STUDY: "Range anxiety" not based on rational thinking
Chevy Volt Home Chargers - Click above for high-res image gallery
Conventional wisdom would tell you that an electric car with a range of 93 miles can be driven up to about, oh, 93 miles or so before needing to be recharged. Apparently, most drivers aren't comfortable with that idea. According to a study performed a few years back by Aerovironment and Tokyo Electric Power Co., electric car operators don't often venture past half the car's available range or venture more than roughly 10 miles from the closest available charger. When asked, those same drivers said they felt confident that the vehicle's range was equal to that stated by the manufacturer. Belief vs. action.
Further, drivers will stop and recharge their batteries even if there is significant range left in the car's power pack. For these reasons, Aerovironment concluded through its study that a viable infrastructure for electric cars must include at least one charger for each vehicle sold. Of course, this potential stumbling block could be negated in large part by extended-range EVs like the Chevy Volt until an adequate infrastructure is in place for pure battery electric cars.
Gallery: Chevy Volt Home Charging Units
[Source: All Cars Electric]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
T at Clarkson 7:57PM (8/25/2009)
I think this anxiety comes from us using our laptops....and all too often watching the 0:49 drop to 0:07 after about 3 minutes of use.
Not trusting the estimate the electronics are giving us.
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PopSmith 8:12PM (8/25/2009)
I believe part of the "range anxiety" problem is that people don't
realize how far they travel in a single day.
Also, any correctly engineered electric motor can also act as a
generator, which is then used when you slow down (i.e. stop and go
traffic, just for traffic lights, etc.) to put a few more miles worth
of juice back in the battery pack, helping you go that much further
between charges.
"Further, drivers will stop and recharge their batteries even if
there is significant range left in the car's power pack."
This is actually a good thing, at least when it comes to Li-Ion
packs. They last longer if they are kept at an optimum level, which
is done by plugging the car in when you have the chance.
Another "problem" people have with batteries (particularly Li-Ion
packs) is that their experiences are usually poor ones due to
non-optimum (or even non-controlled) conditions for the battery pack.
The average laptop battery lasts ~1 year before it kicks the bucket.
However, this is due to several reasons:
1) The battery is only passively cooled, this means it's temperature
isn't regulated to stay at the "optimum" level.
2) The components of a laptop (mainly the CPU and GPU) give extra
"passive" heat to the Li-Ion pack. When combined with the
passive-only cooling the extra heat quickly reduces the overall life
of the battery.
3) Laptops are usually charged fully (not really great for a Li-Ion
pack, if I remember right they work best when only charged to ~90% of
capacity) then fully (or near fully) drained repeatedly. This is also
bad for the battery pack, although probably not quite as bad as the
temperature problem.
The Li-Ion packs in cars (i.e. The Roadster and Model S, probably the
Volt as well) are liquid and air-cooled to keep them at an optimum
temperature. They also have their capacity (both "full" and "empty")
carefully read and kept in check by software. This insures that the
battery will never charge or drain past it's optimum levels.
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Throwback 8:14PM (8/25/2009)
These "studies" are always amusing. They claim that people are not thinking rationally then they put in this sentence, "Further, drivers will stop and recharge their batteries even if there is significant range left in the car's power pack".
Gee, I wonder why people would charge up with half the battery life left? Range anxiety.
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ziv 8:35PM (8/25/2009)
For 50 years cars have had a 300+ mile range. BEV's have a third of that, usually. Sometimes less. An ICE can refuel in 5 minutes at any of a dozen places nearby most people, at any hour of the day. A BEV will take longer to refuel, and there are almost no places to refuel a BEV, and if you can refuel a BEV in 10 minutes, it will shorten the life of the battery pack.
It isn't range anxiety when you drive a BEV, it is range irritation. That is why the Volt and other ER-EV's will kick the BEV's to the curb. If GM can get the price of the Volt down. If GM doesn't get the price down, the Volt will be an interesting idea that encouraged the BYD ER-EV or the Tesla ER-EV. BEV's can't compete with a smaller battery ER-EV because the batteries are still too expensive, and will be for years to come.
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phez 8:46PM (8/25/2009)
The gasoline generator is still an interim solution, the stopgap between past and future technologies. Hydrogen will replace the gasoline in the generator role in the near future - until battery technology allows for quick recharging and extended ranges as we see in normal cars today.
ziv 9:09PM (8/25/2009)
Phez, I agree that the ICE generator is an interim solution. But I don't think that the evidence shows that BEV's will be anywhere close to being as effective for most drivers in the next 10-12 years. And hydrogen is a joke, the EROEI is horrendous. ER-EV's like the Volt need a reduction of 20% in cost to make it work financially. That is probably going to happen. BEV's need the price of battery packs to drop 50% or more for them to make sense financially.
