You Need Way Less EV Range Than You Think: Study

Data from thousands of EVs shows the average daily driving distance is a small percentage of the EPA range of most EVs.

For years, range anxiety has been a major barrier to wider EV adoption in the U.S. It's a common fear: imagine being in the middle of nowhere, with 5% juice remaining in your battery, and nowhere to charge. A nightmare nobody ever wants to experience, right? But a new study proves that in the real world, that's a highly improbable scenario.

After analyzing information from 18,000 EVs across all 50 U.S. states, battery health and data start-up Recurrent found something we sort of knew but took for granted. The average distance Americans cover daily constitutes only a small percentage of what EVs are capable of covering thanks to modern-day battery and powertrain systems.

The study revealed that depending on the state, the average daily driving distance for EVs was between 20 and 45 miles, consuming only 8 to 16% of a battery’s EPA-rated range. Most EVs on sale today in the U.S. offer around 250 miles of range, and many models are capable of covering over 300 miles.

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I don't need a scientific study to know that most days I'd need my car for a significantly lower driving distance than the few long-range outliers.
The problem isn't a logistical of "Wow! Turns out I can commute with an EV because I don't drive 400 km to work each day! Thank you Mr. Scientist!" but a financial one. The large majority of people can afford one car, if any, and this one car has to work for everything. Do you think people are happy investing in a 20k or more EV when they still have to rent a car to visit their familiy over holidays?
If it's just for the sake of driving around town daily, EVs need to get significantly cheaper to be interesting for people with normal incomes.
- Basically this. My commute is a little over 40 miles. If I got a leaf (which my dad used to have, so I know it well), I could get there and back. Unless I had to make an additional stop on the way home. Or run a significant errant on my lunch break. Then it might get squiffy.
  But, okay, maybe I have a spouse I can ask to run errands and stuff for me. Then I just have to worry about when its hot or cold enough I need to run the AC or heater, in which case my range goes down to 60 miles. Good thing that only happens 11 months out of the year.
  Edit: I also live in an apartment. I'm sure nobody will have an issue with me throwing a cable out of my bedroom window on the second floor and snaking it across the parking lot to my car.
  
  Don't forget you'll lose like 1.5% of your overall battery life like every year.
  Then, don't worry. If the battery needs replaced it will only cost you....$8,000.
- If we built good regional/national/international transit, a lot of the longer range issues could be fixed. Some people may still need more range/more storage but high speed rail could get people farther more effeciently than their EVs and be suitable for many trips.
  
  If we had better infrastructure, there would be fewer commutes using cars.
  
  US transit that could efficiently take you to every city you may need to go to in the US would be absolutely insane to try and pull off. It's great for countries the size of one or two of our states, but try to imagine what a transit network to get you from Clarksville Iowa to Clinton Missouri would actually look like. It would need to be insane.
- Would it make sense to rent a car for those longer journeys? I know I'm not in the wasteland of car dependency that is the US, but I don't own a car because it would just sit around costing money 99% of the time. I rent a car for the 1%.
  Edit: I don't know what is so controversial about me saying this, this is anecdotally true for me. I didn't say it's fine for everyone.
  
  Nah, renting a car on top of whatever you're already paying for the short range car is expensive. Hundreds of dollars for even a couple of days.
  Even if you only need a car for those long trips, that's a huge expense on top of the travel costs (hotels, food on the go, gas, etc).
  I've had to rent a car to go up to northern states to visit my or my wife's family a few times, and it's crazy how expensive it is. I drive a little subcompact because I actually like small cars, but you can't pack two adults, a kid, and all their luggage into one little hatchback.
  I can kinda see someone that lives with good, cheap public transport in a city saving enough on not owning a car (insurance, licensing, etc) to make it feasible if they aren't renting more than once or twice a year, but even that can blow the balance if it's an extended rental.
  The cost of a week in another state via the rental, just for the car was more than the car payment, insurance, and approximate maintenance costs for my car for the month. Mind you, I do have a very cheap to insure car that didn't cost much (13k), so the balance for most people isn't as extreme.
  Plus, you can't rent without a credit card reliably, if you want to go out of state. A credit card isn't exactly impossible for everyone, but it's still a limiting factor for enough people that renting anything like that is impossible.
  
