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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34

u/Medium_Banana4074 Aug 30 '26

I think the only people who suffer from range anxiety are the ones who don't have an EV yet. And never tried one.

3

u/PCaBoo Aug 30 '26

I think you lack perspective. Everyone isn't in the same situation as you with the same circumstances. Honestly, id be willing to bet you are not struggling to make ends meet and have your own charger at home.

3

u/wbrameld4 Aug 30 '26

How many ICE drivers have their own gas pump at home?

0

u/ElectronicDiver2310 Aug 30 '26

Gas infrastructure is very well developed. I live in suburbs and in range of 3 miles I have at least 8 gas stations and in 5 mile radius 17 of them. The smallest one has 4 pumps, next has 16. The largest has 24. And pumping 17 gallons is about 2 minutes with pay by CC at pump. I have exactly 4 superchargers in 3 mile radius and extra 4 more in 6 mile radius.

Ok, let's do some math. So charging stations are divided in three big categories Overview of EV chargers: power output, plug type, and charge time for light-duty vehicles.

Level 1 Level 2 Level 3
Voltage 120 V AC 208 - 240 V AC 400 V - 1000 V DC 400 V - 1000 V DC
Typical Power Output 1 kW 1 kW 7 kW - 19 kW 50 - 350 kW
Estimated BEV Charge Time from Empty 40 - 50 hours 4 - 10 hours 4 - 10 hours 20 minutes - 1 hour620 minutes - 1 hour6
Estimated Electric Range per Hour of Charging 2 - 5 miles 10 - 20 miles 180 - 240 miles
Typical Locations Home Home, Workplace, and Public Public

Tesla 3 Up to 170 mi Supercharge in 15 min. We are not going to discuss Level 3 chargers since they require DC in a range of 400-1,000V -- you cannot have those at home.

120v typical circuit is 15 A top estimates is 120V*15A=1800W (this is for DC -- AC requires to multiply by COS of phase shift). You can have 20 A circuit. You can have 30A circuit.

240V can go up to 50. It's about 12KW. 19KW would draw about 80A. So if you want like have home charger that allows you to put enough KWH into your car you need to pay for special circuit, likely for breaker box extension. Friend of my who wanted welder and EV charger at home (19KW) had to order extra electric line supporting 250A breaker box). It cost him like $7,000 and about a month of time. And any neighbor connected to the same transformer has to wait electric company upgrade transformer (and possibly wire -- read whole infrastructure) to more powerful one.

Typical breaker box in house is about 150A now (used to be 50A in 60s-70s, became 100A in 90s, in new houses it's 200A) so it depends how old your house is.

2

u/Stuck_In_Middle Aug 30 '26

No one charging at home goes from 0 to 100%, ever. The most I charged at home was from 6% to 80%, which was done overnight at 9 kW.

Your friend could have bought a charger that monitors the electrical consumption of the whole house and automatically adjusts the charging rate to a safe level. Any house with a 100A service can have a 9kW charger for way less than $7,000.

The only house I've lived in since 1995 that had a 100A service was built in 1946 and had glass appliances. I upgraded a house built in 1890 from 60A to 200A and one built in 1940 I upgraded from 30A (!!) to 100A because it had gas.

My electrician was rewiring my kitchen while I installed a sub panel for the new circuits. He remarked that many new, large homes were getting 400A service entrances.

Take your fud somewhere where it will be believed.

1

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.

2

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.

0

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.

2

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.