That might happen in 10 years, or more.
Hydrogen fuel cells are still fool cells, their price would have to drop 80%+ to make any kind of sense, and then they would still be incredibly inefficient, plus there is no hydrogen refueling network in place. It may be great to use a hydrogen car, but if it has one fueling station 40 miles away, that dispenses hydrogen that costs the equivalent of $5 a gallon since it is so in-efficient, or worse, what good is it?
20 years from now, BEV's will be the obvious choice, but for the next 10-15 years, ER-EV's have a huge advantage over the competition.
Greg Blencoe 8:34PM (8/25/2009)
The problem is that the driving range in battery-only vehicles will vary greatly depending on the driving style. The range will go way down with aggressive and/or high speed driving. Therefore, consumers will have to be conservative in how many miles they think the vehicle will go.
People will not like the thought of being on the side of the road and then having to possibly wait hours to charge up in order to be able to drive all the way home.
Darryl Siry, former CMO at Tesla, has done an outstanding job of discussing this issue in the following two articles.
“Nissan’s first big mistake out of the blocks (Nissan Leaf)”
http://www.darrylsiry.com/2009/08/nissans-first-big-mistake-out-of-blocks.html
“The Problem with EV Range Figures”
http://www.darrylsiry.com/2009/05/problem-with-ev-range-figures.html
Furthermore, Bill Reinert from Toyota discussed the impact of driving style on battery range in the following quote:
“The fact of the matter is there is a huge variability in the gas mileage you get, I see 100 miles per gallon here. And yeah, you can do it if you are driving 35 miles an hour. But if you’re on the 110 Freeway going to Pasadena where you’ve got an on-ramp that’s not even as long as this stage, you’ve got to run wide-open throttle to get into the lane and not get killed. And when you start doing that, you know, what you started out with a 20-mile range becomes a 5-mile range. And what you started out with 100 miles per gallon ends up being more like the common Prius. So you gotta worry about that kind of stuff, because you don’t want to send mixed messages out to the customer.”
http://hydrogendiscoveries.wordpress.com/2009/02/25/bill-reinert-from-toyota-battery-range-in-plug-in-vehicles-can-drop-significantly-in-real-world-driving/
Mainstream consumers are not going to like this at all and are much more likely to instead wait to purchase a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle in 2015 like the Toyota FCHV-adv which gets 431 miles of real-world driving range.
Greg Blencoe
Chief Executive Officer
Hydrogen Discoveries, Inc.
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meme 2:40PM (8/26/2009)
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ufgrat 8:51PM (8/26/2009)
People would be better off waiting for the 5th generation fuel cell, which gets better fuel efficiency.
Of course, since they're going to have to wait for a standardized fueling infrastructure anyway, their best bet is still an EREV for the immediate future.
Chris M 2:16AM (8/28/2009)
The range of ALL vehicles will vary depending on the driving style, that isn't unique to battery electrics. Electrics are actually less affected by "driving style" than other vehicles, thanks to their high efficiency even at high power output.
Yes, it is possible to run out of fuel and stall with any type of motorized vehicle, thats why we have tow trucks. But I'd argue that the chance of "running out" would be less in a vehicle that is "refilled" every night, as contrasted to a vehicle that is only refilled once a week or so when the tank is nearing empty, assuming that the average daily drive was significantly less than the range per fillup.
Few people have the facilities to "top off" the tank every night with gasoline, and it is too much of a hassle anyway. While some attempts were made to make a "home H2 refueling station", the size and cost ($50,000) makes it a very difficult sale, and again it would be too much of a hassle to "top off" the H2 tank every night. Only with Battery Electrics and plug-in hybrids is it inexpensive to install home recharging and convenient enough to do every night.
nrb 9:49PM (8/25/2009)
This study had a conclusion that it wanted to draw and found a way to create a study to draw that conclusion. This is why studies suck.
Concerned about a 93 mile range that's more like 20 miles when it's -20F and takes all day to recharge, assuming you can find a place to recharge it? You're irrational!
Btw: I'm not against EVs, but range anxiety is not irrational. EVs have limitations and you need to decide how those limitations affect you.
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meme 2:40PM (8/26/2009)
"Concerned about a 93 mile range that's more like 20 miles when it's -20F and takes all day to recharge"
Thanks for the straw man. Any more you'd care to offer?
Chris M 2:44AM (8/28/2009)
It is the power that decreases when the batteries get cold, not the energy. So, while the acceleration might be less at -20, the range will still be the same. Or perhaps slightly greater range, if low power results in driving more slowly!
nrb 9:48AM (8/28/2009)
Chris, I find that difficult to believe. When that cold, my cell phone and/or flashlight has a life that's a small fraction of it is when it's warm. Also, people aren't going to drive slower, just because it's cold.
