The Online Photographer

I don't have an EV so I'm talking theoretically, but I am interested.

It turns out that my VW app (we currently have 2020 Golf) records our daily mileage. I recently downloaded the daily mileage for 2024, and there were only two days when we did more than 100 miles in a day. So on every other day, we would have been comfortably within the range of even the worst currently-available EV. Actually, there were a couple of long-distance multi-day trips when we would have been away from home charging for several days and thus relying on public charging. But less than a week overall.

I understand that the batteries are much less efficient when it's cold and the range drops. You can buy heat-pumps to warm the battery to recover the situation to some extent, but I don't know what that does to the price of the vehicle.

Finally, here's interesting thought: it's just possible (certainly in Europe, maybe less so in the US) that in 15 years or so it will be gas that's difficult to obtain - all those petrol (gas) stations will have closed down through lack of trade...

We've looked at EV's, but it's still a hard choice for us - having had several hybrids and LOVED them, it's really down to charing infrastructure and for me, towing. Wanted a F-150 Lightning dearly, but the range while towing just isn't enough to get to where my Scouts camp, or get there with a reserve, and there's no chargers available. That's an edge of an edge case but still would love the frunk. Likely my wife's next car may be an EV, as so long as ONE of us has a fuel powered car we always have the option, but affordability is a big concern. For normal uses, there's enough chargers and times are short enough that it's not a real blocker.

We have a plugin hybrid, Prius Prime, my wife has it, she lets me drive it sometimes. So much fun to drive, when it's electric. Our next car will be all electric, as long as we also have a long range car. We do long trips a few times a year, so it's still necessary for us, and I've vacationed with friends doing long trips with a full EV. It wasn't encouraging. As you say, mileage may vary.

Now my mother-in-law, she's got a ID4, and it's perfect for her. It would be perfect for us as a second car, an around town car. Call it anything within a 100 miles of home, 200+ mile range. I gotta say, after driving her car for several weeks when she was out of town, if you haven't looked at that car, you should. The leases are really good too, like $129 a month. I'm sure the mileage is low for that, but if that fits your life, then...

Electrics are fabulous, as long as you can work with the differences. And the next time there's a spike in oil prices, because isn't there always every few years, you don't have to care. Good luck on finding the right answer for you.

I think you miss the point. A 500-600 mile range is not about soothing anxiety. It is about soothing laziness. With a 500-600 mile range, you very seldom have to bother thinking about refueling.
I have a hybrid van and an ebike. The fact that I have to make sure I charge the ebike battery after every ride is a little annoying. Especially when I go a month of local driving without having to gas up the van.
The hybrid van range is also valuable, for me, because the van is primarily for transporting me and gear to semi-remote campsites on weekends. While finding gas stations is not difficult, in rural areas they are often not open late at night.
Quick note: I commute with the ebike and I still have charge after a single round trip commute (about 20 miles total) but not enough to do another round trip.

Ranching neighbor bought a Ford F150 lighting.
Sold it weeks later after finding out that towing a trailer full of livestock reduced his driving range to 85 miles. Couldn't even get to the Livestock aucthin, much less back.
Rural areas - real farm country nowhere near major highways - Range Anxiety is real, with real reasons for it. Add in winter weather below zero, iced up charging stations and no roadside assistance with a few gallons of electricity and dou have good reasons few up here even try fully electric vehicles. Hybrids - yes. We see a number of them.

No.
You can't.
Not in an article on EVs.
"Now, of course, "your mileage may vary." As they say."
Bad Mike.