  I think I have a similar situation personally. I can use public transportation for 90% of my travels and resort to high-speed trains or rented cars for the rest.
  It works out fine, but I'd consider getting an EV just for the increased flexibility and comfort, if there would be some alternative. Which would be a simple-as-possible battery on wheels either way, but for it to be attractive as a short-range only vehicle it would has to be dirt-cheap. I'm not paying 10-15k for that, new or used.
- That's why I waited until 2019 to get an EV. If I was still married, I'd have gotten one earlier and used it strictly as a commuter. But being single, I needed at car that could also handle occasional road trips up to 12 hours or so. The Model 3 fit my needs and has been the only car I've driven for almost 5 years now.
These studies come from the wrong angle to convince anyone. Average isn't what people are concerned about. It's getting to grandma's house, who lives 150 miles away.
However, that isn't insurmountable, either. 250 mi range with some charging infrastructure upgrades can cover almost all of North America just fine. Yes, even when it gets cold. Plenty of EVs on the market can do this.
Get more charge stations out there, and tell the industry to stop making only $45k base price SUVs for EVs.
- The less range the longer the charge times too, although some of the newer lower power density chemistries like the sodium ones seem to charge a bit faster.
  Those 10-80% charge times don't magically get better if the battery gets smaller they stay roughly the same.
- Bingo. We bought a PHEV with a smaller 26 mile battery because 1) that’s more than enough for our daily range, 2) when we need to travel or do a lot of errands in a day we have the range to do it, and 3) it’s much cheaper than a full EV of the same size (7-8 person vehicle).
I'm fine with an EV that only has a 100 mile range. Im just not willing to pay more that $15k for it. It obviously can be sold for that much. I don't need a seat warmer or even powered windows, just a box with windows.
- I would have seriously considered this when I was married. That’s a perfect choice for a two car family. I already had the smaller, more efficient, cheaper car for my commute, and splurged on the other car so the whole family would be comfortable on trips. Same thing.
  Of course now that it’s just me, and only one car, that car has to cover almost all of my use cases.
- Now that kind of thinking will get us in trouble. How will the wealthy CEOs and shareholders make money?
  Honestly this would be an ideal car option. I own a hybrid now that gets between 45-50 miles with a 10 gal tank. Paid 28k total. I plan on using it as my long distance traveler and an EV as my daily driver, once prices come down.
- This. Ffs why doesn't this exist. A friend of mine bought a used Leaf. They are pretty cheap and he barely drives anywhere. Perfect for that situation.
  
  Because the industry focused on the segment of the market that makes the best margins, not the most volume. Then they started prices at $45k, but only made five of them. All the ones you could actually buy were premium models that added at least another $20k.
  A bunch of people buy them on 10 year/20% APR loans, but even that market is only so big. They're then left with a bunch of excess stock. Headlines run about how nobody wants EVs as if the industry didn't create this mess for themselves.
- It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.
  Upton Sinclair,
People need to seriously consider 40mi range PHEVs.
Toyota Prius Prime, Ford Escape PHEV, and others have "EV-mode" buttons that drive exclusively on electric now. Meaning you could keep the gasoline for "emergency use only", even as you enter highway speeds. (Older PHEVs would turn on the engine because they didn't have this mode-selector button).
- All the complexity of a gas engine, plus the cost of a battery. Just so you can use the range once or twice a year? What happens when you don't use the gas engine for months and then go to start it with gelled gas? You're trying to solve a problem that the article shows doesn't exist for 99%
  
  All the complexity of a gas engine
  Batteries are more complex. A 200lb battery is less complex than 1000lb or 2000lb battery.
  EDIT: I'm an electrical engineer. I can prove to you the complexities of a modern EV Battery. Or do you think 400V systems composed of parallel transistors, battery-management systems, and a whole slew of literally fucking computers estimating the internal-state of the thousands of individual cells that compose a modern EV is a "simple" task?
  EDIT: Do you know what kind of degrees you need to design a battery-management system? To mass produce those circuit boards? And to do it all over again 2 years from now when all the chemistries change and therefore the internal estimates of each of these cells completely and drastically changes? No? Please stop pretending that "Batteries" are simple.
  Case in point: it's the battery that will most likely fail in ALL of the discussed designs here. Why? Because chemistry is incredibly difficult and hasn't been solved yet. I do await for the future improvements in the EV battery pack that are sure to come over the next few years and decade... But let's not pretend that anything is done R&D yet.
  The gasoline engine? Okay we're up to Atkinson cycle so that's a bit different but was around in the 1800s anyway. Nothing is really new or complex here. The engines mechanics were understood nearly two centuries ago.
  There's a reason why gasoline engines are so reliable, while batteries keep having faults. Complexity has a lot to do with it.
  What happens when you don’t use the gas engine for months and then go to start it with gelled gas?
  If only computers existed and had timers that automatically burned off stale gasoline.
  Also, just fill up 2 gallons or so to minimize the stale gasoline effect. You'll only be filling up once or twice a month with all the EV driving you'll be doing in practice.
  You’re trying to solve a problem that the article shows doesn’t exist for 99%
  No. The 800+ to 1500+ extra lbs of battery you lug around with a full 300mi electric car is what's actually being wasted in practice.
  
