Christopher Mims of the Wall Street Journal recently published a review about his experience driving an EV for a week. He concludes that Americans get three major things wrong about EVs: Home charging effectiveness, range anxiety, and total cost of ownership.

In short, EV owners are satisfied with the home charging experience while public charging remains a pain. However, home charging is sufficient for non-supercommuters. This ties to range anxiety which is an anxiety, not a valid problem. Modern EVs with improved batteries and vehicle design drive far more than the average 40 miles per day or the four 150-mile trips in a year of a normal U.S. citizen. In addition, the often-stated EV premium has fallen in the face of price wars, and lifetime costs (maintenance, electricity as an alternative fuel) are considered to be lower on average.

For an automotive expert, these decision-critical aspects sound familiar as they have been heavily discussed in automotive consumer insights. Yet, Mims makes an important remark. He cites Brent Gruber from J.D. Power: “People buy based on aspirations, sometimes things that they want to do, or things they think they’re going to do, and that manifests itself with range anxiety”. Considering the issues of range anxiety and charging infrastructure accompanying the EV since the beginning, the technological improvements in the last decade should have diminished the issues. This is not the case. McKinsey’s EV consumer sentiment study revealed that prospective EV buyers’ range expectations have risen throughout the years, from 270 miles in 2021 to 310 miles in 2024. One might argue that the increase in the average range expectation is driven by the new people who are interested but reluctant to buy an EV and, as well, by the people who already had higher expectations but have not bought one yet. Either way, the increasing expectations keep the range anxiety as an argument alive. 

Potentially, the solution is the transition technology of hybrid vehicles to reduce range anxiety and showcase the ease of charging at home. In the webcast “From China – with love?”, hosted by PwC Germany and China, the Chinese automotive industry leader, Jun Jin, highlighted the so-called “Range-extended Electric Vehicle” (REEV) as a hybrid technology that reduced anxiety in China. REEV, different from Western Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles (PHEV), have a combustion engine that solely fuels a large battery and is not connected to the drivetrain. Hence, this hybrid can be plugged in, fueled, and travel long distances purely electric and even longer distances combined (e.g. 212 km electric, 1390 km hybrid for the Li Li6). 

We will take a closer look at REEV in another article.