Mainstream news doesn’t understand mainstream EV range
Image Credit: Ruth Milligan
I was excited to read today’s NYTimes piece on mainstreaming of electric vehicles. The story with two separate author bylines could theoretically convince middle America that it was OK to consider buying an EV, even if there were places like “North Dakota, for example, [where] there are just 19 fast chargers.” But I found myself cringing because of incomplete reporting and a strong desire to set the record straight.
The NYTimes story started out innocuous enough:
The first wave of people who bought electric cars tended to be affluent, environmentally aware technology enthusiasts who lived in California. The second wave may be people like Russell Grooms, a librarian in Virginia. Mr. Grooms last year bought a battery-powered Nissan Leaf, spending about $20,000 after government incentives, as a way to save money on gasoline.
But you always need a counterpoint. And they found it with a woman from Columbus, Ohio, who had a bad experience driving her daughter to school in Michigan.
Ruth Milligan, a resident of Columbus, Ohio, tried taking her daughter, Maggie Daiber, to Michigan State University in August. Ms. Milligan calculated where she would need to charge her ID.4 during the four-hour trip.
“I did my homework on the charging network,” said Ms. Milligan, an executive speech coach, “or so I thought.”
But she hadn’t considered that the battery would drain faster when the car was weighed down with her daughter’s possessions and her husband, Dave Daiber, who is 6 feet 4 inches tall.
Less than two hours into the trip, Ms. Milligan realized that the car was not going to make it to Toledo, Ohio, where she had planned to charge. Instead, they got off the highway in Findlay. Of the four chargers in town, one was behind a locked gate; another was at a Toyota dealership that would not let a Volkswagen use its charger; a third would charge only Teslas; and the fourth had been installed recently and was not yet working.
The family wound up spending the night at a hotel and making the rest of the trip in a rented van.
Still, Ms. Milligan says she likes the ID.4, which she bought after waiting 10 months for delivery. “In general I’m happy with the car but I’m going to be cautious as I push its bounds,” she said.
That sounds like a horrible experience and one without a solution. And, with the 250 mile range in a Volkswagen ID.4, you’d think it would be pretty easy to make the trip. This situation will scare a lot of potential EV buyers who are being told they can make road trips.
Details, details
I’m from Ohio, not too far from where she stopped in Findlay, Ohio, so I know those roads are mostly over flat farmland – no big hills to climb. So, even with bad weather, it isn’t that far for a modern 250-mile EV like the VW ID.4. Doing a little Google Maps research, it is 96 miles between Columbus and Findlay, Ohio, where she stopped and, at most, 150 miles between Columbus and Toledo where she planned to fast charge, according to the story.
That said, northwestern Ohio is a bit of a car-charging desert, so ending up with a tow truck situation isn’t uncommon.
Weigh-in
Also, the story mentioned that she had a lot of cargo and people in the car and said that was a major factor in the range problem.
It turns out that weight isn’t a huge factor in EV range calculations for highway driving. I learned a lot about this on my Ford trip in the F-150 last month. It comes down to Newton’s first law of inertia: An object in motion stays in motion. A car on cruise control at 60mph on flat land is going to take the same energy to propel it forward as the same car with 500 more pounds inside it. None of the forces on the car (drag, rolling resistance, etc) are directly related to the weight. Aerodynamics is the biggest force by far. So it turns out there was a lot more to this story. City driving with stops and starts is a somewhat different story.
Fact-checking the journey
So I decided to reach out to Ms. Milligan on LinkedIn to get some clarification on the journey. She noted that the Times put out a call for stories from EV drivers on their experiences and picked hers.
The discussion was illuminating. Here’s an incredibly intelligent woman who clearly has done her homework and also really loves her VW ID.4.
From what she says, the NYTimes authors neglected to mention some important information and, for whatever reason, included the information about the weight of the people and cargo in the car as the reason for uncertain mileage.
The NYTimes writers weren’t interested in the aerodynamics of the bike rack, which play a much bigger role in range.
She told me (and the NYT, though they didn’t report it) the following:
- She started out the journey with only 80% charge (already down to 200 mile range) because of a settings issue.
- She had a bike rack and bike on the back.
- She had a 3×3 foot soft roof rack on the top – multiple backpacks tied down.
- She was driving 65-70mph on the trip and stopped with about a 20% charge in Findlay, Ohio, to look for chargers. At that point, she was SOL because all four level 2 chargers in town were unusable. The closest usable charger was outside of her current range.
So now the range problem makes a lot more sense now. In my experience, adding a bike rack will reduce range by 15-20%. A roof rack will do the same. So starting with her 80% of 250 miles = 200 miles, she really left the house with about 150 miles of range at best. We also know that slowing down will really help when there is a higher coefficient of drag, and she was going close to 70mph.
Why am I calling this out?
