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.
I mean just that.
The internal chemical structure of Li-ion is only designed to work for a limited number of charge/discharge cycles. As the chemistry is stressed out, the internal metals begin to form dendrites (or in more simple terms, spikes) internally.
We have reasonable estimates for how long this takes, but everyone’s battery pack is different. And the process is invisible (you have to cut open & destroy a battery to figure out how much of these dendrites or whatever have formed). So the best we got are some computers slapped on the outside of the battery pack that measures temperature, voltage, current, and time to guestimate the effects from the outside.
As cells fail, modern BMS systems will reroute power away from degenerated cells. Its not that the problem was solved per se, its that modern battery packs have a bunch of extra cells waiting in reserve to pretend that nothing has happened to the end user. But this process eventually breaks enough cells that the whole pack fails and inevitably needs replacement.
Exactly when depends on how many cells were left in reserve, how much “fast charging” you do (which is extremely harsh on the internal chemicals), the temperature of the pack under use, and any aggressive driving you might do that heats up the pack more than usual.
Its… really complex. There’s a lot of research going on right now to try to stop these dendrites from forming.
EDIT: In any case, Consumer Reports reliability surveys on various parts of say… a Toyota Prius Prime or other PHEVs. Go look at them all, see what parts fail. Its the battery.
Here’s GM Volt. What’s the problem? Oh, the EV Battery again, and looks like the EV Charger is also terrible cause GM must have messed that up too.
But yes, its the electrical parts that are more complex and prone to failure in almost all of these cars.
Here’s Chrysler Pacifica. Oh boy, lots of parts of this vehicle is terrible. But as predicted, the EV Battery is among the worst of parts again.
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I chose Toyota first for a reason. The other two are just common PHEVs that came to my mind.
In all three cases, the Battery Pack is one of the least-reliable parts of the car. Even for notoriously unreliable cars, the worst part remains the battery.
I’m not kidding when I say that the battery pack is one of the most complex and least-understood parts of EVs, Hybrids, or PHEVs.
EDIT: Wanna go Honda? Guess what part was least reliable again.
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Gas engines just don’t fail today man. It will almost always be the battery pack. Stats prove it.
I’ve looked at a fair number of these different vehicles from different manufacturers.
This is utter horseshit. Gas cars fail way more because they have way more parts and all of those parts require more maintenance.
I would know, I bought a house and put a kid through college with the money I made fixing gas cars and now I’m changing careers cause EVs are taking over and they rarely break.
The batteries degrade over time slowly, especially compared to gas engines. Just compare the warranties! Gas drivetrains get 3 year / 36k mile warranties. EV battery warranties are 8-10 years.
Um…
You know that Hyundai has a 10 Year, 100k mi Engine warranty, right?
Yes I know that. Because they are the only one that does. That’s why it’s called cherry picking.
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Meanwhile, the Toyota Prius has been sitting on the top reliable cars for the last 20+ years…
There’s like, statistics… ya know? We don’t have to hypothesize the problems or “expected” problems. We can look at these cars and their long history now and see where the problems occurred.
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Because replacing a 200lb battery is easier than replacing a 1000lb battery in a full EV.
You’re right. Battery packs have limited durability / cycles. Its just how the chemistry works. The question is if you want to have a 200lbs of it or if you want 1000lbs of it.
Like seriously, do you look up stats?
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The stats I posted are history / survey results.
Consumer Reports conducts surveys where they ask car-owners of various model years how many issues, and what kind of issues, their cars have.
I know the difference from “predicted reliability” and their “Reliability history” page. There’s a reason why I’m posting history. These survey results look back into the past and is more appropriate for our discussion.
https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-reliability-owner-satisfaction/car-reliability-histories-a1200719842/
Before criticizing my methodology, you probably should see what pages I’m posting and understand the material I’m quoting.
Oh look. We even got overall% problems.
Guess what? Its the battery again.
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Consumer reports states:
That’s it. There are other categories for electrical problems. Ex:
The Consumer Reports Survey is very clear. “EV Battery” problems mean exactly the battery. There’s other categories for other cases.
The whole table didn’t fit inside of my screenshot. (I can only screencap what is on my screen…). The “In Car Electronics” also have a 3% failure rate, but are at the bottom of the chart. But between that and EV Battery, they are the #1 failure points of a modern car.
