Range Confidence: Charge Fast, Drive Far, with your Electric Car

By David Herron

Last Update: April 21, 2019

  1. Range Confidence: Charge Fast, Drive Far, on Electricity
    1. The false 'Range Anxiety' story would keep us from driving electric
    2. A brief history of Range Anxiety in electric cars and gasoline cars
  2. Learning Range Confidence
    1. Step 1 - Map your trips to know how far you need to drive
    2. Step 2 - Know your local EV charging terrain
    3. Step 3 - Getting around town with your electric vehicle
    4. Step 4 - Set up charging at home, at work, or nearby
    5. Step 5 - Prefer electric cars with fast charging
    6. Step 6 - Charging station network memberships and smart phone apps
  3. Solving range anxiety in daily driving - putting range confidence into practice
    1. Typical daily driving needs, on electricity
    2. Electric vehicle charging scenarios
    3. How and where to charge electric cars in public
    4. Example longer trips with electric cars - putting range confidence into practice
  4. Autonomy and electric driving freedom
  5. Charging station etiquette - effectively sharing limited electric car charging resources
    1. Electric vehicle drivers Bill of Rights
  6. Electric vehicle range and charging infrastructure
    1. Energy storage, energy consumption, weather and electric car driving range
    2. Total driving range in electric cars: plug-in hybrid versus fast charging
    3. What happens if an electric vehicle runs out of power in a city with no charging stations?
    4. Why doesn't the dashboard show accurate range?
    5. Battery pack age, and capacity loss
    6. How does EPA estimate electric car driving range?
    7. Understanding the EPA ratings label for electric cars
  7. Charging electric cars in public
    1. Electric car charging speed and effective trip speed on road trips
    2. What electric car charging rate do we need at home, at the office, on road trips, at airports, or elsewhere?
    3. Can you drive an electric car away from charging network coverage areas?
    4. What charging networks exist? ChargePoint? Plugshare?
    5. Types of electric car charging connectors, and compatibility: A Field Guide to electric vehicle service equipment
    6. Is it bad to charge an electric car with an extension cord?
    7. Best portable electric car charging stations for home or on trips
    8. How do I pay for energy consumed in charging my electric vehicle?
    9. How do electric car charging station networks make money?
    10. Electric car fast charging held back by standards battle between CHAdeMO, Combo Charging System and Tesla Supercharger
    11. Electric car fast charging required for widespread EV adoption
    12. Smart-phone apps for finding electric car charging station networks
    13. Known electric car charging networks around the world
    14. What to do if the charging cord is stuck, cannot be removed
  8. Getting and installing at home electric car charging equipment
    1. Installing cheap/inexpensive electric car charging at home
    2. How to plan for and install 240 volt circuit to charge an electric car/vehicle?
    3. Fast charging your electric car at home
    4. Apartment/Condo dwellers - what to do if you cannot charge at home
    5. How-to: 240 volts when all you have is 120 volt outlets
  9. The best electric car charging stations for home charging or on trips
  10. A brief study of EV Ownership Economics
    1. Fuel cost per mile
    2. Tipping the economic balance in favor of electricity
    3. Charging cost at home versus in public
    4. The high cost of free charging
  11. Electric car charging technology
    1. Charging levels - Level 1, Level 2, DC Fast Charging, etc
    2. EV DC Fast Charging standards – CHAdeMO, CCS, SAE Combo, Tesla Supercharger, etc
    3. EV AC Fast Charging Systems – Renault ZOE, Smart ED
    4. Fast charge adapters are possible, but how many really need CHAdeMO-CCS adapters?
    5. Why does charging a battery take so long? Hint: reversible electrochemical reactions cannot be rushed
    6. Wouldn't battery swapping be preferable over waiting to recharge?
    7. Can an electric car be charged while driving? Such as a battery pack in a trailer?
    8. When will electric cars charge as fast as a gasoline car? (5 minutes to recharge)
    9. What is the technical limitations on maximum electric car charging rate, why is the Tesla Supercharger limited to 120 kW?
    10. Safely use Extension Cords when charging an electric car or electric motorcycle
    11. Informal electric car charging at any power outlet, versus a regular charging station
    12. When are electric car extension cords required?
    13. Electric car charging within electrical code and power outlet limits
    14. Is it safe to charge an electric car in the rain?
    15. Why do all-electric cars not have a small (efficient) generator for a limp home to ease range anxiety?
    16. Why is there a 12 volt lead-acid battery, and how is it charged in an electric car?
  12. About the Author - David Herron
  13. Copyright
With gasoline cars we became accustomed to "needing" a 300+ mile range and a five minute refueling time. Holding electric cars to the same standard means we won't buy an electric car. But a careful assessment of real needs will show an electric car charged with a slow home charging station can easily handle typical daily commutes.

