV, expect LFP with acceleration limited to about 6 seconds to meet the EPA range of 250 miles with the smallest possible, lowest cost battery and still be competitive with gas vehicles in this price class.
If you want faster acceleration and or longer range, go for it. But most likely 250 mile EPA range will be enough. When you need a public charger will there be one where you need it? Well, check out the apps that show the locations of public chargers and see it if fits your needs. With the planned spending by Ford, GM, VW, Tesla and the government funding of new charging locations, the number and locations is expected to grow significantly. For me, I never needed more than 1 mile diversion to top off my EV in the rare times I used public charging in the last 2 years.
It is clear that EV’s will be offered with many options for price, range, acceleration, charging times and so on. The US is in the process of building out an electrical infrastructure that will:
1. Offer public charging for the rare times you need it and where you need it.
2. Support the many EV’s connected to the grid for home charging. Over time the local utility will need to upgrade transformers and peak energy demands as EV’s become common place.
Think about your driving habits and see if an EV fits your needs.
If you are interested in the recent EV trends check out “EV trends: USA EV light vehicle owners save $315 billion+ per year by 2036”
For another view of the EV and Clean Energy evolution, you can read “EV and Clean Energy Eco System”
https://bob-n-martha-roth.medium.com/ev-and-clean-energy-eco-system-238f452e513c
