But 115km each way (230km round trip) 5 days per week is a problem. We should not be doing this, at least not in individual cars. That electric car is still creating a lot of particulate pollution from the tires on the road, not to mention its contribution to general traffic.
The focus should be on how to reduce the commute distance (or eliminate it as often as possible), and to build/use efficient mass transit systems.
So much of our intellectual and financial energy seems to be directed toward overclocking the horse and buggy - with diminishing returns. At some point it's time to step back and rethink the greater system. (I believe that point was 20+ years ago, when it became clear that cities would continue to become the population growth centers.)
I don't personally think it's realistic to expect everybody/all people (who mainly work for a living/work hard) to ask them to give up the luxury of spending their hard earned money on being able to transport themselves (to and from their job) in something other than the comfort of their own car. I think you're suggesting "we should all be doing public transport, it's more efficient."
You aren't wrong, but there's a human/emotional element/aspect here.
A car to me is a personal, climate controlled cocoon, where I can turn on whatever music I want, have a coffee or a snack, and escape for the 30 minutes or however long it takes to reach my destination...without the chance of being bothered by anyone else, much less any of the other belligerents that you are sure to find on public transit from time to time.
I will continue to own and drive my own car for this simple fact...
It's not about taking away people's cars, it's about making public transit so good (and building cities/neighborhoods that you don't need a car in), that you don't want to take a car, because it's less convenient.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muPcHs-E4qc&t=569s&ab_channe...
I think this quote really nails it: "A developed country is not where the poor have cars, it's where the rich use public transit"
It's also worth noting that car driving is the worst kind of positive feedback loop (not a positive thing). Cars need Parking, which makes it harder to put things close together, which makes you need to drive places to get there, which makes you need parking. And cars are much bigger than humans, so the amount of space needed for cars, also increases much bigger than it would for humans.
I think the answer lies in things like e-bikes, mopeds, and motorcycles. Rail as a high-speed backbone and an e-bike for last-mile sounds close to ideal - especially if I can charge the bike while on the train. Bike lanes ought to be the rule rather than the exception. Bike racks and moped/motorcycle parking spaces (ideally - again - with outlets for charging batteries) could and should be ubiquitous.
Societies don't need to ask citizens to choose a given mean of transport; they can route their choices them by making some means more convenient and other ones less.
Increasing car costs and reducing lanes/streets/parkings, while making the public transport more frequent/extensive/comfortable, will make citizens choose public transport (or more sustainable means) themselves.
On the other hand, when cities are developed (in certain cultures or at least areas) with private transport in mind, and it can be hard or impossible to redesign for public transport.
And brake dust, which includes a lot of metal
I can’t find an English wiki article, but here is German
I hear this a lot, but how much pollution is it really? It surely doesn't register on any municipal particulate measurement station.
>>Imagine your daily commute is 115 km (e.g. Roeselare-Brussel
That would be an extremely unusual commute to be doing by car in Europe, people do it but it's very rare. If you're going to be covering over 1000km a week(!!!!) Then get a good diesel, not a brand new EX90.
Plus the other estimates are correct. The range drops if it’s too cold, or if it is too hot, or if you use any of the features that the car advertises, or if you’re driving on a freeway, or if it is a stop and go traffic, or if you gain elevation, or basically if you use your car as a car.
Don’t get me wrong, I still love my car and I would never drive an non EV again, and a non Tesla EV at the moment. But calling out the marketing bs is totally fair.
> The range drops if [...] you gain elevation
That's true, but unless you're driving inexorably up into the Himalayas, you're going to come down that hill. EVs have a magic trick they can play in that situation. :)
In point of fact regenerative braking makes EV's equivalent range penalty in hilly terrain much (MUCH) better than any fuel-burning vehicle.
> There are two reasons: charging performance and battery longevity. Most of the time you should only charge an EV to 80% because charging rates slow down dramatically past the 80% mark. And two, the long-term health of your vehicle’s battery pack is improved when kept below 100%. > [witricity.com](https://witricity.com/newsroom/blog/the-80-rule/)
Aren't they in the middle of outlawing them?
