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Re:What can 6,000 electric vehicles tell us about EV battery... by jillesvangurp on Saturday August 29, 2020 @11:22AM (#24316692)
I think range anxiety is more of a psychological/imaginary disorder than a technical challenge. I come from the Netherlands. Most EVs there have a range that would put you way past its borders no matter where you are in the country. Even the cheap & shitty ones. This is of course not something most people do very often in any case. So, you'd expect range anxiety to be less of a concern in the Netherlands.

It's not. People are somehow really dreading having to (predictably) stop for a 45 minute charging stop in the rare case they actually do have their trip exceed the maximum range (again, unlikely if you leave on a full charge and don't plan to leave the country).

It will tell you when you step into the car what your range is and you can plan right then and there where to stop for lunch/coffee. Most EV drivers do exactly that. Problem solved.

ICE car drivers don't do that and typically just have unreliable data instead. You might have 70 km of range or 20. Hard to tell when the needle is close to 0. You might be going up hill or downhill and that might affect what the needle says. It doesn't even indicate range, just fuel volume.

So, premature/redundant fuel stops are probably more common than running out of fuel, or indeed battery. By the time you run out of battery, your car will have been drawing your attention to that for quite some time. So, you'd be right to feel anxious about that happening to you because you'd end up looking like the fool you are.

Most drivers take the annoying planned charging stop over that some tens of miles before they'd run out. It's more a case of range annoyance than anxiety. In the end everything has a price and if you can afford to fill up your gas guzzling SUV to burn way more fuel than you'd strictly need to get from A to B, that probably has more to do with other forms of anxiety than with the actual range of the car.

Re:What can 6,000 electric vehicles tell us about EV battery... by everdrive on Saturday August 29, 2020 @12:14PM (#24317119)
It reminds me a bit of (some) people who think they need a truck. We were going to buy a truck for our (very small) farm, but when we really sat down and thought about the amount of times we'd use it, the number turned out to be 0-3 times a year. In this situation it makes sense to rent, and most of the time, our tiny subcompact does 100% of what we need a car to do. For those few times I may really need a truck, I can probably rent one, or find some other accommodation.

Range anxiety is the same -- most of the time, people drive between home and work. For most people, this fits in the range for an electric. If you really want to drive across the country, you can just rent a car, and this will be much cheaper than owning an ICE for how often you'll actually need to do it. If you're lucky enough to have the space and money, and need two cars in the first place, then it makes sense for one to be electric: the one driven most often, and then the ICE vehicle for when electric is not appropriate.

Re:What can 6,000 electric vehicles tell us about EV battery... by fencepost on Saturday August 29, 2020 @02:09PM (#24318146)
This depends a lot on where you are. In the US most travel is pretty local just like yours, but just the state I live in is more than 3x the size of the Netherlands (~150k km2 vs ~42k km2) and it's not that uncommon to have need to travel to areas of adjacent states. At least twice a month I'm at customer offices that are 40+ km away, so a short range combined with possible winter capacity reductions could be a real concern.

Also, if I'm driving with what I call the "idiot light" (low fuel) on, then I'd best go fill the tank. When that warning appears if I have less than 50 km of range I'd be surprised. A low range BEV would feel to me like always having that light on.

Re:What can 6,000 electric vehicles tell us about EV battery... by theshrike79 on Saturday August 29, 2020 @04:04PM (#24319020)
Americans, in my experience, tend to do some really crazy drives. Some people just casually might drive 2-3 hours to some random restaurant and the same amount back.

In many European countries, that would be a border-to-border trip.

But as the saying goes: Europeans think 100 miles is a long trip and Americans think that 100 years is old =)

Re:What can 6,000 electric vehicles tell us about EV battery... by fencepost on Monday August 31, 2020 @01:00AM (#24328636)
The driving to a restaurant happens, but it may just be an excuse (kind of like private pilots flying somewhere for a hamburger). The restaurant isn't the reason for the trip.