I've argued for quite a while that all cars should be (at least) plug-in hybrids. I have one, and I'd guess I buy perhaps a tank of gas every other month or so -- maybe six 17-gallon tanks a year. My car, a Mercedes, gets about 55 or 60 miles in the summer (right now) and about 50 in the winter. I live in a small city, Santa Fe, and I rarely drive more than 50 miles in a day. I don't know how long it takes to go from a flat battery to fully charged, but Mercedes claims it's 2.5 to 3 hours. I know I can go from flat to fully charged in a short afternoon, and overnight I don't even have to think about it with a 250V outlet in the garage. Having a gas backup eliminates range anxiety. Also, I asked my AI how far the average American drives in a day, and ChatGCP gave me a range of statistics, from about 30 miles per day to about 37 miles per day. If all cars were hybrids with a battery like mine, on average Americans would be driving electric cars.

The real expert in this is Ctein, who drove his Tesla from San Francisco to Santa Fe with no problems. No problems, of course, other than the fact he was driving a car sold by a fascist. (Note the lack of a smiley.)

Range anxiety agrees with everything I read. If you do take a long trip, you're going (or should) stop every couple of hours for a break anyway. It's probably ten minutes for filling and hitting the rest room; so maybe you're adding ten minutes to a stop every 150 miles.

And although many of us keep our cars for years, so leases make no sense. But with good deals and the unknown of EVs, leases seem to make a lot more sense.

And the first commenter writes about one thing you need to be aware of—cold.

Why the Mustang over the Equinox? Look at the Honda too if it's a better deal than the Equinox, but it's bigger. As you probably know by now it's heavily based on the GM platform. If I had to buy one today, it would be the Equinox though. But I don't expect to change cars for several years.

One negative is that the build out of charging stations will probably slow down due to the felon and his cronies. But seemingly not an issue for you.

Agree with your comments on range anxiety. I think there are a couple issues at play here. One, I think people who don’t own EVs are less aware of how many chargers are around. They aren’t advertised nearly as prominently (or in traditional ways) as gas stations, since EV drivers tend to find them via apps. Two, it takes some time to get out of the ingrained mindset that you regularly need to visit a refueling station, since as you point out, EV drivers mostly don’t.

Also, as you mention the ingrained mindset that you would be waiting to charge at all. I recently took a small road trip of about 450 miles, over several days, and never used a fast charger or waited for a charge; there happened to be slow chargers conveniently located such that I could just charge a bit here and there as I ate dinner or whatever, and that was enough; actually less waiting than if I had driven a gas powered car.

There are trade offs, sure (like the difference in cold weather fuel economy), and certain use cases where an EV wouldn’t be appropriate (like you frequently travel very long distances in remote areas). But I think many drivers would see a net benefit in convenience with an EV.

There’s a temptation to analogize everything about EVs to gas powered cars, if that’s your only experience, but some aspects are distinctly different. It’s kind of the same as drawing analogies between film and digital cameras. With a digital camera, you are going to take more pictures, yet you are not going to print nearly as much. You just aren’t. Photoshop is kind of like the darkroom, but…

I filled up my gas tank with 16 gallons of gas at $2.65 per. I drove to Marfa, Texas which is about 465 miles (route dependent) for a film festival. When I got to Marfa I still had about an eighth of a tank of gas left. My Subaru Legacy Sport sedan averaged 33.5 miles per gallon for the trip. I used about 14.5 gallons of gas. 14.5 gallons X $2.65 per gallon = $38.5 Multiplying by two for the round trip the cost of gas was $77. Add in a passenger and the cost to go 930 miles was $38.50 per person. Since there were gas stations all along the route I had no range anxiety whatsoever. Texas is different. There's a lot of distance between some destinations. And major cities. And people do tend to travel between them. Since I paid cash for the car there is no interest burden and I would venture to say that the cost of interest on a loan would totally offset the cost of gas while the traditional and well reviewed gas powered automobile also holds its resale value very, very well. Factor in the higher insurance for most EVs and traditional gas powered cars, which also cost less at the outset, are still a better deal for most average drivers. With the low mileage you report driving the cost savings from plugging in a car every day and sourcing electricity from a utility vendor it would take tens of thousands of miles or seven to ten years of use with an EV to hit a break even point vis-a-vis a gas car.

