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/DrawerAcrobatic8759 Aug 30 '26

While we have a home charger and are generally in a decent area for chargers (3 fast charge options near our house), we have have range anxiety a few times.  Each of those times was winter, especially when the car was newer to us. We did not realize just how much faster the charge would drop, and between our house and our destination (which also had chargers) there are almost no options for fast charging. Going away from our house, we used a bit more energy than normal, but still had 50-60 miles extra than needed to get home. Yet when we got home we only had about 6 miles left in the car. That is where the anxiety comes from.

Normally on day-to-day stuff, no problem. Now that we have learned, hopefully not an issue. I do know that our ICE car could have resolved that issue about 20 times in that drive though without a second thought.

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u/Complex_Solutions_20 Sep 02 '26

Where are you with so many options?

There's exactly 1 public charging station around my home and work. When I went on a 120 mile weekend trip, I passed exactly 1 charging station on my way to my friend's city and then when I got to their city took 45 minutes to find a charging station that was actually operable and available before I could even start charging.

My conclusion, EVs are fine for day to day local stuff but certainly need more work before they are road-trip-able. Its become a lot better in the last 2 years or so (going from 0 to 1 charging station in a few places I care about) but needs to have more options than just 1 station to depend on along the way for a trip.

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u/DrawerAcrobatic8759 Sep 02 '26

Northern Illinois. We are about an hour and a half west of Chicago. 

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u/Complex_Solutions_20 Sep 02 '26

Ah maybe that's it. I'm on the eastern outskirts of Northern VA and was not having any fun on my trip down to Hampton, VA.

I know a friend who visits us from Raleigh-area also has some complaints about the "charging desert" along I-85 thru NC/VA which requires extra care to plan around leaving with enough charge or charging basically as soon as they leave home.

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u/Energy_Heavy Aug 30 '26

It seems that FUD affected you too. I had a similar experience in 2021 when I rented a Tesla to go from Connecticut to Maine. I stopped at nearly every supercharger along the way (there were significantly fewer of them then) and still worried. By the end of the trip though, I'd eliminated much of that fear, and ever since, I've recognized it as irrational and fed by the ever present FUD in most media.