Here’s the thing: Most consumers don’t actually need the EV range they think they do. Charging overnight at home or in the parking lot while you’re at work is going to take care of most of what you need most of the time. Even if you don’t have best-in-class EV range, chances are 150-200 miles is going to be more than enough for your typical driver’s daily commute.
But if it’s not, there are solutions to your problem. Manufacturers know range is an issue, so they’re working on it.
Look at the Lucid Group’s Lucid Air Dream Edition, which has an official EPA rating of an estimated 520 miles of range without sacrificing horsepower, delivering 933 horses under the hood. Just keep in mind… this is a luxury car. It looks like a beautiful car – I’m just saying, you’re gonna pay for it.
Alternatively, maybe you aren’t necessarily worried about the battery’s ability to store a load of range at one time. What I’m saying is, maybe you don’t need range, you just need the ability to get a decent charge quickly.
In that case, look at Kia’s EV6, which features up to about 328 miles on a single charge. Now first off, that’s pretty decent range anyway for an EV, but it’s true superpower is found in the company’s multi-charge system, which is capable of what Kia refers to as 800-volt ultra-fast charging. Using this system, the EV6 can recharge from 10 to 80 percent in just 18 minutes.
The 2022 EV6 even recently set a new Guinness World Record, traveling 2,880.5 miles with the shortest charging time to cross the United States in an electric vehicle. During the seven-day trek from New York City to Los Angeles, the Kia EV6 was plugged in for 7 hours, 10 minutes and 1 second, beating the previous record-holder, Tesla, by more than five-and-a-half hours.
Or, if you really need the range but still want to lessen your carbon impact on the planet, maybe a hybrid is more your style. Toyota’s 2022 Prius Prime might only get 25 miles of EV driving range when fully charged – which could honestly still work pretty well for a lot of folks’ daily commutes – the car has a whopping 640-mile driving range overall.
Using the supplied cable, Prius Prime plugs into a standard household outlet, fully recharging the battery in less than five-and-a-half hours. But a 240v source can reduce that time to approximately two hours.
So, I guess I overreacted. Range anxiety? Never heard of it.