Of course it’s the battery. Nothing else breaks on an EV!
Similar to the rising rates of cancer these days because people are living longer and surviving everything else more due to medical science.
https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-reliability-owner-satisfaction/electric-vehicles-are-less-reliable-than-conventional-cars-a1047214174/
If I have a 400 V 50 kWh battery and charge at 400 V 50 kW, won’t it be charging at 1 C? Like you could use the Nissan leaf as an example but it’s dishonest since it’s the worst type of battery cooling, air, which makes the cells die prematurely.
Tesla is one of the more failure prone brands. Hybrids are a bad solution since it won’t address the problem fully, and only serves to lengthen the ICE industry.
Don’t let perfect be the enemy of good.
There’s no perfection in engineering. Just a series of compromises. Anyone who is an absolutionist is going to have a bad time in engineering, policies, and politics.
Using fossil fuels in ICE is a waste of resources
Agreed.
Which is why converting 100-million ICE cars to 100-million Hybrids is our best chance for reducing our fossil fuel consumption.
We are Li-ion limited right now, and will continue to be Li-ion limited for the near future. Hybrids are magic technology because not only is Li-ion chemistry available, but also cheaper/easier to manufacture NiMH (Nickle Metal Hydride), which grossly reduces fossil fuel consumption on the order of 30% to 40%. (50mpg vs 30mpg is 40% savings).
You wish to deny the intermediate step just because… of your weird obsessive compulsive desire of perfection? We all know that 100-million EVs is out of the picture, even on the scale of 10 years of progress and production. We’re literally going to run out of Lithium by 2025 and become production constrained.
When the battery tech is ready. Sodium-Batteries are coming as are Silicon-Lithium, both of which will improve our chances. There’s also recycling centers that aren’t functional yet before Li-ion is a truly green solution.
How many EVs do you think can be made in the next 10 years? Now multiply that by 5 to 20 (because PHEVs / Hybrids use 5x to 20x fewer batteries than a pure EV). How much fossil fuel savings do we get from 20x more Hybrids (or 5x more PHEVs) ??
Its an intermediate step, but economically speaking its a necessary economic step because its more efficient to transition from ICE -> Hybrid/PHEV -> EV, than to not do so. Especially given the economic realities of spinning up Li-ion production.
Lmayo converting 100 M cars is not realistic either
There exists a Hybrid in every vehicle segment, and its technology available to Toyota, Honda, Hyundai, Ford, GM, Stellanis, BMW and more.
The only reason we’re not converting to Hybrids is because online idiots have decided to kill the idea and never give them a proper try. But the market is healing, people are realizing how reliable and practical they are today.
EVs should continue developing of course. But the immediate best move for our society is to immediately move to hybrids and off of traditional ICE. And the technology is in fact, available today… and at cheap prices… to allow for such a move.
What we need is EV fans to get off the backs of people buying a $23,000 Corolla Hybrid or $25,000 Ford Maverick. They need to congratulate these car drivers for making a better environmental choice and something that fit their budget. Trying to get the poor or middle class to buy $40,000+ class EVs is insane. It feels even more insane to fund that through $7500 tax credits, but even with that tax credit the Hybrids are still winning out.
The US has a deeper systemical issue of corruption regarding energy sources and pricing, I’ll agree that hybrids are the better solution when ICE fuels pay to carry their costs.
Another EV fanboy complaining about corrupt taxes and policies who likely benefits from $7500 direct handouts as well as pays $0 in gas tax aka how most states pay for Road Infrastructure.
Politics is shit. Let’s not go there. There’s black marks everywhere.
Btw. I support EV subsidies. But I admit that they are in fact, one of those subsidies you are complaining about. I feel like the subsidy regime favors EVs and therefore we EV fans should celebrate it… not bite the hand that feeds us.
We aren’t going to reach widespread adoption of electrified transit unless we have large scale subsidies like this.
… chrysler what are you doing
That Chrysler Pacifica is one of the few electrified solutions with 7 comfortable seats.
Despite that terrible reliability, its one of your best family-van options if you care about electrification at all. You just gotta grin and bear it.
It’s interesting to be on the other side of watching a subject matter expert being downvoted by laymen suffering from Dunning Kruger. Their feelings will always Trump your knowledge.
I’ve read enough on these systems to understand you’re speaking the truth here. Thanks for trying. I learned some new details on these system’s complexities.