What's the most common trip you take? For most it's the daily commute to their job. For others it might be driving around town, shuttling kids from place to place, shopping for groceries, running errands, etc. The majority of this is around-town driving. For most the long distance road trip covering 700 miles a day is rare.

It's estimated the typical person drives 40 miles or less per day. That job might be 10 or so miles away, meaning a 20 mile round trip. Add in a couple stops along the way, picking up or dropping off dry cleaning, or grocery shopping, and it might increase to 30 miles.

Each person has their own needs, which is why step one of the range confidence process had you map out your frequent trips. This gave you a list of places you frequent, and more importantly the distance between each. That list lets you calculate with pencil and paper, or maybe a spreadsheet, your likely daily driving needs. By the time you get to step three, and are driving an electric car around town, you're really just verifying the daily driving estimates you made with pencil and paper.

Obviously some people drive more than 40 miles a day. The 40 miles/day figure is an estimate made by the US Department of Transportation calculated by adding together daily driving of a large number of people.

Your daily commute might be over 100 miles each way, or your work-day may be spent driving a car around. Others have a 1 mile or less daily commute, and barely need a car. You have to judge your own needs, and choose accordingly.

Why must we assess daily driving needs to own an electric car?

Should you spend more on an electric car with longer driving range? Should you spend more to get a higher power electric car charging station?

Your money was earned by the sweat of your brow, so to speak, doing whatever job you hold. You need to know how to best spend that money. Don't you want to make good use of that money?

If, like most, your daily driving is less than 40 miles a day, and your long range trips are only once a year, won't a 100 mile range electric car be perfectly fine? An inexpensive low power charging station easily handles charging 40 miles of range at home, which can save you a couple hundred dollars on buying a less expensive charging station.

How much electric driving range is required for your daily commute?

We've already made the case that most of us drive a short distance every day. Unless you've already mapped out your driving, you might be thinking this is nuts. Let's walk through fairly typical daily driving scenario.

  • Home is 10 miles from the office where one works
  • Drive to the office in the morning, stay there all day except for a quick jaunt out to grab lunch, and drive home. That's a 20 mile round trip, plus 2 miles for the lunch trip
  • Side trips are often made while commuting, that might add another 10 miles
  • The extended urban area might be 100 miles in diameter making occasional 200 mile round trips a possibility to attend special events
  • Weekends might be typically spent at home, or doing other shopping around town.
  • Weekends are the typical time for longer trips, most of which will be within the region and therefore might be 500 miles round trip
  • Truly long distance trips of 1000 miles or more round trip are likely for the yearly vacation, or holiday time travels to visit relatives

Of course there are exceptions to all that, but it seems fairly typical.

A 100-150 mile range electric car can easily handle the typical daily driving, plus the occasional weekend trips. For the 500 miles per weekend trip, look for fast charging support in the car. For the truly long distance trips the powers-that-be are starting to implement charging rates of 250 kiloWatts or more, which will make those trips possible with on electric car.

How often do you take a truly long trip?

The idea that our car absolutely NEEDS 300+ mile range and a 5 minute recharge is based on our experience with gasoline cars, and the inconvenience of having to drive out of your way to find a gas station. With a gasoline car you cannot refuel the car at home, and therefore must refuel by finding a gas station and taking time from your day to handle refueling. To minimize the times we have to refuel gasoline cars, the automakers settled on the 300+ mile range as a good target.

The 300+ mile range plus 5 minute refueling combination also allows us to take truly long distance road trips.

While some folks do long distance trips all the time, most of us do not and stay closer to home.

As we saw in the previous section the charging time for current electric cars is a challenge for taking long range trips. It's not so much of a challenge for a 200-300-500 mile trips, especially now that affordable 200 mile range electric cars are becoming available. Traveling 500 miles round trip with a 200 mile range electric car means 3ish charging stops spread throughout the trip.

Range Confidence is Copyright © 2016-17 by David Herron

About the Author(s)

David Herron : David Herron is a writer and software engineer focusing on the wise use of technology. He is especially interested in clean energy technologies like solar power, wind power, and electric cars. David worked for nearly 30 years in Silicon Valley on software ranging from electronic mail systems, to video streaming, to the Java programming language, and has published several books on Node.js programming and electric vehicles.
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