How much range would you need to consider a electric car

[ScienceRocks]

How much range(miles) on a single charge would an electric car need before you would consider one?

Me, 400 miles.
0 to 60 in 5 seconds
Under 3 hour full recharge
100,000 miles before replacement of the battery
Battery replacement under a few thousand dollars(tops)

 

[RGR]

How much range(miles) on a single charge would an electric car need before you would consider one?

Me, 400 miles.
0 to 60 in 5 seconds
Under 3 hour full recharge
100,000 miles before replacement of the battery
Battery replacement under a few thousand dollars(tops)

Some of us have already answered the question by buying one. So for me, its 40 miles. Works quite nicely too.

 

[Politico]

Same range and performance as a regular car.

 

[hortysir]

$15 -$20,000

 

[rightwinger]

How much range(miles) on a single charge would an electric car need before you would consider one?

Me, 400 miles.
0 to 60 in 5 seconds
Under 3 hour full recharge
100,000 miles before replacement of the battery
Battery replacement under a few thousand dollars(tops)

With gas engine backup, I could live with a 200 mile range

Good with 3 HR recharge and batteries lasting 100,000 miles

 

[flacaltenn]

How much range(miles) on a single charge would an electric car need before you would consider one?

Me, 400 miles.
0 to 60 in 5 seconds
Under 3 hour full recharge
100,000 miles before replacement of the battery
Battery replacement under a few thousand dollars(tops)

With gas engine backup, I could live with a 200 mile range

Good with 3 HR recharge and batteries lasting 100,000 miles

Actually RW -- the answer may be counter-intuitive.. There's a guy who writes for IEEE magazine (my Electrical Eng professional org) who thinks Chevy blew it by even going for 40 or 50 mile range. His argument is that 25 miles would make the charge times lower, and the price MUCH lower and create a much smaller waste stream when all those batteries get recycled. Depends on what problem you're solving for people.. Actually a street ready GOLF CART would solve 60% of my road trips. (OK -- a golf cart with bucket seats and a reasonable sound system.) Guess thats why there's a Smart Car ---

1/2 the price of a Volt.. Maybe the guy is right. Smart Car has been averaging 11,000 sales a year...

 

[hjmick]

Same range and performance as a regular car.

With the same refueling time.

 

[RetiredGySgt]

How much range(miles) on a single charge would an electric car need before you would consider one?

Me, 400 miles.
0 to 60 in 5 seconds
Under 3 hour full recharge
100,000 miles before replacement of the battery
Battery replacement under a few thousand dollars(tops)

Just driving around town is 15 to 20 miles one trip. It is 5 miles just to get to any major shopping areas. And if I go aboard base that is 10 to 12 miles one way. So I wold say no less then 200 even for town driving and 400 if I wanted to go long distance. 3 hours is a long time to waste recharging too. Now if they had cheap batteries and easily replaced....

 

[IGetItAlready]

How much range(miles) on a single charge would an electric car need before you would consider one?

Me, 400 miles.
0 to 60 in 5 seconds
Under 3 hour full recharge
100,000 miles before replacement of the battery
Battery replacement under a few thousand dollars(tops)

The real question should be, "why hasn't the range of electric cars increased even a few miles since their first widespread use just after WWI?".

 

[Foxfyre]

400 miles and a fast recharge is a bare minimum for me too. It is not unsual in my part of the world for civilized areas to be 100 or more miles apart, and sometimes those places are at best tiny communities that would not have a recharging station. Getting stranded out in the middle of nowhere, most especially in inclimate weather, is not something I care to seriously risk.

Also when I was working I could easily put 400 or more miles on my car in a day and that included a lot of stops along the way,. Does a lot of stop and go driving require as much extra fuel in an electric car as it does in a standard gasoline powered vehicle?

 

[ScienceRocks]

Electric cars: How many miles will kill 'range anxiety'?


Most electric car charges last longer than 95 percent of the trips made in the US, but 'range anxiety' is still a major drawback for many potential electric car buyers. How many miles will it take to curb that fear?

By Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield, Guest blogger / July 29, 2012

Even though research clearly shows that present electric cars can satisfy the requirements of 95 percent of all trips made in the U.S., many car buyers say electric cars need to travel further per charge before they’ll consider buying one.

Of course, not everyone who thinks electric cars need to travel further per charge actually needs the extra range, but how many miles are enough to kill electric car range anxiety for good?

120 miles

At the recent Plug-In 2012 conference in San Antonio, many experts there admitted that a target range of 120 miles per charge would be more than enough to eliminate range anxiety in most drivers.


RELATED: 10 coolest cars you've probably never heard of

At highway speeds, that equates to around two hours of driving, more than enough to cover even the most extreme of daily commutes without requiring a mid-day charge.