  Hybrids have been out for over 20 years, and this simply isn't an issue.
  Furthermore, "a problem that doesn't exist for 99%" is false because this article is just talking about averages. When you look at the average mileage driven per state, it ranges from 9,900 miles to over 24,000 miles per year. There is no one size fits all solution. Would you rather someone drive an old Suburban 100 miles per day or a Prius prime 100 miles per day? It's that simple. These people aren't going to buy a BEV until the segment is nearly ubiquitous, if ever.
  
  I think people use the gas more than twice a year. For me, the electric could suffice for weekday commutes, but weekend trips end up requiring the gas.
  I have personally avoided EVs in favor of PHEVs because I think charging all the time would be a pain. EVs like Tesla claim you get like 320 miles of range, but that’s on a full battery and they recommend only charge to 80%. So it drops to 256 miles. However even that is on the high end as driving at normal highway speeds, using AC or heat, in cold weather all kill the range even further. Tesla actually got caught exaggerating the range and canceling customer appointments over the issue. So, a realistic estimate there is probably more like 175 miles left. From there you probably don’t want to risk getting stranded and would need to find a charge with no less than 25 miles left. This gives an effective range of more like 150 miles out of the claimed 320. If you’re on a road trip, stopping every 150 miles for 20-40 minutes is going to be a pain.
  
  Once or twice a year? Do you mean daily? We have a phev Prius and it is great. It is able to run EV mode to work, but the trip home requires hybrid mode.
This is such a bone-headed approach. Averages are meaningless. People don't have one car for short trips and a different one for long trips.
You're worried about range but did you know that range is only a problem for 3% of the journeys you make? Just stop visiting people, going on holiday, or travelling for work and it's fine!
- is only a problem for 3% of the journeys
  If each trip is one day, you’re telling me the car will not be useful ten days every year? Phrase it like that and it becomes much more obvious how useful that is
  
  Except it doesn't. Because your fancy electric car demands $700/month already.
  Now you want them to have an extra 2 grand to throw at rental cars for 10 days. On top of the car payments, and the actual vacation expenses.
  Your salary pays your bills everyday of the year except the first of the month. How odd. That's only 12 days per year. Nothing to worry about.
Yeah. Average trips most days amounts to not needing much.
But that's just most days. To be a replacement for a vehicle it has to also handle the rest of the days, and if it can't, that means you'll have to have two vehicles instead of just one, and one of them will have to be an overpriced 1,100 pound giant battery, or an ice vehicle.
In other words, saving the planet with ev's means you'll have to own more vehicles.
- It would be much more useful for a study to look at the outliers, since that’s what people decide by. How many trips, how many days in a typical year will I not have the range.
  My EV theoretically can go 330 miles. Last month I drove to a town 110 miles away, drove around for the weekend, and came back. But I needed a recharge enroute. The first month of the year and I already had a trip not handled by home charging. In theory it should have but the reality is I already have two days where range became a concern. People have made decisions on less
- Phev ftw?
OP: Your car should only get you to work and back because what else are you good for?
No I don't. I don't have a charger at my apartment and I'm not going to wait for a charge on a daily basis at a public charger for one of the more city focused EVs. I won't buy an EV that doesn't have the range of a "normal" car and I'm not alone on that.
I'm 70 miles from the slopes. There's no charging at the lots and the last thing I want to do after 6+ hours of skiing is to stop and wait for a charge on the way home. That means having to have at least 140 miles + some extra to get around done the next day before hitting up a charger.
The averages are one thing, but a car that meats an average need will have limitations on even frequently occurring exceptions. The average falls short of a round trip to the airport even. If a car can't get me to and from the airport in a single charge then I can't choose that car.
The article rightfully recognizes at the end that this really isn't an issue of reeducating the customer. This is a matter of providing a product that meets the customers expectations.
- I think the main problem with the article is that, yes, most days we only need range for short distances, that's where those numbers come from. But occasionally we have an appointment in the next city that's over a hundred kilometers away and we don't have time to charge the because we need to return with the same mileage. Like if we want to visit granny in a village a few hundred kilometers away with no charging spot anyway near.
  So we don't need hundreds of kilometers of range every day. But we need it occasionally.
- I get what you mean, but I hate to have to point out the obvious… You’re up a mountain. When you drive back down, the car is going to regenerate the energy back into the battery, you might find that you recover a considerable amount. Was amazed how much I was getting back in my ID.3 just going down some very big hills in Belgium. And 70 miles is not a lot… It’s what, 120 km? I don’t know many cars that do less than 2.5-3 times that amount, and constantly regening down means you probably get a good quarter of that back
  My battery is pretty modest… 58 kWh usable, and in the warm months that’s about 4 1/2 days going round-trip between where I live to Amsterdam. Maybe 60 km round-trip. In the winter take off a day. I do not get the charge at home as I am in the apartment as well, but it is easy to find a charger at my destination and plug in there. I think you’d be surprised how little it matters about the charging.
  
