Consumer demands for greater range in electric vehicles and the efforts by OEMs to meet those demands may prove reminiscent of the old-school muscle-car horsepower wars.
The term “range anxiety,” according to Wikipedia, was first reported in the press by Richard Acello on September 1, 1997, in the San Diego Business Journal. It referred to worries by General Motors’ EV1 electric car drivers — that they might not reach their destinations before the vehicle’s battery died, leaving them stranded.
Range anxiety has since become an everyday part of the electric vehicle (EV) lexicon, cited by many potential customers as the number-one reason they choose not to drive EVs.
There are, of course, other important reasons such as the density and proximity of charging infrastructure, charging time, and up-front costs. But potential range between charges continues to be a perceived, if not necessarily real issue mitigating the adoption of EVs.
The obvious response to such concerns, from an automaker’s perspective, is to extend an EV’s operating range. The easiest way to do so, short of some technological breakthrough (such as improved energy density), is to increase the vehicle’s battery capacity. And that is exactly what has happened.
As a point of reference, the original Nissan Leaf, which pioneered the widespread sale of modern EVs on this continent as a 2011 model, had a battery capacity of 24 kWh (kilowatt hours). The 2020 Leaf has a 40 kWh battery pack in its most basic form and a 62 kWh Plus variant is also offered.
The 2011 model’s advertised range was 117 km, as rated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Natural Resources Canada (NRC). For the 40 kWh 2020 model, the 243 km and the 62 kWh Plus version can potentially go up to 363 km between charges.
Several other current EVs offer similarly-sized battery packs and nominal ranges: Chevrolet Bolt — 60 kWh/410 km; Kia Niro EV — 64 kWh/385 km; and Hyundai Kona Electric — 64 kWh/415 km.
Based on available numbers, and allowing for some margin of safety and even the effects of low ambient temperatures and heater or AC use, those battery capacities and driving ranges should be more than adequate for most Canadian drivers, in terms of normal use.
According to the EV advocacy organization Plug’n Drive, most Canadians drive 60 km or less per day. In fact, according to the most recent Canadian census (2016), the median one-way distance people drive to their usual place of work was just 8.7 km.
Even for the worst-case scenario of 854,000 Canadians who spent more than an hour each way commuting by car, according to that census, their average one-way commuting distance was 57 km. So a round-trip commute would be well within the range of any of the EVs listed previously — if they were recharged daily.
Doing so, while it is a significant deviation from normal practice for gasoline- or diesel-powered vehicles, is a real option for a significant proportion of customers who could install charging systems at their places of residence. Which means that EVs are already a practical alternative for many, if not most, buyers.
The problems for those designing or selling EVs, however, can be traced to the words “average” or “most.” That is because “most” people aren’t “average,” or at least they don’t see themselves as such. And they don’t buy vehicles based on their average needs.
That is why they buy four-wheel-drive SUVs for the one or two times a year they may venture off-road, or at least onto a cottage trail. Or why they buy heavy-duty pickups so they can haul that big boat they plan to buy at some point. Or why they tolerate rock-hard suspension settings on the sports-coupe daily drivers they might take to a track day someday.
And it’s why they want the 600-km range of their current IC-engined vehicle before they’ll even consider an EV. Even though they seldom, if ever, spend more than three hours in a vehicle at a time.
Which is why automakers from General Motors to Tesla are pushing battery capacity specs beyond 100 kWh. GM even previewed a 200 kWh, double-layer battery pack as part of its Ultium propulsion technology for next-generation EVs.
The adoption of electric power for near-future pickup trucks, be they from Ford, GM, Rivian or Tesla, is likely to exacerbate that battery capacity competition. It will be like the muscle-car horsepower wars all over again!
While the increases in range will be welcomed by many, the downside of increased capacity — at least in the absence of that magical energy-density breakthrough — is increased weight. And the heavier an EV is, the more battery capacity it needs to drive it.
I’m sure you know where this is going.