If I ever buy a house it'll be to actually live life in it, not to nickel-and-dime some poor college student.
I personally do charge my Ioniq BEV to 100%, and I often drive it to, say, 6%. In summer, I get a range of 220km, and in winter 160-180km, depending on temperature and number of cold starts (cold starts seem to trigger a battery warm-up). SOH is still at 100% after almost 3 years.
Availability can be seen in many charge-apps miles before you get to the location, so if you see it at 75%+ capacity, select a different location.
Why don’t you start with 100% if you want to go to Paris in one go?
There's some rational logic in the article and comments but there's also some nonsense.
EVERYDAY CITY DRIVING - I drive whenever I need or want, without ever worrying about range. If I notice the expected range has dipped below ~60 miles, give or take, I plug it in at home at the end of my day. I'm delighted that I never have to go to a gas station, which reeks of all that smelly/poisonous/explosive stuff.
LONG TRIPS - I charge to 100% the night before, get on the road, and stop to charge only if/when the software tells me I should. The longest trip I've taken is ~325 miles, and it requires only one 15-20 minute stop to get 150+ miles of range at a supercharger (I grab a snack and go to the bathroom). Whenever possible, I try to stay in/go to places with destination charging, so I can plug the EV and find it fully charged by next morning.
EVs can be great if your commute is less than 30mi one way, but that doesn't make them good for road trips. At least in the US.
As for commuting, your 30 miles number is way low. Even if you accepted this article's ridiculously low 50% as true, most modern EVs (think 300 mile range) would still be fine for a commute that's 75 miles each way even with no charging at work. And that's way further than most people commute (to put it in perspective, living in Philadelphia and commuting to Manhattan would be 75 miles each way).
I take this to mean that the author acknowledges GAS cars are also affected by cold weather. There's just no escaping thermodynamics. It's also like pointing out GAS cars' MPG is reduced by 20%+ in cold weather. While it's true, it's like pointing out a gotcha edge case for all cars. So the conclusion can also apply the same way to GAS cars. 'Next time you estimate the mileage, take a 20% discount!'
According to energy.gov[1]:
Cold weather and winter driving conditions can significantly reduce fuel economy. Fuel economy tests show that, in city driving, a conventional gasoline car's gas mileage is roughly 15% lower at 20°F than it would be at 77°F. It can drop as much as 24% for short (3- to 4-mile) trips.
[1] https://www.energy.gov/energysaver/fuel-economy-cold-weather....
Most of the effects it describes are only in effect while the car is warming up, and given that say, engine oil typically warms up to around 70C when operating, it's hard to believe that the difference between starting at say -10C vs 20C is really going to add up for anything more than a VERY short drive (one that, if you cared about fuel economy or environmental impact, you'd probably just make on foot).
Sure, if you have electric seat warmers and the like, that could add up, but one of the "advantages" of an ICE car is their inefficiency leads to lots of waste heat, so they can keep the car cabin warm just from that, without needing to use electric heaters at all (keeping the interior cabin warm is one of the primary factors that sucks up EV range in cold weather).
Also, survival time in a stuck ICE in Winter is much higher.
My understanding is that the preservation of the battery is built into the charge controller and you shouldn’t have to worry about it. In other words when your car says it’s fully charged it’s only “really” charged to 80% or some other cutoff as determined by the charge controller. I don’t drive a Tesla so my only point of reference is my Fiat 500e which doesn’t have as far as I know a setting to limit battery charging to a certain percentage and I would think most consumers just plug in overnight without thought to this.
I apologize for not bringing a link but there is a beautiful story of real world range that shows that Teslas are systematically over reporting their range. It was posted recently. The author should probably read it before generalizing...
The fuller the battery is, the slower it charges. 10%-80% charge often takes same or less time than the final 80%-100%, so when road tripping it makes much more sense to make a few short top-ups than wait forever for last percent to trickle-charge.
