Fear Mongering About Range Anxiety Has To Stop — CT Governor Calls Out EV Opponents

I was among those worrying about range until I spent 5 minutes thinking about what I actually do on a daily/weekly/monthly basis.

We'd still have my wife's ICE van, we both work from home, and 99% of the time my work-related travel is local (within 5 miles). My wife's van can pull the camper for our camping trips, or for our longer drives.

I have no good reason not to get an EV for my next car.

I've had an EV for 9 months now and I've actually experienced far less range anxiety with my EV than with my previous ICEs. This is due to the fact that because I can charge overnight in my garage I almost never leave home without a full battery. Versus before with my ICEs where I'd often be driving across town on fumes because I'd forgotten to fuel up the night before.

I drive in the city/urban areas the vast majority of the time so 200+ miles of range is plenty for my day-to-day needs. I've honestly never run into a situation where I've been worried about running out of juice; I rarely even get below 50%.

As for longer drives, I've done several 600+ mile road trips without issue. Sure, charging takes a bit longer than fueling up at a gas station but the opportunity to stretch my legs, rest in the car, or get a bite to eat does wonders for reducing road fatigue. As for finding charging stations, I'd recommend planning your route beforehand but the charging network is dense enough in my region to where I can usually choose to skip a station if it's too busy and try the next one.

As a EV owner I don't worry about range that much but I'm constantly infuriated by the shitty charging experience. Charging at home is great but road trips are a constant pain in the ass. Let's face it, most people are not interested in switching to EV at all and will find an excuse until ICE cars are banned (I'm looking at you people with two family cars and private garage). You want to convince the people actually thinking about it? Make charging work.

Where I used to live and work near Hartford range anxiety wouldn’t be an issue. Where I now live and work in Oklahoma it still is an extremely big issue. A friend in CO with an EV wanted to come visit but couldn’t make the drive in one day due to charging options. Hell, if I want to go on a 4 hour drive to Amarillo I need to carefully plan my fuel stops because there’s hundred mile stretches where I can’t even fill up my Ford Focus, let alone charge a Tesla. Range anxiety is a legitimate concern for much of the country.

There's no fear mongering about it! I'm anxious about the range of an electric car and not having a quick and convenient way to refuel if I near empty.

some states like Tennessee have removed EV infrastructure the charging stations

how is range not an issue

I drove half way across the country and back last summer in my EV and it was great, except for a couple of the stops being in shady locations.

EV rest stops still have a little ways to go to becoming more convenient, but there is no range issue.

As someone who has been driving an EV for several years now, it really is nuts hearing people on the internet constantly repeat the same three or four stupid talking points that people with first hand experience have been rebutting for the better part of a decade at this point.

How about trains? Americans are too used to their cars for those long-range trips. Make them unnecessary. Build out the infrastructure. Have your car for local trips, switch to trains for anything else.

I read the article and clicked through their own reporting on range anxiety: https://cleantechnica.com/2023/07/16/is-range-anxiety-really-worth-all-the-angst/

According to data from the US Department of Transportation, 95.1% of trips taken in personal vehicles are less than 31 miles; almost 60% of all trips are less than 6 miles. In total, the average US driver only covers about 37 miles per day.

it seems to me that this screams out for better shared transportation - If I'm going less than 6 miles, I'd much prefer an Uber or easy subway ride or the like to owning a car at all. However, that's something government would actually have to fund and do something rather than just passing rules on to other people to make happen.

That minor rant aside - I still maintain that the 37 miles per day is a commute and going out to lunch. If we actually wanted to have people change habits in a really useful way - it'd be to start incentivising / mandating telework where possible - stop all the unnecessary car traffic of any kind. You know what's more environmentally friendly than ZEV vehicles? No vehicle (use).

That all said - most people I know buy vehicles to solve as close to 100% of their needs, not 95.1% - because vehicles are so expensive. The range anxiety haven't been about the daily commute for like a decade - even the 87 mile leaf did that fine and most anyone I've ever talked to was perfectly OK if they had the leaf JUST to drive to work and back in the summer / nice weather. Very few people buy a car like that though, because they need to get through bad weather or carry more stuff or people or tow or ...

