Data from thousands of EVs shows the average daily driving distance is a small percentage of the EPA range of most EVs.
For years, range anxiety has been a major barrier to wider EV adoption in the U.S. It’s a common fear: imagine being in the middle of nowhere, with 5% juice remaining in your battery, and nowhere to charge. A nightmare nobody ever wants to experience, right? But a new study proves that in the real world, that’s a highly improbable scenario.
After analyzing information from 18,000 EVs across all 50 U.S. states, battery health and data start-up Recurrent found something we sort of knew but took for granted. The average distance Americans cover daily constitutes only a small percentage of what EVs are capable of covering thanks to modern-day battery and powertrain systems.
The study revealed that depending on the state, the average daily driving distance for EVs was between 20 and 45 miles, consuming only 8 to 16% of a battery’s EPA-rated range. Most EVs on sale today in the U.S. offer around 250 miles of range, and many models are capable of covering over 300 miles.
I don’t need a scientific study to know that most days I’d need my car for a significantly lower driving distance than the few long-range outliers.
The problem isn’t a logistical of “Wow! Turns out I can commute with an EV because I don’t drive 400 km to work each day! Thank you Mr. Scientist!” but a financial one. The large majority of people can afford one car, if any, and this one car has to work for everything. Do you think people are happy investing in a 20k or more EV when they still have to rent a car to visit their familiy over holidays?
If it’s just for the sake of driving around town daily, EVs need to get significantly cheaper to be interesting for people with normal incomes.
Basically this. My commute is a little over 40 miles. If I got a leaf (which my dad used to have, so I know it well), I could get there and back. Unless I had to make an additional stop on the way home. Or run a significant errant on my lunch break. Then it might get squiffy.
But, okay, maybe I have a spouse I can ask to run errands and stuff for me. Then I just have to worry about when its hot or cold enough I need to run the AC or heater, in which case my range goes down to 60 miles. Good thing that only happens 11 months out of the year.
Edit: I also live in an apartment. I’m sure nobody will have an issue with me throwing a cable out of my bedroom window on the second floor and snaking it across the parking lot to my car.
Don’t forget you’ll lose like 1.5% of your overall battery life like every year.
Then, don’t worry. If the battery needs replaced it will only cost you…$8,000.
My battery got replaced at 5 years old due to a warranty issue
Before that I had lost a grand total of 1.6% battery capacity, and I charged almost exclusively through fast chargers
Battery degradation is massively overexaggerated
You also literally just said you had to replace your battery, the capacity readouts the vehicles give are often not correct. It’s literally impossible for a car or phone or anything that uses rechargeable batteries to know true capacity loss without a full discharge (ie car stop/phone shuts off ect.) and is charged to 100% capacity. Unless you do that capacity lost can only be an estimate based on expectation of degradation and total usage with an added curve on boltage levels.
You had it replaced at 5 years under warranty, so it had less than 100k miles on it and you were 3 years away from having to pay out of pocket even if you managed to go the 8 year warranty without hitting the 100k mark. Your car had a $12,000 failure after just 5 years (or dangerous issue that had to warrant a new battery) but you’re defending the thing because it got replaced under a federally required warranty. Good job, my guy.