While the sticker estimates of range are probably advertising, and the % battery to range meter you get in the app / dashboard is junk, the drive estimates are spot on.
When you enter a destination, it will tell you very precisely how much energy it will take, accounting for every current condition, including temp. This must surely be data driven because it is alarmingly good. So your day to day use will not involve these guessing games, imho
"What are you going to do if the battery runs out in the middle of nowhere?" they ask.
"The same thing you will do if you run out of gas in the middle of nowhere: Call a tow truck." I reply.
I cannot get them to understand that they're asking the wrong question. The right question is "How do you ensure that you won't unexpectedly run out of energy?"
They don't run out of gas in the middle of nowhere because gas stations are everywhere. I don't run out of energy because the car does an exquisite job of tracking and predicting energy usage, as well as helping me find charging locations. It's an alternative (and IMO better) solution to the problem of running out of energy, but too many ICE drivers cannot conceive that there even could be another solution than "gas stations everywhere."
Green hydrogen will be an eventual solution for those use cases.
What the OP also omits is that you gain range during fair weather. My Bolt EPA rating is 255 miles, but I've gotten 303 miles in the summer and as low as 191 in the winter.
I am an avid cyclist. When I output 200W for an hour I can go 20-30km depending on the terrain. Maybe 15 if it's steep uphill all the way. Cyclists are not very aerodynamic. They sit high and have boxy shape. A small vehicle can be much more efficient (the reason recumbents beat standard bikes on a track).
It all seems so wasteful to me. It's true sometimes you need to carry load or more people, or go to very steep uphill, or maybe sometimes you really need to go fast. In vast majority of cases though, especially inside populated areas it's one person and a short trip. You carry your 2 ton metal box with you, use 20-30x more energy than a cyclist would and take so much space traffic jams are inevitable.
True innovation those electric cars. The very definition of missing the forest for a tree.
They really should be reporting 50% of their ranges as standard. When people get slightly better than that, they'll be pleasantly surprised and it will result in much more customer satisfaction across the board.
ALWAYS underpromise and overdeliver if you want happy customers.
not if you have customers comparing you promise to competitions promise. In this case you will never have option to deliver anything
Everyone will be all over social media with videos saying how their car was rated for 300km but they got 400km out of it and EVs will start getting very, very positive reviews.
For reference, 125 miles is about Louisville, KY to Indianapolis, IN.
https://insideevs.com/reviews/443791/ev-range-test-results/
Here's some "winter effect" info for different models.
https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/winter-ev-range-loss
I'd take that second one with a little grain of salt, though. I know that my 2022 Nissan Leaf SV+ gets more than the 175 miles they claim for summer (as long as I keep my speed down which is another factor OP seems to ignore). Haven't really given it a real winter workout, but I'd expect that number to be a bit higher than that table's 125 too. That's a very far cry from OP's claim of only ~110 miles.
Some might try to dismiss that as anecdata, but so is OP. Claims based on their one empirical observation, failing to account for known confounders and clearly wrong for a second sample, are kind of worthless. I'm not trying to propose any grand theory like they are. Find out the right numbers for your vehicle, routes, temperatures, and driving style.
If you typically plug in at home you should always be preheating the car before going out.
Realistic daily range is a bullshit phrase that assumes you will never have access to a fast charger. I understand realistic range, e.g. you can not go as far in cold, and daily range, e.g. you need to go 230km every day. I'm calling out how a combination of the two terms somehow excludes the ability to refuel when needed on that 230km commute. If you're going to be realistic, be realistic.
But at least in the US, pretty much any new EV you can buy has a rated range of 200 miles or more. More than 100 miles of commuting per day is a lot! Also, workplace charging is becoming more of a thing, and would effectively double your range without any additional inconvenience.
Ironically, the inefficiency of ICEV engines is what makes them less variable in their range. First, you get heating for free because the engine produces an abundance of excess heat. Second, since the engines are at best 30% efficient, the effect of things like drag and grade are far less noticeable in terms of fuel consumption.
