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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Environment
‘Bitcoin Family’ hides crypto codes etched onto metal cards on four continents after recent kidnappings
The Taihuttus on a ski trip to Sierra Nevada in southern Spain. They sold everything they owned in 2017 to bet on bitcoin — and now travel full-time as a family of five.
Didi Taihuttu
A wave of high-profile kidnappings targeting cryptocurrency executives has rattled the industry — and prompted a quiet security revolution among some of its most visible evangelists.
Didi Taihuttu, patriarch of the so-called “Bitcoin Family,” said he overhauled the family’s entire security setup after a string of threats.
The Taihuttus — who sold everything they owned in 2017, from their house to their shoes, to go all-in on bitcoin when it was trading around $900 — have long lived on the outer edge of crypto ideology. They travel full-time with their three daughters and remain entirely unbanked.
Over the past eight months, he said, the family ditched hardware wallets in favor of a hybrid system: Part analog, part digital, with seed phrases encrypted, split, and stored either through blockchain-based encryption services or hidden across four continents.
“We have changed everything,” Taihuttu told CNBC on a call from Phuket, Thailand. “Even if someone held me at gunpoint, I can’t give them more than what’s on my wallet on my phone. And that’s not a lot.”
CNBC first reported on the family’s unconventional storage system in 2022, when Taihuttu described hiding hardware wallets across multiple continents — in places ranging from rental apartments in Europe to self-storage units in South America.
The Taihuttu family dressed up for Halloween in Phuket, Thailand, where they recently moved homes after receiving disturbing messages pinpointing their location from YouTube videos.
Didi Taihuttu
As physical attacks on crypto holders become more frequent, even they are rethinking their exposure.
This week, Moroccan police arrested a 24-year-old suspected of orchestrating a series of brutal kidnappings targeting crypto executives.
One victim, the father of a crypto millionaire, was allegedly held for days in a house south of Paris — and reportedly had a finger severed during the ordeal.
In a separate case earlier this year, a co-founder of French wallet firm Ledger and his wife were abducted from their home in central France in a ransom scheme that also targeted another Ledger executive.
Last month in New York, authorities said, a 28-year-old Italian tourist was kidnapped and tortured for 17 days in a Manhattan apartment by attackers trying to extract his bitcoin password — shocking him with wires, beating him with a gun, and strapping an Apple AirTag around his neck to track his movements.
The common thread: The pursuit of crypto credentials that enable instant, irreversible transfers of virtual assets.
“It is definitely frightening to see a lot of these kidnappings happen,” said JP Richardson, CEO of crypto wallet company Exodus. He urged users to take security into their own hands by choosing self-custody, storing larger sums on hardware wallets, and — for those holding significant assets — exploring multi-signature wallets, a setup typically used by institutions.
Richardson also recommended spreading funds across different wallet types and avoiding large balances in hot wallets to reduce risk without sacrificing flexibility.
That rising sense of vulnerability is fueling a new demand for physical protection with insurance firms now racing to offer kidnap and ransom (K&R) policies tailored to crypto holders.
But Taihuttu isn’t waiting for corporate solutions. He’s opted for complete decentralization — of not just his finances, but his personal risk profile.
As the family prepares to return to Europe from Thailand, safety has become a constant topic of conversation.
“We’ve been talking about it a lot as a family,” Taihuttu said. “My kids read the news, too — especially that story in France, where the daughter of a CEO was almost kidnapped on the street.”
Now, he said, his daughters are asking difficult questions: What if someone tries to kidnap us? What’s the plan?
One of the steel plates the Taihuttu family uses to store part of their bitcoin seed phrase. Didi etched it by hand using a hammer and letter punch — part of a decentralized storage system spread across four continents.
Didi Taihuttu
Though the girls carry only small amounts of crypto in their personal wallets, the family has decided to avoid France entirely.
“We got a little bit famous in a niche market — but that niche is becoming a really big market now,” Taihuttu said. “And I think we’ll see more and more of these robberies. So yeah, we’re definitely going to skip France.”
Even in Thailand, Taihuttu recently stopped posting travel updates and filming at home after receiving disturbing messages from strangers who claimed to have identified his location from YouTube vlogs.
“We stayed in a very beautiful house for six months — then I started getting emails from people who figured out which house it was. They warned me to be careful, told me not to leave my kids alone,” he said. “So we moved. And now we don’t film anything at all.”
“It’s a strange world at the moment,” he said. “So we’re taking our own precautions — and when it comes to wallets, we’re now completely hardware wallet-less. We don’t use any hardware wallets anymore.”
To throw off would-be attackers, Didi Taihuttu encrypts select words from each 24-word seed phrase — then splits the phrases into four sets of six and hides them around the world.
Didi Taihuttu
The family’s new system involves splitting a single 24-word bitcoin seed phrase — the cryptographic key that unlocks access to their crypto holdings — into four sets of six words, each stored in a different geographic location. Some are kept digitally through blockchain-based encryption platforms, while others are etched by hand into fireproof steel plates using a hammer and letter punch, then hidden in physical locations across four continents.
“Even if someone finds 18 of the 24 words, they can’t do anything,” Taihuttu explained.
On top of that, he’s added a layer of personal encryption, swapping out select words to throw off would-be attackers. The method is simple, but effective.
“You only need to remember which ones you changed,” he said.
Part of the reason for ditching hardware wallets, Taihuttu said, was a growing mistrust of third-party devices. Concerns about backdoors and remote access features — including a controversial update by Ledger in 2023 — prompted the family to abandon physical hardware altogether in favor of encrypted paper and steel backups.
While the family still holds some crypto in “hot” wallets — for daily spending or to run their algorithmic trading strategy — those funds are protected by multi-signature approvals, which require multiple parties to sign off before a transaction can be executed.
