Here's another point of view.
Range anxiety doesn't so much come from the range of the vehicle but the
ability to charge. Regardless of the range, at some point you will have
to charge. If such places are easy to come by and charging doesn't take
long, it's not a big deal.
For example, if you need to drive across Phoenix and there are
superchargers every 5 miles, you wouldn't think twice about running out
of energy. At some point, you'd simply look at your gauge and say, "I
think I should stop and charge". Lo and behold, you'd spot a charge
station, pull in, and charge.
Charging is still in its naissance. The current build out of level 3
quick chargers gives a distorted impression. There seem to be plenty of
level 3's in urban areas but only a sparse thread between cities. Aside
from Tesla, the production EVs on the road today may not be able to make
it between the sparsely located charge stations. On top of that, 20-30
minutes to charge is hardly convenient. Thus, people assume they need
to make their trip without stopping to charge, resulting in range
anxiety.
A few years ago, everyone was talking about 100 miles per charge as the
magic number; then EVs would really be practical. Well, we more-or-less
reached that. Are they successful? I would say yes - they are now
practical in urban environments for a very large number of people.
The next magic number seems to be 200 miles. I think that number,
combined with faster level 3 charging, will virtually eliminate range
anxiety. You'll be able to go whereever and charge if you need to. But
this only works if there are ample level 3 stations, and fast ones, on
your rote.
My conclusion is that range anxiety comes more from the lack of adequate
charging facilities, not from the range of the vehicle.
Peri
------ Original Message ------
From: "Ben Goren via EV" <ev@lists.evdl.org>
To: "tomw" <tomofreno2...@yahoo.com>; "Electric Vehicle Discussion List"
<ev@lists.evdl.org>
Sent: 19-Nov-14 7:08:04 AM
Subject: Re: [EVDL] EVLN: Hand-wringing EV angst is not a real problem
On Nov 19, 2014, at 7:27 AM, tomw via EV <ev@lists.evdl.org> wrote:
A person's viewpoint on this and many other things depends on how
risk averse
s/he is, and we all tend to think our level of risk aversion is just
about
right and any that is quite different is unreasonable.
Range anxiety, I think, is even more governed by typical and expected
use cases.
If you have a five mile commute and the next city is thirty miles away
and you can't imagine needing to go there on a whim, range anxiety
isn't going to exist even with a vehicle with only 50 miles of range.
If you live (as I do) in the Phoenix metro area, a vehicle with an
80-mile EPA range probably won't even be able to make it from Apache
Junction (the city on the eastern edge of the Valley) to Buckeye (on
the western edge) on a single charge.
Risk aversion is going to be secondary to that. Maybe you live in the
small town and you're not very risk averse, so a 20-mile range seems
luxurious; maybe you live in the small town and you _are_ risk averse
and that 50-mile range is what it takes to calm your fears. But, no
matter how risk averse you are or aren't, if you live in Surprise and
work in downtown Phoenix and can't plug in (a perfect description of
another friend of mine), that 50-mile car isn't even going to get you
all the way home. This same friend also sometimes has to go to Mesa as
part of the job, and _that_ round trip is itself outside of even the
Leaf's EPA range. She'd probably honestly need a 200-mile range just to
get to the same level of lack of range anxiety as that person in the
small town would have with a 20-mile range.
b&
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