I get it if you just want a new car and want to try an EV but to run the numbers, accounting wise, as a rationale for an investment into new technology is questionable in light of the current markets. And your current driving needs.

If you are going to buy a brand new EV it would make sense to do it before the $7500 federal credits expire in September. With your driving needs/mileage that $7500 would pay for gas and oil changes for something like seven to ten years with your current vehicle or something practical like a Toyota Corolla.

Accounting. It's good to have the facts. But sometime you just want something different. Understandable.

People writing from places like the U.K. and the E.U. have a vastly different set of variables since they pay a much higher rate for gasoline....or petrol.... Advice that works for dense population areas that are also burdened with very high fuel prices is not easily transferable to markets like Texas or rural NY.

Do the EV cars you are considering have five speed manual transmissions? Or is that no longer a feature you desire?

[What I like is responsiveness and control, which (good) electric cars give you in spades, more so than any ICE vehicle I've ever owned or driven regardless of transmission.

As for your other points, you're very thoughtful. However, I'm not thinking of this entirely in terms of dollars in my own wallet. EV, hybrid, and plug-in hybrid sales have risen every year since 2015 except the first year of the pandemic. I believe those cars are the future, at least in the near- to middle-term (no one can safely predict disruptive technologies that don't yet exist), and I'd like to support that. I believe zero-emission vehicles are critical to the human and overall ecology, and I'd like to support that. I'd like to support solar energy and continuing battery R&D as well. I'd actually sacrifice some self-interest to be able to participate. But it looks like I won't have that luxury, so it's sort of a moot point. –Mike]

I've had an MG ZS EV for three years now. And I love it. The only downside I think is the drop in range from the day I got it ⏤ 320 km in the beginning, now down to 290 km after three years.

I had to look up the term ICCU. You should write in your post that it is the "Integrated Charging Control Unit". I'm an old-time gasoline engine user, so these terms related to electric cars are foreign to me.

Ioniq6 No problems so far for 6 months. Had the ICCU checked and replaced under a recall in 2 hours. Running fine. We average about 150 miles per week. The level 2 charger tops it up in 2 hours.
No regrets here.

Disclaimer: I’m not ”anti-EV” in any way, but you should consider where you live when deciding.

Say you buy a car with a 300 mile range: In the dead of winter you can shave 40% off your range estimates. So now you’re at, say, 175 miles. Thats IF you’re willing to run the battery to zero, having started at 100% charge.

Thing is, most manufacturers recommend not regularly charging to full capacity to save wear on the battery. 80% seems to be the sweet spot.

So…you now start at 220 miles, minus 40% for the cold…Anxiety, here we come.

These battery or gas issues sound like the battery-dependent/manual issues back when the then “new” all-battery cameras were starting to come in…

Comments from an extremely happy Ioniq 5 AWD vehicle for 3.5 years in a semi-rural town in Maine...

No, Hyundai hasn't solved the ICCU problem. There are reports of 2025 models having the problem. Hyundai isn't publishing the failure rate. But best guesses from reasonably unbiased people is a 1-2% failure rate. They've issued 2 recalls to fix the problem, but all they did was (presumably) lower the failure rate, not eliminate the underlying causes.

Your usage is near ideal for an EV. The one factor you didn't specifically mention was having a 240V outlet w/ 30A+ current capability in easy reach of your parked car. For more luxurious living, that plug would be under a car port or in a garage. You MIGHT be able to get by with just the standard 110V15A circuit, but for that EZ EV living style...nothing beats a 240V50A circuit.

Range anxiety is a raging pandemic among non-EV owners. Once you do 1 or perhaps 2 trips using fast charging, you develop a lifetime immunity to the disease. Especially for those who are more analytical and/or like to plan ahead. (Leaf and earlier Bolt owners perhaps excepted.)

