Range anxiety?

ChargePoint

ChargePoint

Member
Flashing back to your very first drive in an EV - do you ever still feel like you have range anxiety?



Here's what a few other drivers had to say :)

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Living in a fly-over state, no interest in a pure BEV. We have two plug-in hybrids and when I rebuilt the broken J1772 I was using to charge at home, I used the gas engine in both cars to run errands.

Bob Wilson
 
It's more 'availability' anxiety that would put me off. The worry that when you suddenly need the car for something urgent, you can't use it because the damn battery is flat!
 
Martin Williams said:
It's more 'availability' anxiety that would put me off. The worry that when you suddenly need the car for something urgent, you can't use it because the damn battery is flat!
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For me, I don't see availability as really much of an issue. Rental cars are available within 5 miles 7 days a week during the day and 24 hours, 7 days a week 25 mile away. Uber and Lift are available too.

Frankly even with a gas driven auto connect to your hip, there will be times you can't drive to save the day to make a difference. Sometimes "It is what it is."
 
The problem is that ICEs are unavailable only when they are broken or you have NO fuel at all. These are, for most of us, rare events. With a battery car, the thing is unavailable for hours out of EVERY day.

So a sudden need to travel or an emergency is far more likely to coincide with a battery car being unavailable than an ICE one You might be happy to rent a car, but the whole point of owning a car is that you DON'T have to shell out for taxi fares or rental charges! Moreover, you can't always rely on taxis to be instantly available, or rental cars not to have lent out all their cars just when you need one.
 
I remember skipping Santa Barbara and going up to Solvang. Drove in turtle mode and saw those beautiful ChargePoint DC fast chargers with zero range showing on my gom. It was the best $10.60 I've spent owning a EV.

Shut out to the City of Twentynine Palms for installing the level 2 ChargePoint chargers. Without you guys, I would have not enjoyed Joshua Tree.

ChargePoint should focus on destination chargers. If you build it, they will come.
 
Martin Williams said:
The problem is that ICEs are unavailable only when they are broken or you have NO fuel at all. These are, for most of us, rare events. With a battery car, the thing is unavailable for hours out of EVERY day.

So a sudden need to travel or an emergency is far more likely to coincide with a battery car being unavailable than an ICE one You might be happy to rent a car, but the whole point of owning a car is that you DON'T have to shell out for taxi fares or rental charges! Moreover, you can't always rely on taxis to be instantly available, or rental cars not to have lent out all their cars just when you need one.
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You don’t have any idea what you are talking about. An EV like the Bolt or a Tesla has more than 200 miles of range. Most people drive less than 40miles in typical day. Could drive the Bolt several days without charging up. You are not “without your car for hours everyday”

Not to mention you can charge at destination chargers out in the world to top off, while going about your day.

We just bought a Pacifica Hybrid with 33miles all electric range. My wife spent the whole day running errands, topped of the charge at the local shopping center and never used a drop of gas. Had the car 2 days, and have yet to burn any gas.

So if we can do that with only 33 miles of range, most current gen all-electrics aren’t an issue with lots more range.
 
I'm glad you find your car suits your lifestyle.

I'm not generally a believer in 'proving' a point by presenting my own experience as if it applies to everyone else, but as you have done so I will reciprocate.

I did a 300 mile round-trip from home the other day, and had no sooner got home than my daughter phoned in a panic because her taxi to the airport had let her down. I immediately got back into the car, picked her up, and drove her there. I doubt if I could have done that in a battery car.

A hybrid is different of course, but I think you are paying a great deal of money in order to save on very short trips. Overall, you will not recover the extra cost in fuel savings, and you have a much more complex and therefore less reliable machine on your hands. I doubt the extra weight will have helped the fuel consumption on a long trip either.

But each to his own. It suits you, clearly, and really that's all that matters.
 
Well it could be worse. Living in Huntsville AL, I'm about 2,000 miles from the nearest California fool cell station, about 7x the Mirai range with no stations in between. Of course I could tow it:

I just need to not pack the fuel cell assertions in the Mirai trunk.

Bob Wilson
 
Martin Williams said:
I'm glad you find your car suits your lifestyle.

I'm not generally a believer in 'proving' a point by presenting my own experience as if it applies to everyone else, but as you have done so I will reciprocate.

I did a 300 mile round-trip from home the other day, and had no sooner got home than my daughter phoned in a panic because her taxi to the airport had let her down. I immediately got back into the car, picked her up, and drove her there. I doubt if I could have done that in a battery car.

A hybrid is different of course, but I think you are paying a great deal of money in order to save on very short trips. Overall, you will not recover the extra cost in fuel savings, and you have a much more complex and therefore less reliable machine on your hands. I doubt the extra weight will have helped the fuel consumption on a long trip either.

But each to his own. It suits you, clearly, and really that's all that matters.
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Not really trying to prove anything. Just giving a personal example illustrating what is fairly common use pattern for the average household. Daily trip miles less than 40miles running errands close to home. And all you have to do to understand the charging infrastructure availability is look at a map of PlugShare.
 
Personal anecdotal information is interesting. I too, conform to the 40 miles a day average mileage but I find the prospect of fiddling about with cables which will be pretty filthy after being on the ground a few dozen times is extremely unattractive, particularly in low light and bad weather. I'd prefer to spend a few minutes every couple of weeks or longer filling up and hang the cost.

With respect, I don't think you can describe your experience as typical or average. Only one in a hundred people own battery cars. I think the other 99 who buy ICE cars are more typical or average. You'd have to ask them why they decided against batteries. They might have different reasons from me.
 
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