For all the problems that electric vehicles have, the greatest impediment to them being widely adopted is their range limitation combined with the lengthy time it takes to re-charge…if a functioning charger can even be found.
I would like to share two true anecdotes about “range anxiety” today:
1) A co-worker (“Zeke”
returned to the office from an out of town trip and was greeted by co-workers who asked him how it went. He replied that it was great until the journey home, at which point he stated loudly, ”I will never, EVER, buy an electric vehicle.” This obviously got my attention, and I joined the group of employees listening as he related his odyssey.
2) It was Spring of 2021, and my wife and I had just arrived in Hilton Head for a short getaway vacation when news broke of the ransomware attack on the Colonial gas pipeline. That attack pretty much put a halt to gasoline deliveries in much of the eastern seaboard, including the state of Georgia, through which my wife and I would have to drive to get back home when our stay ended.
I immediately topped off my tank. We were 425 miles away from home. With mostly highway driving, that tank of gas might take us about 400 miles, close enough to home that someone could come fetch us if necessary. But while in the Low Country, we had also planned to visit Savannah. That round trip would consume about 65 miles of our "range." Plus, we wanted to just slowly drive around Savannah to look at the live oaks, moss, and architecture. That was going to burn more precious range. Irrespective of every other reason I despise EVs, I could never drive one simply because of range anxiety. I would be obsessed with keeping it fully charged. That experience of mine in Hilton Head / Savannah was an anomaly, but it would be my daily life if I had an EV, always worried about maintaining range for whatever emergency or trip I must embark on.[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]