We are still years to a decade away from solving the more difficult use cases. Need to tow a trailer across Alaska in winter? ICE vehicles only as of 2025. Live in an area with low gas prices and high electricity prices? ICE vehicles maybe less expensive to operate there in 2025. But improvements in battery energy density and more equitable government policies will resolve those problems.

2025--at least through late September--is shaping up to be an excellent time to buy or lease an EV.

In the UK the vast majority of new EV car sales are "company" cars.This is where your company provides the car as part of your salary package, and gov legislation means that companies receive a tax break, as does the employee, if the car is an EV. An ICE company car you pay lots of tax on, EV is virtually free. Which one would you choose? :-)

It's important to recognise the basic practical characteristics of ICE vs EV. ICE good fuel consumption on long runs, poor on short stop/start journeys. EV's have the opposite characteristics. Poor on long high speed runs, good on stop/start short journeys.

EV manufacturers recommend only charging to 80% to extend the life of the battery. If you are only keeping the car for a few years, then human nature is to ignore and charge to 100%. Some one else gets the problem :-)

If you are only doing local journeys and can charge at home then EV's are a good choice. Although, in the UK depreciation on EV's is horrific, so leasing rather than owning is best. The leasing company has the problem.

A leasing company, LEX, in the UK has recorded Lex Autolease, a major vehicle leasing company owned by Lloyds Banking Group, reported a £10.6 million pre-tax loss for 2024. This loss comes after a significant drop from the previous year's profits, with pre-tax profits falling by over £400 million. The company attributes this downturn to several factors, including increased depreciation on the funded fleet, lower profits from vehicle disposals, particularly electric vehicles (EVs), and rising borrowing costs due to interest rate increases.

So range isn't usually an issue for local journeys but range in EV's is more problematic because it is impacted by weather. When it is cold range is reduced significantly, not so much of a problem in the UK although Scotland can get down to below 25F in the north of Scotland.

Turn on the cabin heating, range decreases, etc.
Then in the UK we have a lack of Fast EV chargers that are either available, some one is hogging the charger by charging to 100% (which is slow), charger not working etc.

If you are not doing regular long journeys you have the issue that you are not used to planning your journeys, where you have to drive a route that includes suitable charge stops (do you know how reliable the charge availability will be?). What if it isn't working is there another charge station within range of whatever your battery level is now?

So EV's work for short journeys and are better than ICE vehicles. Longer journeys are also OK but you need careful planning which you can get used to doing.

In the UK at the moment if you only have one car (company car drivers normally have two, one provided and one purchased, so that they can use the ICE vehicle for longer journeys, holidays etc)a self charging hybrid gives you the best of both worlds eg Toyota Prius (Honda hybrid system is better).

The hybrid EV battery provides low speed instant torque and boosts the MPG figure (lowering CO2 emissions) and you don't have to worry about range.

The UK Gov is currently incentivising private motorist EV purchase with a $5,000 grant. Trouble is if EV's are so good that they need the Gov to give you $5,000 then....

Look at it this way…it’s the time factor of changing the battery. With gas you go to the pump fill up and you’re all set to go. No concerns about how long to charge etc. Get a hybrid best of both worlds and you have your own on board charging station. I get 53 mph with my Prius. ]

My post-retirement driving is such that I only refuel every three-four weeks. I’d have to drive until after I’m dead for fuel savings to offset the 10k or so up charge a BEV incurs. And that doesn’t include the lousy depreciation and higher insurance that BEVs “enjoy”.

This will change as newer battery technologies come to market but for now I still see BEVs as early adopter products. If I get another car it’ll likely be an ICE. I’d prefer something electric but I can’t justify it.