And then there's the all american road trip. Roughly once a month I go 180 miles one way on a quick trip to see family. They don't have a car charger setup anywhere. I'm not at all sure if they can run an extension cord out, but then I'm on slow charging, and I also drive around while I'm there (unless I asked to use their car for all trips). I'm usually there for a couple days and come back. I have to get gas on each trip. This is not in reality if I had a leaf. If I had a more expensive car it's do-able, but I still would be anxious till there's more "top up" points. I go by probably 20 gas stations I notice on the trip, and there's probably 100+ more within 2-3 miles from the route I take. I know of one charging station.

They have an answer in the article

Plan your route: PlugShare and other apps allow you to determine where chargers are located along your intended route as well as details like the hours they’re open, the cost to charge, whether it’s a public or private facility, and user reviews. It reminds me of childhood trips we took when my parents used Trip Ticks from AAA to determine best roads and attractions. Being organized makes any trip more pleasant, and being aware of possible charging stops ahead creates a sense of calm in you and your passengers.

Yes - plan you trip around your car. I mean, sure, but harkening back to needing Trip Ticks like in the early 1990s isn't exactly a "towards the future" sort of vibe. And they're right - a lot of it is vibe.

Limit your use of air conditioning or heat when possible: So be uncomfortable... I never think about turning on aircon or heat in my ICE car. This is a stupid "fix a perceived problem" statement.

Plan errands to intersect with available chargers Again, live your life around your car - this just is absurd. If I'm planning errands around my transportation, I ought to be able to use public transport and get better returns for the hassle - but I can't because our public transport is shit, and also it's probably not feasible in the vast rural areas of the US.

Stay calm, breathe deeply: According to research in the Journal of Advanced Transportation, range voltage depends on a variety of factors, including emotional type, age, and driving experience, and these factors may influence how susceptible you are to range anxiety.

Yes, get some therapy and Xanax and you too can love the EV.

Ok, but ranting about the sheer stupidity and patronizing nature of the article around range anxiety over - back to the road trip. Many people like to drive to their vacations to save money, especially if they have 3+ people going and would have to also rent a car at the other end of a flight. My next trip is a 900 mile trip over 2 days. With ICE I literally just put it in my GPS and go - no issues because I can stop and get gas ANYWHERE. We're just NOT THERE yet with chargers, and even with superchargers, we're talking going from a 10 minute break to get gas, grab a snack and use the restroom to more like 30 minutes waiting for the car. I don't have issues with planning lunch or dinner around that, IF I could be sure there was a super charger where it makes sense to break.

The thing that's stupid is it's not "range anxiety" really, I have to worry about getting gas and finding a gas station. We just have gas stations already built out and getting gas is a 5 minute process to get another 360+ miles of range. If the charging was close to that to add 360+ miles of range, no one would blink an eye, but instead, it's 30 minutes to add maybe 100 miles of range - which leads to making trips take much longer in many cases. The other anxiety inducing thing is if you run out of gas, AAA can bring you 2 gallons to get you to a station. I haven't heard about the equivalent for EVs yet.

The important thing is - talking down to people isn't going to get them to listen to you. Telling people they shouldn't worry about their yearly or more often road trips because normally they're driving to work and back isn't a great sales pitch really. If I have to rent an ICE car 2 times a year for a road trip, that's at least $1,000 each time, which itself pays for a lot of gas, or 3 new car payments (for most people). It doesn't make people think EVs are cheaper.

Me feeling this way is a problem, because I do think EVs are a good thing, and I really want one, but not for massively more than a direct replacement of my existing ICE car, and not if I have to also maintain an ICE car for trips. One car is cheaper than two to keep going no matter how frugal the second car is.

The irony of using a Bolt EV in the accompanying photograph. A car with some of the slowest DC fast charging, and a battery that’s been reduced to 80% capacity for three years by the company who makes it.

Why aren't plug in hybrids getting pushed harder?