I’m not here to shame the NYTimes or its writers on the omissions in their article. I do think the story needs a correction to note that aerodynamics – not weight – is the major factor in range because I think EV and potential EV drivers need to know this information. I think they chose this story because of the harrowing outcome, but that’s speculation.
I’m also not here to fault Ms. Milligan, who obviously is an EV advocate who wasn’t told about the significance of potential range hits when adding bikes and roof rack. A bigger issue, however, is that she trusted the VW ID.4’s internal EVCharger finding map, which told her about potential charging backups but not the reliability of each of these stations. There are still a lot of calculations to make when driving EVs on trips that typical drivers just don’t have to consider. I think her tale can and should be a cautionary one.
However, instead of the POV of the story where there is uncertainty on why the EV didn’t get the expected range, we can have some faith in the numbers that are shown. “Range anxiety” is about uncertainty. Now we know why she couldn’t make the trip.
How to make this trip with a bike rack and roof rack
And heavy passengers and cargo.
In this case, I would have made sure the car was close to the full 250 mile range before embarking on the trip. Driving at normal highway speeds is going to cut off about a third of the range with the bike and roof rack. So at best, you are starting off with about 150 miles of range with a fully charged vehicle. You can get to Toledo from Columbus fairly easily that way with about 25 miles of extra range. If I was running close, I would have slowed down considerably to 55mph.
But I don’t love the idea of stopping at the Chevrolet dealer that shows up as the only fast charger in Toledo on her route. Instead, I would have mapped to the Electrify America station on the I-80 turnpike just outside of Toledo as a first stop. Being in a VW, that’s going to be the fastest and most reliable charging station and, if updated recently, should also do Plug and Charge instant charging. It requires traveling on some smaller roads before entering the turnpike and adds about 15 driving minutes to the trip.
That’s 120 miles from Columbus and takes 2 hours and 20 minutes. She could have charged there to 80% in a matter of minutes, eaten some food and been on her way again. She’s now 138 miles from her destination in Lansing, Michigan (where there is another EA charger), which she might have been able to make on one charge. There’s also an EA station in Ann Arbor where she could have topped off to make that trip.
Electrek’s Take
It turns out Ms. Milligan has already figured all of this out (also missing from the NYTimes piece). Since she took her daughter to school in August, she’s been back to Michigan State with her ID.4. She’s tried my method above with success, though it adds driving time. On the way back, she made it from Ann Arbor to Columbus in one leg (about 190 miles) without bikes or roof racks but with her 6’4″ husband. That’s the route they will go in the future, and they don’t expect to add any extra driving time. Just one stop and no diversion off the Interstates.
More importantly, Ms. Milligan has learned not to trust every EV charger out there. She says she’ll first look for Electrify America stations to make a trip, then look at the less reliable options if she needs to. If she does have to find other charging stations, she’ll look at recent check-ins and won’t trust anything that hasn’t been visited successfully by an EV driver within the most recent 24 hours. Finally, she says that the VW ID.4 EV charging station finder “is dead to her,” and they really need to work on this if they want her to trust this functionality again.
So my point here is to help people who might feel some anxiety from the NYTimes piece or EVs in general. So, some final road trip tips:
- Weight doesn’t matter much unless you are climbing mountains (and you’ll often make most of that up regenerating electricity on the way down).
- Aerodynamics matters a lot. Bike and roof racks may cost 10-20% of your range – each.
- Slowing down, particularly with added drag, really makes a big difference.
- Also deduct 10-20% for very cold weather, mitigate some by preconditioning the vehicle.
- You can go just about anywhere in the US (yes, even North Dakota) in an EV if planned and executed correctly.
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The International Maritime Organization, a UN agency which regulates maritime transport, has voted to implement a global cap on carbon emissions from ocean shipping and a penalty on entities that exceed that limit.
After a weeklong meeting of the Marine Environment Protection Committee of the IMO and decades of talks, countries have voted to implement binding carbon reduction targets including a gradually-reducing cap on emissions and associated penalties for exceeding that cap.
Previously, the IMO made another significant environmental move when it transitioned the entire shipping industry to lower-sulfur fuels in 2020, moving towards improving a longstanding issue with large ships outputting extremely high levels of sulfur dioxide emissions, which harm human health and cause acid rain.
Today’s agreement makes the shipping industry the first sector to agree on an internationally mandated target to reduce emissions along with a global carbon price.
The agreement includes standards for greenhouse gas intensity from maritime shipping fuels, with those standards starting in 2028 and reducing through 2035. The end goal is to reach net-zero emissions in shipping by 2050.
Companies that exceed the carbon limits set by the standard will have to pay either $100 or $380 per excess ton of emissions, depending on how much they exceed limits by. These numbers are roughly in line with the commonly-accepted social cost of carbon, which is an attempt to set the equivalent cost borne by society by every ton of carbon pollution.