The Taihuttus use Safe — formerly Gnosis Safe — for ether and other altcoins, and similarly layered setups for bitcoin stored on centralized platforms like Bybit.
Didi Taihuttu during a recent visit to Sierra Nevada, Spain. The family’s lifestyle — unbanked, nomadic, and all-in on bitcoin — makes them outliers even in the crypto world.
Didi Taihuttu
About 65% of the family’s crypto is locked in cold storage across four continents — a decentralized system Taihuttu prefers to centralized vaults like the Swiss Alps bunker used by Coinbase-owned Xapo. Those facilities may offer physical protection and inheritance services, but Taihuttu said they require too much trust.
“What happens if one of those companies goes bankrupt? Will I still have access?” he said. “You’re putting your capital back in someone else’s hands.”
Instead, Taihuttu holds his own keys — hidden across the globe. He can top up the wallets remotely with new deposits, but accessing them would require at least one international trip, depending on which fragments of the seed phrase are needed. The funds, he added, are intended as a long-term pension to be accessed only if bitcoin hits $1 million — a milestone he’s targeting for 2033.
The shift toward multiparty protections extends beyond just multi-signature. Multi-party computation, or MPC, is gaining traction as a more advanced security model.
Didi, Romaine, and their three daughters live largely off-grid, managing crypto through decentralized exchanges, algorithmic trading bots, and a globally distributed cold storage system.
Didi Taihuttu
Instead of storing private keys in one place — a vulnerability known as a “single point of compromise” — MPC splits a key into encrypted shares distributed across multiple parties. Transactions can only go through when a threshold number of those parties approve, sharply reducing the risk of theft or unauthorized access.
Multi-signature wallets require several parties to approve a transaction. MPC takes that further by cryptographically splitting the private key itself, ensuring that no single individual ever holds the full key — not even their own complete share.
The shift comes amid renewed scrutiny of centralized crypto platforms like Coinbase, which recently disclosed a data breach affecting tens of thousands of customers.
Taihuttu, for his part, says 80% of his trading now happens on decentralized exchanges like Apex — a peer-to-peer platform that allows users to set buy and sell orders without relinquishing custody of their funds, marking a return to crypto’s original ethos.
While he declined to reveal his total holdings, Taihuttu did share his goal for the current bull cycle: a $100 million net worth, with 60% still held in bitcoin. The rest is a mix of ether, layer-1 tokens like solana, link, sui, and a growing number of AI and education-focused startups — including his own platform offering blockchain and life-skills courses for kids.
Lately, he’s also considering stepping back from the spotlight.
“It’s really my passion to create content. It’s really what I love to do every day,” he said. “But if it’s not safe anymore for my daughters … I really need to think about them.”
WATCH: ‘Bitcoin Family’ tracks moon cycles to make crypto investment decisions
Tesla’s head of Optimus humanoid robot, Milan Kovac, announced that he is leaving the automaker after 9 years.
It leaves just as CEO Elon Musk claimed that the humanoid robot is going to make Tesla a”$25 trillion company.”
Electrek first reported on Tesla hiring Kovac back in 2016 to work on the early Autopilot program. At the time, we noted that the young engineer had an interesting background in machine learning.
He quickly rose through the ranks and ended up leading Autopilot software engineering from 2019 to 2022.
In 2022, he started working on Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot program.
Late last year, he was promoted to Vice President in charge of the complete Optimus program, as CEO Elon Musk began to tout the program as critical to Tesla’s future.
Musk claimed that Optimus could generate $10 trillion in revenue per year and make Tesla a $25 trillion company. These claims are largely unsubstantiated as the humanoid robot market is still in its infancy.
Most market research firms currently estimate the size of the humanoid robot market to be in the low single-digit billions of dollars, with growth projections through 2032 ranging from $15 billion to $80 billion.
That would represent impressive growth, but nowhere near what Musk is touting to investors.
Today, Kovac announced that he is leaving Tesla for personal reasons:
This week, I’ve had to make the most difficult decision of my life and will be moving out of my position. I’ve been far away from home for too long, and will need to spend more time with family abroad. I want to make it clear that this is the only reason, and has absolutely nothing to do with anything else. My support for Elon Musk and the team is ironclad – Tesla team forever.
Kovac has been regarded as one of the top new technical executives at Tesla, which has seen a significant talent exodus of top engineers.
The company has made progress with the Optimus program over the last year. Still, many have been skeptical, as Tesla has been less than forthcoming about using teleoperation in previous demonstrations.
Kovac is not the only Optimus engineer to leave Tesla recently.
Figure, another company developing humanoid robots, has recently poached Zackary Bernholtz, a 7-year veteran at Tesla and most recently a Staff Technical Program Manager.
Electrek’s Take
This is a significant loss for Tesla. Kovac was one of Musk’s top technical guys and literally the head of the program he claimed would bring Tesla to the next level – although I think most people have been understandably skeptical about these claims.
I’ve been bullish on humanoid robots, and I could see Tesla being a player in the field, but it’s nowhere near the opportunity that Musk is claiming, and there’s also plenty of competition with no clear evidence that Tesla has any significant lead, if any.
In China, Unitree has been making impressive progress, and it is already selling a humanoid robot.
In the US, Figure has also been making a lot of progress lately:
I think it’s a smart space to invest in for manufacturing companies like Tesla, but there’s going to be a lot of competition.
It’s too early to say who will come out on top.
As for Kovac leaving, I’m sure his personal reason is correct. However, we often see people claim that and then they quickly turn up at another company.
If he believed that his product would soon become a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity, I doubt he would be leaving, but you never know. 9 years at Tesla is some hard work and it’s impressive for anyone. Congrats.
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