With direct-current fast charging technology, a battery pack that large could easily be recharged in under an hour at a rest stop, theoretically making a 240-mile trip easily possible in one morning.

While that’s still a little short for the most intrepid of long-distance drivers, a 240-mile trip in five hours is about the limit of most what most drivers -- especially with young children or pets -- can handle.

Within reasonable costs

Current electric cars, like the 2012 Nissan Leaf, manage an EPA-rated 73 miles per charge.

With battery technology improving, building an electric car with a range of 120 miles per charge within the next few years seems technologically feasible.

More importantly, with electric car battery prices already dropping faster than analysts previously predicted they would, a larger capacity battery pack capable of 120 miles of range per charge is much more likely than it was even two years ago.

Electric cars: How many miles will kill 'range anxiety'? - CSMonitor.com

120 miles on one charge isn't nearly enough.

 

[RGR]

How much range(miles) on a single charge would an electric car need before you would consider one?

Me, 400 miles.
0 to 60 in 5 seconds
Under 3 hour full recharge
100,000 miles before replacement of the battery
Battery replacement under a few thousand dollars(tops)

The real question should be, "why hasn't the range of electric cars increased even a few miles since their first widespread use just after WWI?".

Because the new ones are required to meet all the safety/impact/protection requirements that regular cars do. Which ups the weight, and of course, we demand a wee bit more performance nowadays then we did back then. Can you even imagine what a Tesla would be like compared to even 1940's vintage ICE powered cars?

 

[IGetItAlready]

How much range(miles) on a single charge would an electric car need before you would consider one?

Me, 400 miles.
0 to 60 in 5 seconds
Under 3 hour full recharge
100,000 miles before replacement of the battery
Battery replacement under a few thousand dollars(tops)

The real question should be, "why hasn't the range of electric cars increased even a few miles since their first widespread use just after WWI?".

Because the new ones are required to meet all the safety/impact/protection requirements that regular cars do. Which ups the weight, and of course, we demand a wee bit more performance nowadays then we did back then. Can you even imagine what a Tesla would be like compared to even 1940's vintage ICE powered cars?

Good point. But the fact that we've seen a net gain of roughly zero in efficiency in nearly a century is pretty remarkable and implies that we're not there yet.

I think the OP is pretty close to the mark in that we're not going to fully embrace this technology until it can compete with what we've all grown accustom to.

 

[RGR]

The real question should be, "why hasn't the range of electric cars increased even a few miles since their first widespread use just after WWI?".

Because the new ones are required to meet all the safety/impact/protection requirements that regular cars do. Which ups the weight, and of course, we demand a wee bit more performance nowadays then we did back then. Can you even imagine what a Tesla would be like compared to even 1940's vintage ICE powered cars?

Good point. But the fact that we've seen a net gain of roughly zero in efficiency in nearly a century is pretty remarkable and implies that we're not there yet.

Actually, we've had HUGE gains in efficiency if you measure it by weight moved per kWh expended, or number of conveniences and performance per kWh used. Just because the range has been static doesn't mean there haven't been huge improvements because....range isn't the overall problem, getting people to buy into the concept by giving them something comparable to an ICE powered cage is.

I think the OP is pretty close to the mark in that we're not going to fully embrace this technology until it can compete with what we've all grown accustom to.

Exactly. Which is why efficiency isn't the issue at all, even if it has increased massively. So have the expectations of car drivers. Certainly in the modern world we can't be seen shifting our own gears, not being cooled and heated, driving vast distances without a breakdown, being safe should another cager hit us, or we hit a power pole, and so on and so forth.

But 40 miles works for me, if only because why would anyone want to go to a gas station and buy foreign fuels when domestically produced energy is right there in our garage, just needing to be plugged into our cars.

 

[flacaltenn]

Got to believe that efficiency has gone up with all the braking energy scavenging, computer monitoring, and better motor design.

What HASN'T improved greatly is Charge times. Because the chemistry and physics largely haven't changed. Charge times go up to EXTEND battery life, overall efficiency and safety.

Low-tech Magazine: Overview of early electric cars (1895-1925)

Early EV manufacturers and battery makers could not agree on how to position the electric vehicle in the market. Some were convinced that the electric should be marketed as a short distance city vehicle. They saw it as a mistake to try and sell the electric as a touring vehicle, because its range would always be inferior to that of a gasoline powered car.

Instead, they focused on the fact that the range of electrics was sufficient for most people.

"Electrical World" wrote in 1909: "The average EV, as built today, has considerably more available mileage on one charge of battery than the average vehicle of ten years ago, and what is more, has a considerably greater mileage than is actually needed in the run of business or pleasure, except where a long tour is undertaken."

