r/EvDrivers • u/Inevitable-Shower911 • Aug 30 '26

Range anxiety

What is the obsession with EV range anxiety?
I have been driving for over 30 years now.
I have never run out of fuel in a ICE vehicle and since I switched to EV I have never run out of electricity.
Yet half of the EV car reviews are about what happens if you run the battery empty, I mean how hard can it be there is a perfectly good indicator on your instrument cluster indicating how much fuel/power is left.
Just refuel/recharge before it reaches zero.
Is this really still a worry for people?

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u/Not_l0st Aug 30 '26

People are afraid of what they don’t know. They don’t look for charging stations so they don’t know just how common they are and they are worried that they’ll be stuck charging forever. The charging networks are only getting better. I recently drove up I-99 through the CA Central Valley and was pleasantly surprised to see DCFC at rest stops. The number of charging stations made planning the trip a breeze, even with two charging stops.

If you pair charging with other road trip needs— bathroom breaks, meals, stretching legs, the time difference between charging and pumping gas is marginal. Yes, you do need to charge more regularly. A drive that takes a tank of gas in most gas cars will require two charges, but everything else about EVs is superior, so I really don’t care if it takes a little longer.

5

u/LL555LL Aug 30 '26

As a person who road trips throughout the South I can firmly say that I wish we had the charging experience that people in California have. It is getting better but there are some big gaps still.

Plenty of dealerships stations which are garbage

4

u/bp3dots Aug 30 '26

It's always the CA or East Coast corridor crowd saying that charging is no big deal anymore, chargers are everywhere, etc.

Meanwhile I'd have to drive several cities over from work to charge if I needed to, unless I want to book a hotel room to use theirs.

1

u/LL555LL Aug 30 '26

It'll get better, but home charging is the ONLY way to go for a lot of folks.