An "Outlet" for Your Range Anxiety

Plugging in is easy, and EV infrastructure is already here: there are already millions of outlets from which to charge!

“Range Anxiety” is the concern that your electric car will not have the range to take you where you need to go, and you will be stuck by the roadside with an empty battery pack 3 and nowhere to charge. Real life experience, however, has shown us that the longer you live with an EV, the less anxious you are about range.¹ Drivers also use public charging stations much less than they anticipated, since charging at home is so convenient and EV drivers find they don’t need to charge anywhere else.²

The average American drives 33.4 miles a day.^3,4 Since most of the electric cars coming to market in the next few years get about 100 miles per charge,⁵ there is little reason to worry about range. But don’t let us convince you, keep a log of your daily mileage for 3 weeks to determine how well an EV could integrate into your life. And remember, if you live in a 2 car household, an EV will be an even easier fit!

Charging a plug in car is so simple and takes about 4 seconds. Just pull up to the charger, open the charge port, insert paddle. Most EV drivers let their vehicles charge while they sleep, but public charging infrastructure allows for additional peace of mind and will enable EVs to drive farther out of town.

As our character Gasoline says in the PSA, there are 120V plugs everywhere, and the new plug in cars coming on the market in 2011 will be able to charge from them, although faster charges are probably preferable: A level 1 charging system (which uses 120 volts, the regular outlet you see everywhere) will give you about 5 miles of driving per hour of charge. A level 2 charger (which uses 240 volts), will give you 20 miles of range for every hour of charging. A full charge will take about 30 minutes using a level 3 system. (480 volts).

An added bonus to charging is that electricity is cheaper than gasoline - up to 3 times cheaper!

Plug in vehicles coming to market now are powered by lithium ion batteries. Li-Ion batteries have twice the energy density of the NiMH batteries (in hybrid vehicles and older EVs), and about six times the energy density of lead acid batteries, which are in conventional cars. Greg Hanssen, CEO of EDrive Systems, says, "While lithium is still expensive, it is dropping and at the same time the cost of nickel [found in NiMH batteries] is rising. Over time, lithium prices will come down to the point where the batteries are cheaper". Lithium Ion is also a lighter element than nickel or lead, so it is less toxic to the environment. It has a longer life cycle. Because there is so much inherent value in Lithium, the batteries will be wholly recycled and will not add toxicity to landfills.⁶

There are concerns about lithium based batteries, however. Lithium is a limited resource, just like oil, a situation recycling can ameloriate. Its reserves are mostly found in the Andes region where Bolivia, Argentina and Chile intersect,⁷ and in Tibet. China has thus become the largest processor of lithium,⁸ which puts the United States at a disadvantage reminiscent of its Mideast oil dynamic. This will push battery technology into other areas, like zinc- air⁹ or sodium nickel chloride batteries.¹⁰ Batteries overheating is a common worry, as we have all heard the stories of laptops spontaneously combusting due to their lithium batteries. However, Peter Roth, lead researcher for Sandia National Laboratories’ FreedomCAR program says, “The energies that can be released are certainly less of a concern than driving with 20…gallons of gasoline. Are there scenarios in which the battery may get into an accident or an environment that causes it to burn? Yes, it can burn, but you're not driving around in a [gasoline] bomb.”¹¹ The Chevy Volt and Nissan’s Leaf have lithium Ion batteries.¹² Lithium iron phosphate batteries are in cars by Aptera, Smith Electric Vehicles and BYD because they stay cool and suffer less degradation than Li-Ion over time.¹³