EARLY ADOPTERS
Range Anxiety
Range anxiety is the term often used for the misplaced fear of driving an electric car with a range that's lower than what we're used to from driving gas cars. Conquering this fear requires a shift in thinking from how many miles you can drive on a tank of gas to how many miles you drive in a day. Today's electric cars won't work for everyone. Someone that has an exceptionally long commute, say 150 miles per day, isn't going to be happy with an electric car that can only drive 100 miles between charges. That’s not range anxiety, that’s just reality. Like the Nissan LEAF introduced this year, the Toyota RAV4-EV has a nominal range of about 100 miles. We looked at our driving and knew that we don't drive over 100 miles very often,
so we figured that we could use the RAV4-EV, with its limited range, for maybe half of our driving. We were totally wrong. It's more like 98% of our driving. Despite doing the math, we were surprised how much 100 miles really is. The only time we needed to drive a gas car was when we needed to be different places at the same time. Since we both wanted to drive the cool electric car, we instituted a simple rule: whoever needed to drive the farthest got to take the electric car. Cathy's parents were skeptical about the electric car. They thought we'd end up stranded somewhere with no charge. Shortly after we got the RAV4EV, the alternator on Cathy's mom's car died, lighting up every error indicator on the dash. She had it towed to the nearest dealer and was stranded there. We were out running errands in the RAV4-EV and were down to 70% charge when she called to ask for a ride. We had plenty of charge to pick her up, drive her home and get home ourselves. The car came through for an unplanned side trip outside of our normal driving routine. Three weeks into driving electric, and range anxiety was dead. If you’re considering buying an electric vehicle, I recommend you measure your daily driving. Each morning, either record your odometer reading or zero your trip meter. The next morning, see how far you drove and write it down. Do this until you have a good idea how far you typically drive and
how far you drive on exceptional days. If you can do your driving on 70% to 80% of a vehicle’s rated range, then that electric vehicle will probably work for you.
Do You Have to Plug It In?
It's hard to appreciate what a nuisance gas stations are until you stop buying gas to fuel your car. There's the obvious problem that gas prices can fluctuate wildly which poses a real problem when you depend on gasoline to get you to work and run your daily errands. All it takes is a disturbance in some unstable country in the Middle East to threaten the world supply of oil and prices spike, turning a normal weekly expense into a genuine hardship. The inconvenience of gassing up is harder to notice because it's so normal. When the tank gets low, you have to make a detour and often end up running late. Working the gas pump leaves your hands smelling like gasoline for hours, something I used to hate doing on the way out to dinner. Gas stations are outdoors, in the cold and wet. When your favorite station is busy, you end up burning more gas while waiting to creep up in line. If you share a car and the other driver drains the tank getting home instead of stopping to fill up, you get stuck with the chore when you need to drive. None of this happens when you charge up at home overnight. People new to the concept often give me a concerned look and ask, "do you have to plug it in?" "No," I answer, "I get to plug it in." Instead of fueling at a gas station, sending my dollars overseas, and breathing toxic fumes, I charge at home with about the same effort required to charge my cell phone.
“Three weeks into driving electric, and range anxiety was dead. ” 24 CHARGED JAN/FEB 2012