  When you drive back down, the car is going to regenerate the energy back into the battery, you might find that you recover a considerable amount.
  On the flip side, going up needs additional energy to begin with, so overall it's bound to be less efficient than its typical mileage.
But that cross-country trip I make every few years! Am I supposed to like borrow a regular car or something?
I went with a plug-in hybrid and it feels like the optimal solution at this point in time. I get enough electric range to cover my commute and local driving (i.e. maybe 90%+ of my driving) and gas for when I need more range. I barely burn gasoline and the battery is on the smaller end so it didn't take so many resources to manufacture. The downside is having the complexity of both IC and EV drivetrains within the same vehicle, but so far it's been pretty low maintenance (about 6 years so far).
- Another happy PHEV driver here. It’s really the best of both worlds as the charging infrastructure is built out and vehicle costs come down. Wife went 700 miles last fill up because she travels to the country once a week. If we stayed in the city we’d be well over 1000 miles before filling.
- Stop half way, charge for thirty minutes and smell the roses? We've been programmed to all be type-A drivers, where the journey is just a burden. I drove 600 miles in my EV, made three stops I wouldn't normally make along the way and saw some new places.
  
  Not even. We exclusively roadtrip in an EV now. The whole family gets out to pee, grab snacks, and by the time we are ready, so is the car. As the driver, if it’s mealtime I might eat the harder to manage portion before we leave, and we aren’t rushing, but there was certainly no time to smell roses!
  
  This is a nonstarter. Stopping for 30min to charge is not acceptable for a majority of people.
  When we drive long distances, stop time is minimized. Fill up gas, while someone goes to get food while others go to the bathroom. The stop is done in under 10 min and we are in the way.
  If I have to stop twice per direction, that’s an additional 40+ min on my drive. No fucking thanks.
- You know, I don't know about this exact situation, but I just did a ski vacation with my model Y. The distances weren't super long but the mountain climb was significant. Basically we rented a place at 1400ft and every day drove to the lodge at 6000+ ft. We had snow tires on admittedly dumb 20" wheels, car loaded with 5 people and all the gear. We did this routine for 4 days in a row. I think the actual distance was only like 20 miles or so but I don't remember exactly.
  Leaving the rental at 80% battery every morning and then returning at the end of the day at about 61%. The temperature ranged from 23F at the coldest to 36F on the warmest day.
  Obviously a bit of a worst situation for EV efficiency.
  All in all the efficiency didn't really matter much, there were 6 ev chargers at the top of the mountain, though usually full ( one time a jeep double parked blocking two of them, fuck that guy). Though I didn't used them this trip as I would just charge at the rental overnight.
  Our trip to the rental is probably also a terrible situation, we left with 80% and arrived with ~40% on a somewhat short 60 miles. It took over two hours though due to heavy traffic.
  We've done a bunch of road trips in this car over the last two years and what I've learned is that none of this stuff really matters for our lifestyle and location. Yeah winter wrecks efficiency. Yeah large wheels and snow tires wreck efficiency, stop and go with 5 people and all their gear in the freezing cold wrecks efficiency ,but even doing day trips to the mountains is fine, that's when I plug into the charger while I ski. I had to get gas in my previous car for the same trip (Hyundai suv) which is annoyingly at the bottom of the mountain.
- Rent a van or take a train for such trips.
  
