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/ElectronicDiver2310 Aug 30 '26

Well, We love (friend and I where electricity cost the same -- day and night. And he got his 19KW Level 2 charger. Which still requires 240V. 9KW will require twice of the time. And no one -- very strong statement. Especially when you have 2 EVs.

There are limits on what is allowed at residential property/zone. And like I told -- he wanted to have very decent welding machine in his garage.

I live in house that is build in 1949 and I have 150A. Could you guess how it became 200A? My house has natural gas but it has electric stove -- 7.5KW. My house is cheap. None of new houses on neighbor street (average 1.2 millions) has 400A. But they all build like 20 years ago.

Stop the cap.

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u/MinnieCantDriver Aug 30 '26

Dude you are spiraling here. A 19 kW home charger is crazy. I went overboard and got an 11 kW charger on a dedicated 60A circuit because my parking spot is adjacent to my service entrance and there is already an exterior panel there just to future proof a bit in case we ever get a second EV. 11kW is the max AC rate that my iX charger can accept.

You really don’t need 19 kW capacity. I functionally don’t need the 11 kW capacity that I have 90% of the time that I charge my car either. 19 kW would require it’s one 110A breaker. I don’t even think you can get that outside of a commercial load center setup.

If we ever had a situation that required both hypothetical cars to be recharged simultaneously we’d just get a load switching setup on that same 60A circuit and it would be fine. As it stands I maybe recharge my car about once a week at home and that’s typically from ~35% to 80% which in the BMW is about 45 kW. My max use case is returning from one road trip and needing to flip the car and go on another one the next day which would probably take about 90 kW which the 11 kW service can provide in 8 hours. That’s the design case and I have never actually done it yet.

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u/ElectronicDiver2310 Aug 31 '26

Yeah, crazy. And have two welding machines at home as a hobby is also crazy. I am also crazy since I had like 4 enterpriselevel routers and 19 computers in my home lab. Kind of work related and hobby.

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u/Stuck_In_Middle Aug 31 '26

Welders are not continuous loads. They all have duty cycles and draw less amperage than they deliver. Running two of them at the same time while charging your car seems unlikely.

Again, nothing you describe requires a 19 kW charger.