My point is that there are concerns about range. They can be debated, but range anxiety is not irrational.
why not the LS2LS7? 9:51PM (8/25/2009)
I'm sure people are over conservative. It comes from better safe than sorry. Walking home sucks.
Rational or not, it doesn't really matter. The customer holds the pursestrings. You can talk at them all day and tell them how they're wrong about what they need. But it's going to be difficult to actually change their mind. And even if you do manage, you better hope they never run out of gas (er, charge), because if they do, they're going to think right back to that conversation (cause people love to blame others for their own mistakes) and vow never to buy another vehicle with that short a range again.
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Brett 10:38PM (8/25/2009)
What an MBA can teach a PhD is that regardless if the anxiety is rational or not, it must nonetheless be addressed such that the product would ever gain mainstream acceptance. The folks who read this website are not considered "mainstream"- we are the early adapters.
Either through education, practice/usage from piers, or technological improvement will this anxiety be addressed so that, as Sarah Palin would put it- Joe SixPack would buy an EV or PHEV.
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jake 1:16AM (8/26/2009)
That's why they suggest at least one charger for each vehicle sold. Of course, simple education is the easiest solution. Also this is a temporary problem most likely: once people get over it, it's not going to be a problem. It would be nice to know how long they did the study.
It seems the mindset of the people were that once they were away from home, they would be stranded. This has to do with them only having 2 chargers. It's unknown if their EVs support standard plugs or just the specialized charger. If it's a specialized charger, then it makes a huge difference. For the EV drivers in CA, they can charge off RV parks when they make long trips, there's the infrastructure left over from the 90s. Worse comes to worse, they can charge in a dryer outlet of a friend or relative. If you have a specialized charger then you don't have any options when you run out of range.
I think with this mindset, it doesn't really matter if the charger is a slow charger or a fast charger. Just having a charger nearby will alleviate a lot of the fear; this seems to agree with the idea of installing a lot of public inexpensive slow chargers, and having a couple of distributed rapid chargers.
why not the LS2LS7? 2:16AM (8/26/2009)
Most people are not going to spend 3 hours in an RV park to charge their car. Remember, the guy who did this to go to Yosemite spent 8 hours of his 40 hour trip sitting in a trailer park charging his car.
Trust me, if you've ever been on a car trip with your family, you aren't going to want to add extra hours sitting around. Road trips are long enough already.
And what if it rains? Are you going to spend 4 hours in the car sitting there in the RV park?
I don't think carrying a charger is any comfort at all. If you run out of juice and you have to charge off a regular outlet, you add about 6 miles each hour you charge. And that's if you happen to run out in reach of any outlet at all.
I've had a friend charge his EV off my dryer outlet before. It's not a dream. He blew my breaker for starters. And even though he carried a $1000+ 20' cable, it barely was enough to reach my dryer outlet even though it's in the nearest room in my house to the garage. Do you know how much space a 20' x 1.3" cable takes when coiled up? It's about the size of temporary spare. And then there was the 3-prong to 4-prong converter, as there's no standard for dryer outlets (well, more accurately there are 3 standards). That converter is two 3"x3"x1.5" connected with more 1.3" cable. That's not small either. And all this is just so you can plug your charger in, the charger takes up space too!
And luckily I'm older, most younger people in California only have an apartment without an attached garage. And their dryer outlet is on the 2nd floor near their kitchen.
Basically, I really don't understand how you think charging off wall outlets or dryer outlets is a good solution for being out of range. Even under ideal conditions, you're going to drive for 4 hours (240 miles), run out of juice and then have to charge for 8 hours off a dryer outlet and then you're on the road again. That'll give you a range of 500 miles a day and that's if you're really patient. On wall outlets it's far worse, it's more like 4 hours on, 30 hours off. An RV park is maybe 50A, in theory it gives you 3 driving segments a day (700 miles), but only if you divide your 8 hours of sleep a day into two 4 hour chunks (4 hours on, 4 off, 4 on, 4 off, 4 on, 4 off).
GoodCheer 9:45AM (8/26/2009)
why not:
You are once again setting up the same old straw-man argument. If you are going to take a road trip of 240 miles with your family... YOU WILL NOT TAKE YOUR EV. 65% of households own more than one car. 35% own more than two. Everybody in the country has a friend with an (ICE) car.
I have spent hours, in the rain, in RV parks recharging an EV, and it is not something that is at all fun (even when the game room is open). We only do that because we need to take the EV to demos too far away to get there on one charge. It it were simply a matter of getting to the event, we would have taken a different car.
If you own an EV, you will be able to see that terrible RV charging debacle coming from weeks away, and if you have half a brain, you will find some other solution.
paulwesterberg 10:09AM (8/26/2009)
FYI some people like spending time in rv parks, Not all campgrounds are hellholes next to the freeway.