Before you base your buying decision on saving the planet you might want to read this alternate perspective: https://www.narcissips.com/en-us/blogs/news/the-dirty-secrets-of-evs?srsltid=AfmBOool3DAB1p9QLBmRgbWBuTLTAi24ogeQt-WUBxCIgH_EHkRnojMC

I was just reading about the Hyundai ICCU issue last week. Motor Trend, where they're long-term testing an Ioniq 6, did a somewhat deep dive and gathered some data. If you haven't seen it, it may be worth five or ten minutes: https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/2024-hyundai-ioniq-6-yearlong-review-update-3-iccu-recall

Not everyone needs a Level 2 charger. Even a plain household outlet can trickle-charge an EV, and a 220V appliance circuit will do it faster. Some users won't need more than that for their regular use.

Regarding recommended maximum charge: While you're not supposed to DC fast charge an EV battery to 100%, or to keep it at 100% charge for a long time, occasionally slow-charging on AC (like on a home charger) to 100% is not only OK, it's recommend on some models in order to keep the car's charge and range estimates accurate.

I have so much range anxiety that long before there were EV's I'd get upset somewhere between half and a quarter full. When I'd go to workshops in the Sierras or Utah, I'd start each day with a full tank of gas regardless of how far I had to go that day. When all my friends were getting Teslae (plural of Tesla in Latin), before Elon went nuts, I tried but could not get my head around the range issues and still cannot. So... I got a plug in, a Lexus NX450H+ which as I write this has 50 miles of EV, and 467 miles of gas range. I rarely go to a gas station and rarely does the hybrid gas engine kick in unless I'm on a road trip. Even then I charge at a hotel if it's free. At home I charge my car with a 110 outlet, no fancy level 2 charger. When the electricity is all gone, it charges in just over 10 hours. I'm older now and not at all sure I'll ever get a full EV even though in my town (Oregon-suburb of Portland) there are about 5 commercial chargers in walking distance from my home. As so many have said, YMMV. Good luck in your decision making.

I was always a hand held meter guy. Nothing beats an incident meter, and sometimes I needed a flash meter anyway. And the built in meters would keeps giving different readings when you knew the light hadn’t changed. So most of my cameras either were meterless or maybe had broken meters because they were cheap.

But I thought the people complaining about the camera not operating without a battery and needing to carry a battery were idiots. They have to carry film with them, so balking at carrying a battery seems weird.

I also thought paying good money to have a light meter adjusted was a waste of money when “+.5” on a piece of tape was just fine.

On another site there’s a conversation about range anxiety, and I remembered that my father had a little Datsun 720 diesel pickup with an 80 gallon auxiliary tank for fueling farm equipment. In theory it could go over 2500 miles but we never got it more than 30 miles away from home, and Chevron would deliver 500 gallons of gasoline and diesel to out house. I used to drive 2800 miles nonstop a couple times a year, but that was 20 something year old me.

A report on my own EV experience.

We bought a used 3 year old Kia E-Niro 4 with 17,000 miles on the clock. We live in Bromley, an outer suburb of London, no worries about crossing a desert, so different concerns than some living in wilderness US regions, but probably representative of many city or suburban dwellers. We mostly charge overnight on the driveway from a 7kW home charger with a type 2 connector.

The E-Niro has a specified 282 mile range on a full charge. In summer we have found the real world range can hit 350 miles on the clock (about 330 in reality). Not sure why, maybe because we are permanently in eco-mode and do a lot of town driving where EVs do very well. In the winter (not particularly cold in the UK) range does drop. A realistic 270 miles I would estimate. But it isn't cold that drops the range, but rain. Not absolutely sure why, but probably the tyres having to push all that water out of the way.

Long distance driving has a different meaning in the US to the UK (a small island) but we routinely drive from home to our summer house in Scotland, a journey of 375 miles. It's no problem at all now that banks of fast chargers have been installed in motorway services (although there are more EVs than there used to be and at peak times there can sometimes be a queue). Top ups take about 30-40 mins (the E-Niro only charges at 70kW max and can't take advantage of very fast chargers), time for a break and a bite to eat. Because we always do the same route we know where and when to stop, but we always make sure that we have planned at least two alternatives in case of unexpected trouble.

