Americans insist on 300 miles of EV range. They are right

Americans love a good road trip. There’s nothing like packing your bags, turning up the music and… driving. For more than a century, summer dreams have been fueled by the limitless possibilities of a full tank of gas.

That same “live free or die” mentality has also made the United States, until recently, slower to adopt electric car. The open road is the freedom and need to stop frequently and charge an intrusion. Last year, plug-in vehicles accounted for less than 8% of new-car sales in the U.S., far behind EV adoption rate in Europe of 32%. AND Chinait is 30% absorption.

These places have had an advantage in part by embracing small EVs with little ones batteries and limited scope. In contrast, a survey conducted last year by Bloomberg Green found that fewer than 10 percent of U.S. respondents would settle for anything less than a 200-mile range. Moreover recent number crunch on ranges for electric vehicles sold in the United States found that:

• Americans are demanding the world’s longest distances, about a third more than the global average.

• The average range of EVs is on the verge of over 300 miles, a key psychological barrier.

• Many were quick to wag their fingers at this quintessential American excess. The average commute in the US is 55 miles a day, the thought goes, so why the need for so many extra miles? But American EV exceptionalism reflects a more nuanced understanding of range limits than consumers are generally credited with.

What affects the range of electric vehicles? Very

Americans spend more time in their cars than drivers in any other country. Road trips in the United States total about 4 trillion miles annually, or roughly 14,500 miles per person — a third more than any other country. This makes range anxiety especially acute for Americans, whose access to charging networks is still limited. For new EV buyers, figuring out how much range you really need can be tricky.

The problem is, a car rated for 250 miles of range doesn’t actually provide 250 miles of reliable range. The number drops when you turn on the heat or air conditioning, or drive in the rain or against a strong wind. Sudden and frequent stops braking also consume kilometers. So does driving over 60mph, loading the car with passengers and luggage, or using a ski or bicycle rack.

Even in perfect condition, drivers can’t count on all those rated miles. Just like with a tank of gas, draining a battery to death risks stranding, so it’s important to keep a few miles to spare. Most batteries are also not meant to be fully charged — Tesla, for example, recommends not exceeding 90% for daily charging. Finally, auto buyers planning to keep their vehicle for many years will need to anticipate battery degradation over time, which is accelerated for smaller batteries.

All of these factors together can easily reduce the usable range on a 250 mile battery down to 90 miles.

At first glance, 90 miles appears to be enough to cover the average day for most drivers. But many days aren’t your average: the times you forget to plug in your car at night, or lose power, or unexpectedly need to run extra errands or check in with a friend across town.

Well, one might ask, is this not the audience battery charger are for?

A little quirk of EV charging is that it’s usually a lot faster to add a few miles of charge to a large battery than to a smaller one. This is because long-range batteries are made from materials better suited to fast charging. Also, once a battery is half full, the charge rate begins to slow down, so smaller batteries take less time to add miles to their maximum charge rate.

That means 10 minutes at a highway loader could add 160 miles of driving to a long haul Kia EV6but only 32 miles from a base Nissan leaf. Drivers must plan their pit stops accordingly.

Savvy EV owners learn how to extend range on long journeys, by keeping coats zipped up and heaters low when driving in cold weather, for example, or slowing down to 60mph on the highway instead of 75. when they stretch to make it to the next charge. But mass adoption of long-range EVs requires fewer of these trade-offs.

The technological case for the range

Some argue that, given the world’s protracted supply of batteries, automakers should prioritize smaller EVs or plug-in hybrids. The rationale is that we should distribute what we have to as many vehicles as possible.

But this battery-maximizing strategy is based on the myth that supplies can’t grow any faster, a notion debunked by a century of mass production. Admittedly, it usually takes 2 to 3 years for a new battery plant to hit the ground running and up to a decade to plan and develop new mines for essential minerals like lithium and nickel. But when demand is high enough, capitalism finds a way and battery profits in 2023 are simply too massive to continue progressing at 2013’s pace.

Right now, miners and refiners of key battery minerals are ramping up the capacity of their existing plants and opening new operations around the world at the fastest pace in history. In the United States alone, more than $58 billion has been invested in the battery supply chain eight months to March. The battery supply chain is expanding like a tidal wave, triggered by an earthquake in demand.

Another way battery supplies are growing is with expanding battery chemistries increasing production using the same amount of key materials. For example, a new generation of battery suppliers add increasing amounts of silicon to the anode, which is the part of the battery responsible for storing lithium electrons after a charge. This simple change can instantly increase your range by 20%.

That means the same Panasonic or LG Chem factory designed to build enough battery cells for 100,000 cars could suddenly house 120,000, with no major changes to the factory itself or the critical minerals it uses. These high-silicon anodes will make their debut in long-haul luxury vehicles, such as the 2025 Mercedes G-Wagonbut ultimately they should increase vehicle range and reduce costs across the industry.

This pattern is typical of successful technologies, from cell phones to solar panels. Innovation starts in high-end markets and over time economies of scale bring it to the masses. In this way, US range enthusiasts can be a driving force in reducing battery costs globally.

The environmental case for flow

Another argument against large batteries is that they add to the significant environmental cost of producing EVs. Giant EVs like the 400-mile Chevy Silverado pickup arriving later this year have roughly the same lifetime carbon footprint as a gasoline engine Honda Civicsecond EV Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In other words: if all trade their little giant electric vehicle internal combustion engines, we’re not going to make much environmental progress.

But few consumers are trading Civics for Silverados, or Volkswagen Jetta For Ford F-150 Lightning. If America’s suburban cowboys can’t be persuaded to give up their pickups, they might as well take away their combustion engines. Look in any Walmart parking lot in America and imagine if every giant SUV and truck they were replaced with a fuel-efficient one Toyota Corolla. This is the extent of the environmental achievements inherent in long-range electric vehicles. And environmental savings will only increase as batteries become more efficient and more of the grid runs on renewable energy sources.

Another thing to consider is the wonder of battery recycling. While efforts to recycle lithium-ion batteries are still in their infancy, that’s only because few electric cars have reached the end of their useful lives. Recycling electric vehicle batteries is a lucrative business and approximately 95% of the critical minerals can be recovered. Anyone buying an electric vehicle today can expect that the majority of their battery will be made from newly mined materials at a non-negligible environmental cost. But anyone buying an EV today can also expect those materials to eventually be recycled into someone else’s EV.

Better to walk

To be clear: There are many Americans for whom smaller cars and smaller batteries are sublime. These vehicles can be perfect for short city trips in temperate California, for example. Also, more people should definitely cycle, walk and use public transport. If American cities did more to accommodate these things, we’d all be healthier and happier for it.

But walkable cities aren’t what the average freedom-loving American thinks of when looking for a new electric car. The main concern for most consumers is how much range they need to fit their lifestyle and how much they can afford.

To that end, the big-battery boom is working: as the US nears the 300-mile range standard, EV adoption is starting to climb faster than in other major markets (boosted in part by subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act). Sales are expected to increase 73% this year, according to the latest estimate from BloombergNEF. This growth rate is more than twice as fast as China and more than four times as fast as Europe.

Consumers are not stupid. It’s not ignorance about how much we drive that keeps Americans from choosing lower-end cars. In fact, it’s the realization of how deeply dependent we’ve become on our vehicles that drives Americans to demand so much range.

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