Serious Question: Why can't we just have towable generators so EVs can go from an electric car to a Plugin Hybrid for road trips?

Generators aren't very expensive relatively speaking.

Yet I've never heard not seen this anywhere, and seems like a very easy solution to range anxiety.

This article doesn't really touch on the biggest issue of getting into an EV - the price tag. I mean, $26k to get into an entry-level model? I paid $11k for my SUV, and the only reason I could afford that was due to a pay-out from the company that totaled my previous vehicle. Show me a used EV with towing and storage capacity more in the range of $6k that I can expect to drive for twenty years with basic maintenance and you might get me interested.

Beyond that, they claim that an EV is cheaper to maintain over the years? OK I've been driving my used SUV for 15 years now and I've spent less than a grand on replacing parts (not including stuff like tires that are going to be replaced on any vehicle). My previous vehicle was driven for 24 years and cost even less to maintain because it didn't have 4WD. It looks like within these time periods I would have expected to replace EV batteries several times (most estimates put battery lifetime between 8-15 years), and how much would that have cost? I understand that most people can't be bothered to learn how to perform even the most basic maintenance tasks and believe that you need to buy a new car every 5 years, but I would like to see realistic maintenance estimates for those of us who don't treat our vehicles like a piece of disposable tupperware.

I have to commute one way 250 kms with one settlement on the way (75 km from one end) for work. There are not many EVs now that I would be comfy making that trip right now (more so after the battery ages a few years, in winter etc.) but their are some. In some countries the range is fine, in cities the range is fine but where I am the range is the major limiting factor. Please don't call market demands "fear mongering" just give me more range.

I don't need any super acceleration or a top speed 2x the speed limit, I want range.

Switching to an EV is not "free". You have to do some research, learn some new things and gain a bit of experience. Some people (for example the elderly but also stupid people) will have real issues adapting to new infrastructure. Even more people are simply to lazy to bother, will always see the effort required to switch to an EV as completely unnecessary and will complain loudly when forced to do it. The best option would be probably to wait for "EV first" generations of drivers to simply replace the current ones but we don't have time for it. Other option would be to make the switch completely painless (imagine having a charging plug right next to the gasoline dispenser on every gas station, simply choose from diesel, gas or electric) but we're currently very very far away from this dream. So yeah, the only option is to force people slowly to make the effort and at the same time work on making it easy enough so they don't revolt.

You guys are allowed to leave work?

Ehhh. For the range-anxious until charging infra catches up, there can be PHEVs.

I've been excited to have my next vehicle be a BEV for a while now, but having rented a Tesla while on vacation in Michigan (where the infra wasn't exactly good for it) I understand why people might have reservations about jumping in with both feet. Also now that I've interacted with the vehicles and got a better idea of Tesla as a company, I won't be buying one.

For the moment, given my use cases (I periodically have to drive between western WA and central UT) my next vehicle will likely be a PHEV unless there are real breakthroughs in EVs (fuel cells? swappable battery standards?) or charging infra where I need it.

I mean, worst case, just buy and bring a gas generator with you if you think you are going to be reaching those limits. With an EV, anyone can have a plug-in hybrid (albeit much less convenient).

how about evs arnt the fucking solution and build some fucking decent infrastructure

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Household transport is a fraction of a fraction of the states emissions. But hey that cost of living sure is going through the roof, better double the cost of cars to shift internal combustion to remote combustion.

Range anxiety is basically a myth or at least a real anxiety masquerading as range anxiety. Who hasn't been out on the boonies somewhere late at night running out of gas and wondering if you were going to make it to a gas station ... the real anxiety is refuel anxiety. As soon as universal fast electric charging stations are ubiquitous this "range anxiety" will suddenly disappear. Most ICE cars only have around a 300-400 mile range tops (unless maybe the hybrids) and that is never talked about. It's not range that is the problem.

Heck 95% of my driving would be more than ok with 50 mile range if I could charge at work and it only took a few minutes to charge. An ultra capacitor car would likely fit this bill.

How about lithium fires burning down peoples houses then?