Range anxiety: an overcharged story

by Stephen Bieda on 01/03/11

I concur with the projection of the nation's leading EV advocacy group Electric Mobility Canada, that 2.5% of vehicles on the road in Canada by 2018 will be electric. That seems to be a reasonable target and in line with the original Ontario government mandate of 1 in 20 by 2020 (5%). What I have issue with, is so many EV cynics citing range anxiety as the  Achilles heel of BEVs like the Nissan Leaf and the Mitsubishi iMiEV. Back in November, I was in Toronto at an EV industry conference participating in a EV infrastructure round table break out session with a host of EV stake- holders when the tiring range anxiety question was raised once again. I maintain whether you own a battery electric vehicle (BEV), a hybrid, a  PHEV, a gas or a diesel vehicle, the issue of how far you can go before running out of stored energy is always present and somewhere in the back of your  mind. The range anxiety issue is so overblown because cynics need something  to talk about and the fear of the unknown can always be relied on to strike a  chord with the public. The real difference between a Nissan Leaf and its ICE platform brethren  the Nissan Versa, is the Leaf gets up to 160 km on a charge and the Versa up to 620 km on a tank. So what! Most everyone by now has heard the much quoted figure for the daily average commute is 64 kms round trip. How often does anyone just hop in their car and drive aimlessly and not pay attention to their instrumentation? How likely is it that while you are driving your car that you will have sudden memory loss forgetting that you car can only go X kms before it requires more juice? If anything, those with a EV will be less likely  than ICE auto drivers to run out on the side of the road because they have the benefit of advanced iPod interface instrumentation and a heightened sense of what their vehicles capabilities are or are not. Range anxiety is a red herring folks! We would all love to be able to mindlessly drive forever without charging up but a fully electrified wireless highway network is still decades away.