Money from these penalties will be put into a fund that will reward lower-emissions ships, research into cleaner fuels, and support nations that are vulnerable to climate change.
That means that this agreement represents a global “carbon price” – an attempt to make polluters pay the costs that they shift onto everyone else by polluting.
Why carbon prices matter
The necessity of a carbon price has long been acknowledged by virtually every economist. In economic terms, pollution is called a “negative externality,” where a certain action imposes costs on a party that isn’t responsible for the action itself. That action can be thought of as a subsidy – it’s a cost imposed by the polluter that isn’t being paid by the polluter, but rather by everyone else.
Externalities distort a market because they allow certain companies to get away with cheaper costs than they should otherwise have. And a carbon price is an attempt to properly price that externality, to internalize it to the polluter in question, so that they are no longer being subsidized by everyone else’s lungs. This also incentivizes carbon reductions, because if you can make something more cleanly, you can make it more cheaply.
Many people have suggested implementing a carbon price, including former republican leadership (before the party forgot literally everything about how economics works), but political leadership has been hesitant to do what’s needed because it fears the inevitable political backlash driven by well-funded propaganda entities in the oil industry.
For that reason, most carbon pricing schemes have focused on industrial processes, rather than consumer goods. This is currently happening in Canada, which recently (unwisely) retreated from its consumer carbon price but still maintains a price on the largest polluters in the oil industry.
But until today’s agreement by the IMO, there had been no global agreement of the same in any industry. There are single-country carbon prices, and international agreements between certain countries or subnational entities, often in the form of “cap-and-trade” agreements which implement penalties, and where companies that reduce emissions earn credits that they can then sell to companies that exceed limits (California has a similar program in partnership with with Quebec), but no previous global carbon price in any industry.
Carbon prices opposed by enemies of life on Earth
Unsurprisingly, entities that favor destruction of life on Earth, such as the oil industry and those representing it (Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the bought-and-paid oil stooge who is illegally squatting in the US Oval Office), opposed these measures, claiming they would be “unworkable.”
Meanwhile, island nations whose entire existence is threatened by climate change (along with the ~2 billion people who will have to relocate by the end of the century due to rising seas) correctly said that the move isn’t strong enough, and that even stronger action is needed to avoid the worse effects of climate change.
The island nations’ position is backed by science, the oil companies’ position is not.
While these new standards are historic and need to be lauded as the first agreement of their kind, there is still more work to be done and incentives that need to be offered to ensure that greener technologies are available to help fulfill the targets. Jesse Fahnestock, Director of Decarbonisation at the Global Maritime Forum, said:
While the targets are a step forward, they will need to be improved if they are to drive the rapid fuel shift that will enable the maritime sector to reach net zero by 2050. While we applaud the progress made, meeting the targets will require immediate and decisive investments in green fuel technology and infrastructure. The IMO will have opportunities to make these regulations more impactful over time, and national and regional policies also need to prioritise scalable e-fuels and the infrastructure needed for long-term decarbonisation.
One potential solution could be IMO’s “green corridors,” attempts to establish net-zero-emission shipping routes well in advance of the IMO’s 2050 net-zero target.
And, of course, this is only one industry, and one with a relatively low contribution to global emissions. While the vast majority of global goods are shipped over the ocean, it’s still responsible for only around 3% of global emissions. To see the large emissions reductions we need to avoid the worst effects of climate change, other more-polluting sectors – like automotive, agriculture (specifically animal agriculture), construction and heating – all could use their own carbon price to help add a forcing factor to drive down their emissions.
Lets hope that the IMO’s move sets that example, and we see more of these industries doing the right thing going forward (and ignoring those enemies of life on Earth listed above).
The agreement still has to go through a final step of approval on October, but this looks likely to happen.
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In the Electrek Podcast, we discuss the most popular news in the world of sustainable transport and energy. In this week’s episode, we discuss the new Tesla Cybertruck RWD, more tariff mayhem, Lucid buying Nikola, and more.
The show is live every Friday at 4 p.m. ET on Electrek’s YouTube channel.
As a reminder, we’ll have an accompanying post, like this one, on the site with an embedded link to the live stream. Head to the YouTube channel to get your questions and comments in.
After the show ends at around 5 p.m. ET, the video will be archived on YouTube and the audio on all your favorite podcast apps:
We now have a Patreon if you want to help us avoid more ads and invest more in our content. We have some awesome gifts for our Patreons and more coming.
Here are a few of the articles that we will discuss during the podcast:
Here’s the live stream for today’s episode starting at 4:00 p.m. ET (or the video after 5 p.m. ET):
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It’s that time of year again, time for events across the country to show off electric vehicles at Drive Electric Earth Month.
