How Much EV Range Do You Actually Need?
Range is the distance you can drive before you need to charge your electric vehicle’s battery, right? Well, technically it is exactly that, but I often find that these numbers and the real world don’t necessarily add up. Instead of calculating the distance that a car can go before it needs to be juiced up, I find that the time before it needs to be juiced up is actually a lot more relevant than distance. Allow me to explain.
The Human Bladder
Any medical professional deserving of the degree certificate hung on their wall will suggest that you ought to use the restroom once every three to four hours. Yes, I know you are superman and you can go sixteen hours with just one bathroom break, but that’s not actually healthy. At all. What you really need is an EV that can drive 3 to 4 hours at highway speeds and take a 20 minute charging break. During that break, you and your passengers can unload the liquid contents of your collective bladders, reload liquid contents into the orifice up top and generally pretend to be yoga specialists by the side of the parking lot. Yes, that’s how a road trip should be. Typical average highway speeds in the developed world range between 50 and 70 mph. Thus, by the human bladder measurement protocol, you really need a car that can do 200 to 280 miles on a full charge at highway speeds. Said car should accept enough charging power to be able to get that range back within 20 minutes. Seriously, forget every other metric.
Charging Speed
Today’s Tesla Supercharger network gives peak charging power of 112 kilowatts, enabling this bladder-suitable range within 30 minutes of charging, if you’re in a Model 3 or Model S. The larger Model X is a bit too thirsty for electricity and may need to stop for a few minutes longer between each 4 hours slog at the wheel. Recent innovations in the CCS charging protocol means that 150 kilowatt chargers are being deployed everywhere across the United States and Europe. Some chargers are even rated as high as 350 kilowatts. Of course, you need a car capable of accepting such large quantities of power but the new breed of cars coming to market over the next 18 months all claim to be able to fill their batteries at rates above 100 kilowatts.
Conclusions
We’re not as far off as you might think. The Hyundai Kona charges at 74 kilowatts peak speed and would get you the miles in about 40 minutes. The Tesla Model 3 long range could gain the required kilowatts in a few minutes less. As charging speeds improve, this “range anxiety” situation, like most other doubts about EVs, will be a thing of the past. It should also be noted that a more efficient car, like the Hyundai Ioniq, needs less peak charging speed than an inefficient one, like the Jaguar iPace, to charge the same amount of distance and driving time. That’s fairly obvious, but disclaimers are cool.
Anyhow, the drill is simple. Drive your battery down to 10%, pee, stretch, drink, snack, drive your battery down. If you plan well, your EV road trip will take as long as one conducted in a liquid burning, oily and expensive-to-run dinosaur juice vehicle. Yeah, that’s what we call gasoline now. Dinosaur juice.