  Not sure why you're being down voted. Rental cars exist and can be a better option that spewing emissions 360 days/year just so your can take your one long vacation, that isn't really even that long...
  Realistically though, a 200 mi trip, even if op lives in Alaska, is going to be at most 1 stop, and only if it's really really cold.
This study is brought to you by greedy corporations in an attempt to justify shitty products for large sums of your money.
So you're saying that the people who don't average longer driving range needs are the ones who bought EVs?
That tracks.
It absolutely doesn't translate to any useful information for everyone else, though.
- Also, average drive length is completely irrelevant for this question. People are not worried about their typical daily trips when evaluating a new car's range, they're worried about the occasional longer trip they might have to make and not having to have a separate car or other accommodation for that.
  
  Agreed. Traveling to my boyfriend's parents' place is a nightmare in my EV and renting a car for the trip every year is expensive and uncomfortable comparatively. It adds like 6 hours to the trip or an overnight stay in the middle.
I drive every month over 1100km one way and then few days later back home. It's almost impossible to do it with EV
- But that makes you:
  1.) not an average motorist, in no country 2.) not really the target group for current EVs
  There will never be a perfect solution for everyone, but that doesn't mean that most people couldn't just switch to an EV without any problems at all
- We have a PHEV with a paltry 26 mile range for a family of 5 but that still means we go over 700 miles on a tank before filling because my wife works 5 miles from where we live. See how we aren’t the same?
I think owning a commuter car with shorter range and renting anytime you need longer range makes a lot of sense. I don't know why more people don't do it.
- Because it doesn't make sense, if a rental car is $59 a day, and you leave town one day a month, an take 1 week of vacation, that's 18 days a year, or $1062 extra cost per year, over the life of the car that's $10-15k so unless the commuter car is at least $10,000 cheaper it doesn't make sense.
  And if you need it more than one day a month the math falls apart really quick, 2 weekends a month is $3k a year or at least $30,000 over the life of the car.
  
  Your selective math is not doing you any favors and I'm not sure you fully understand what I'm suggesting. Do you know what TCO is?
  I actually did this for a while and it worked out well for me. My divorcemobile was a very old and very used 1st generation Prius. I rented pickup trucks for vacations. I didn't leave town 1x/month, not sure why that is a need. But this points out that everyone has very different scenarios and needs.
  More recently I've took a vacation by train and rented a car at my destination which worked out well.
  When the day comes where we can buy econobox EVs this seems like a viable solution to me. But it does depend on a person's transportation needs.
We drove 4260km last september with a tesla model 3 standard range in 7 days. Mostly used superchargers and the car decided most of the charging stops. We had a small child with us so the car was always charged up faster than we were ready to continue the journey. We also slept in the car for 5 nights of the 6 nights.
So yeah at least in the fennoscandia area there is absolutely no point for most people to have a huge battery because charging stations are everywhere.
The car was also a joy to drive especially on the narrow and twisty Norwegian roads.
The problem is that something that works for me 90% of the time ends up completely fucking me the other 10%. That might be manageable, but the thing is that the easiest way to manage it is to just get a vehicle with more range.
No, I'm pretty sure me and most everyone else have a pretty firm grasp on how far we need to go regularly, dude bros in jacked up F350s that live in the suburbs notwithstanding..
My minimum is, using only 60% of the battery (like you're supposed to), 100 freeway miles after 10 years of ownership. I won't use it like that regularly, but car that can't go 100 miles between stops isn't worth owning.
Doing the math, that works out to about 200-250 EPA range. I'll settle for the lower side of those numbers and stress the battery on long drives, but I'd rather not.
I get shit on every fucking time I say this. Forcing people to EVs is stupid as fuck. PHEV is the sweet spot to reduce emissions.
- From a use perspective, yes. But do you really want to produce and carry around all parts needed for a combustion engine when you need it 10% percent of the time? It's like constantly driving around with a trailer attached because you might need to sleep in it three days a year.
  
  Not really. In practice it has zero effect on my daily commute. I might lose a few kwh due to weight but it's nearly trivial. Engine maintenance might be 1-2k over 5 years and that's well worth the ability to drive electric 98% of the time and not having an ounce of range anxiety. Far less cumbersome than adding hours to my traveling when I need range. I believe the vast majority of Americans probably fall into this use case.
  The PHEV f150 is the perfect truck for most truck owners and believing folks are going to deal with 100 miles of range just ain't happening.
  
  In my experience, it is more like 50% of the time.

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