Drive Electric Earth Month is an offshoot of Drive Electric Week, a long-running annual tradition hosting meetups mostly in the US, but also occasionally in other countries. It started as Drive Electric Earth Day, but since not every event can happen on the same day, they went ahead and extended it to encompass “Earth Month” events that happen across the month of April. It’s all organized by Plug In America, the Sierra Club, the Electric Vehicle Association, EV Hybrid Noire, and Drive Electric USA.
Events consist of general Earth Day-style community celebrations, EV Ride & Drives where you can test drive several EVs in one place, and opportunities to talk to EV owners and ask them questions about what it’s like to live with an EV, away from the pressure of a dealership.
This month, there are currently 152 events registered across the US and 1 in Mexico (including one online webinar about things to consider when purchasing an EV).
Events have already started, with a smattering happening over the last week. One really neat one was the Asheville event, which showcased the resiliency of EVs in an area devastated by Hurricane Helene, which was made more severe by climate change. That event was attended by the Rivian R1T which famously got dragged 100 feet submerged in mud and came out running fine.
But the bulk of the events are coming up on the weekends of April 19-20th, and even moreso, the weekend of the 26-27th.
There are plenty of events in the big cities where you’d expect, but Plug In America wanted to highlight a few of the events in smaller places around the country. Here’s a sampling of upcoming events:
- Space Coast Drive Electric Earth Month Event at the American Muscle Car Museum in Melbourne, FL on April 19, 10am-2pm – EVs are the new muscle car of the 21st century, and this event has been one of the biggest ones nationally in previous years (with 47 vehicles registered already). The event is free, but the museum has a required donation for entry.
- EV Mississippi Spring Drive Electric Earth Day Event in Hattiesburg, MS on April 19, 10am-2pm – This one is happening at a PetSmart near a Tesla Supercharger, and is a combined EV/pet adoption event with food, pets, raffle prizes, test drives, and activities for all ages.
- Big Island EV – Cruise and Picnic in Waimea, HI on April 26, 10am-1pm – EV drivers will congregate in various places around the Big Island (Kona, Waimea, Waikoloa and Hilo), then drive up Saddle Road to the Gil Kahele Recreation Area on Mauna Kea for a potluck and a chance to talk about the experience of owning EVs on the Big Island.
- Santa Barbara Earth Day 2025 and Green Car Show in Santa Barbara, CA on April 26-27, 11am-8pm – This is part of Santa Barbara’s Earth Day celebration, which routinely attracts 30,000 participants and is one of the longest-running Earth Day celebrations on the planet. The Green Car Show includes ride & drives and an “Owners Corner” where owners can showcase their EVs and attendees can check them out and ask questions.
- Earth Day’25 – EV’s role in a sustainable future in Queretaro City, Mexico on April 26, 9am-4pm – The sole Mexican event, this is a combined in-person/online seminar at the Querétaro Institute of Technology.
- Norman Earth Day Festival in Norman, OK on April 27, 12-5pm – Another municipal Earth Day festival, with hands-on activities for kids to learn about the environment. A portion of the parking lot reserved for an EV car show for EV owners who pre-register to show off their vehicles.
- Oregon Electric Vehicle Association Test Drive & Information Expo in Portland, OR on April 27, 10am-4pm – This one is at Daimler Truck’s North American HQ, and will have several EVs for test drives, owner displays (including DIY gas-to-EV conversions), and keynote presentations by EV experts. They’ll even have a 1914 Detroit Electric EV available for test rides!
- And, we at Electrek want to give a shoutout to Rove’s EV Drive Days in Santa Ana 10am-3pm April 28 – ROVE is the company behind the “full-service” EV charging concept that we’ve talked about several times here on Electrek, and we like what they’re doing for EV charging. They’ve hosted a few community events, and this is their contribution to Earth Month.
Each event has a different assortment of activities (e.g. test drives won’t be available at every event, generally just the larger ones attended by local dealerships), so be sure to check the events page to see what the plan is for your local event.
These events have offered a great way to connect with owners and see the newest electric vehicle tech, and even get a chance to do test rides and drives in person. Attendees got to hear unfiltered information from actual owners about the benefits and trials of owning EVs, allowing for longer and more genuine (and often more knowledgeable) conversations than one might normally encounter at a dealership.
And if you’re an owner – you can show off your car and answer those questions for interested onlookers.
If you can’t make it to any of the physical events, there are also a few virtual events (go here and click “online events” at the top) including a webinar about programs to help you charge your EV at work, a virtual show and tell about EVs in middle America and an information session about potential career pathways related to e-mobility in Virginia.
To view all the events and see what’s happening in your area, you can check out the list of events or the events map. You can also sign up to volunteer at your local events, and if you plan to show off your electric car, you can RSVP on each event page and list the vehicle that you plan to show (or see what other vehicles have already registered).
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