I suspect that if you are used to petrol cars with 500 miles of range and petrol stations everywhere, you can develop a quite causal mindset about refuelling and EV usage requires a bit more planning. But it's straight forward enough once you switch to a mode of thinking ahead. Last year we took the car on the Eurostar to France and drove down to south of France. It was a piece of cake, chargers everywhere.

We still have our VW Golf 2.0L GT as a backup, but since we got the Kia, neither of us have any interest in driving that car. The EV driving experience really obsoletes fossil cars. I love to have the regen on max, you rarely have to brake, you contol the speed with the accelerator pedal alone and with no clutch or gear changes to worry about and maximum acceleration available at essentially any speed, it's a very smooth and effortless way to drive. Especially important on our narrow and packed streets with all the weird road layout, signage and speed limit messing about we now have. The less driving input you have to do, the more brain resources available for figuring out whether you are in a 20mph or 30mph zone or whether or not you can or can't drive into that bus lane or yellow box...

"Remember the admonition to change your camera's batteries every year on your birthday whether your camera needed it or not?"

Well, if you remember how batteries used to leak nasty chemicals after a while, that's not bad advice.
==========
"everybody's like, oh, yes, these digital cameras require rechargeable batteries that have to charged virtually EVERY DAY, but we're all fine with that, no problem, we can handle it."

That's because their beloved cell phones had to be charged quite often, so they were used to it.

Think of how many devices you can't use if your electricity goes out for a week.

I would look at a Tesla model (new Y) because
1. You get a car plus a chauffeur (Full Self Driving)
2. You get a car which can be transformed via software into a Robotaxi and generate an income.

Another poster recommended the VW ID.4, and I have to warn any potential buyers that VW has had a lot of trouble getting promised software upgrades out to their cars. It was so bad that their former CEO was ousted because of the late software issues. The Porsche arm of VW seems to be doing a little better, but I suspect they did a deeper integration with Apple because they know how bad their own software is.

This is not to say that no other manufacturer has had or is going to have software issues. The legacy car companies are trying to find their footing in this new world of what the industry calls "software defined vehicles", where the software controls as much of what a car is and does as the mechanical bits. Instead this is a warning to not just apply a checklist to the features of a car: Carplay? Check. ADAS level 2? Check. etc.

Instead you have to dig deeper, probably in user forums or maybe Facebook groups, to see how people are actually getting along with their cars. For example, Carplay, which one would expect to be tightly regulated by the Walled Garden Company, varies widely in quality across manufacturers, and even with different software releases within the same vehicle!

ADAS (Advanced Driver Assistance Systems) also varies quite a bit in performance and reliability. Same thing with the charging and motor system (charging speeds have been increased significantly with software updates in some cars, including the ID.4) as well as all the other bits of the system that are software driven. Not having your displays crash and reset while you drive is also a software thing.

The ability to update software quickly and reliably is probably more important than anything else with EVs, and so far the legacy makers are lagging behind the new companies. Tesla, Lucid, and Rivian have all shown they can deliver useful features and upgrades over software consistently and quickly. The legacy companies less so though some are better than others.

Anyway, all this to say that there is a lot of stuff going on under the skin of these vehicles, and don't rely on high-level executive summary feature lists to select a vehicle. Look also at how they treat their existing users who've already bought a vehicle: are they still fixing bugs and giving them useful software updates?

I would love an EV, but I live in an apartment and the nearest charging station is too far away to be practical. A PHEV is a definite option for me, given that my employer has charging stations.

On the subject of range, I have heard that there are these places (often near airports) that will let you borrow one of their cars (ordinary-range gas powered vehicles, mostly) in exchange for a fairly small amount of money (compared to a monthly car payment)! Amazing!! I dunno about you, but I don't take near enough 100+ mile road trips to be bothered by the thought of having to rent a car for them.