"I do not believe the average daily mileage of most cars is above, say, 30 miles", said the German-American engineer Charles Proteus Steinmetz to the New York Times in 1915. Steinmetz had developed a more efficient motor - incoporated in the 1917 Dey Electric Roadster - but he did not turn that advantage into a longer range. Instead, he choose to develop a lighter and cheaper vehicle (1400 pounds or 636 kg): "The series motor consumes about 20 percent more power than the controlled motor. With the same mileage, this means a savings of 20 percent of the battery weights, and as the battery is a considerable part of the car weight, a further saving of power due to lesser weight which has to be carried".

Over 100 years later, the braintrust at USMB vow to answer the very same question !

 

[lectricgenius]

How much range(miles) on a single charge would an electric car need before you would consider one?

Me, 400 miles.
0 to 60 in 5 seconds
Under 3 hour full recharge
100,000 miles before replacement of the battery
Battery replacement under a few thousand dollars(tops)

Tlready have such with both Tesla models. Plus with the advent of the zinc-air battery, we can now get a higher charge density than what gasoline offers! I say wake up America, we no longer have to be held hostage by the likes of Exxon etal. Just type this search into google and you can see we have known about the technology of zinc-air batteries for over 20 years now site:anl.gov zinc-air

 

[flacaltenn]

How much range(miles) on a single charge would an electric car need before you would consider one?

Me, 400 miles.
0 to 60 in 5 seconds
Under 3 hour full recharge
100,000 miles before replacement of the battery
Battery replacement under a few thousand dollars(tops)

Tlready have such with both Tesla models. Plus with the advent of the zinc-air battery, we can now get a higher charge density than what gasoline offers! I say wake up America, we no longer have to be held hostage by the likes of Exxon etal. Just type this search into google and you can see we have known about the technology of zinc-air batteries for over 20 years now site:anl.gov zinc-air

WHAT??? Higher energy densities than GASOLINE?? What High School propaganda are you reading? Gasoline has about 25 TIMES the energy per weight of a zinc-air battery and 5 times the energy by volume..

You're new -- you really want to blow all your cred in your 1st few posts?

And here's a news flash -- Zinc air isn't designed to MAKE power to run vehicles -- Gasoline is..

 

[Immanuel]

How much range(miles) on a single charge would an electric car need before you would consider one?

Me, 400 miles.
0 to 60 in 5 seconds
Under 3 hour full recharge
100,000 miles before replacement of the battery
Battery replacement under a few thousand dollars(tops)

Just driving around town is 15 to 20 miles one trip. It is 5 miles just to get to any major shopping areas. And if I go aboard base that is 10 to 12 miles one way. So I wold say no less then 200 even for town driving and 400 if I wanted to go long distance. 3 hours is a long time to waste recharging too. Now if they had cheap batteries and easily replaced....

I have long envisioned the idea of the gas station being replaced by the "battery station". Pull in, open the battery compartment, pull out the used battery, replace with a recharged one and go on your way. The battery station takes your battery, recharges it and then places it back into service several hours later when it is fully charged to a new customer.


Immie

 

[American Horse]

I don't see a problem with the Chevy Volt only getting 40 gas free miles in a trip event. In a longer trip I would only have to depend on gas to a smaller percentage than 100%, say 50% gas in eighty miles, and I could manage that, and spend very little on gas.

Problem is, I don' really know how much my electric bill will be boosted by the charging costs, the safety of those charging times; it's not free, and Obama's EPA has assured that at least one third of our Indiana coal fired plants will be shutting down, and that will agravate those charging costs.

On the other hand, I drive a big engine GMC Savana van, but I need it to haul my tools, and it gets about 10 mpg with my type of driving, and I nurse it - it has a fuel efficiency reading at all times.

 

[flacaltenn]

I don't see a problem with the Chevy Volt only getting 40 gas free miles in a trip event. In a longer trip I would only have to depend on gas to a smaller percentage than 100%, say 50% gas in eighty miles, and I could manage that, and spend very little on gas.

Problem is, I don' really know how much my electric bill will be boosted by the charging costs, the safety of those charging times; it's not free, and Obama's EPA has assured that at least one third of our Indiana coal fired plants will be shutting down, and that will agravate those charging costs.

On the other hand, I drive a big engine GMC Savana van, but I need it to haul my tools, and it gets about 10 mph with my type of driving, and I nurse it - it has a fuel efficiency reading at all times.

Why bother with a fuel efficiency gauge?? Just saying..

You could probably pay off a Hybrid Van with the fuel savings you would get..

MOFact ---

Chevy Express & GMC Savana Hybrid Van | XL Hybrids

THere ya go -- Same Savana --- 25% better mileage.
(((Geez -- does that mean 12.5 mpgal?)) Maybe not a good investment eh? Pushes hybrid tech a little too far me thinks..