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The march towards an all-EV future hit a major roadblock. What went wrong?
(www.businessinsider.com)
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this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2024
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Technology
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Large batteries are a must-have to get anywhere near a comfortable range.
I wonder if larger battery packs fit in small cars. And it would also push the price beyond the level that people expect to pay for smaller cars.
Range anxiety is what pushed me to buy a Bolt over other EVs, but I do find that practically I don't need as many kms as it offers, especially in the summer.
Opinion: 400km is overkill for city driving in warm climates. Half the battery/range would be fine for virtually all daily use. I know everyone will anecdotally state their use case on why 200km is insufficient, but that's basically what the article is saying is part of the problem.
People also forget that rental cars exist.
For the handful of actual long-range drives a typical person needs to take in a given year, it'd almost certainly be cheaper to rent a different car rather than spend extra to get a huge-range EV. But relatively short-range EVs are basically not a thing because of how universal these range anxieties are. Not to even mention that the available rentals aren't a great situation either, given how universal it is for people to own these long-range vehicles.
Our society is a damn prisoner's dilemma.
A lot of that range anxiety will start to evaporate as charging (both slow and fast) becomes more ubiquitous. If I can charge to 80% in 15 minutes I don't need a lot more than 2-3 hours of drive time on a single charge, so long as there's a charging station at that interval.
Rental cars are incredibly expensive in some states. If I wanted to rent one in Tasmania for ten days, it would have been cheaper to buy a car and abandon it than rent one. Less of a problem at home in NSW.
It’s also worth nothing that in the US, 200km is more than sufficient to navigate the entire interstate highway system from end to end and coast to coast. Moreover, when going on long trips charging speed is more important than range, so long as your range is over that 200km barrier.
Now the system is not perfect, especially out west where the state highway system is more important and I can personally attest to a few 600km gaps, but the solution to that problem is to put in a few dozen infill fast chargers in the small forgotten backroads towns, and in the mean time just eating the fifteen percent longer detour to use the interstate highway network.