Here's How Much EV Range You Actually Need

I’m a Mach-E owner for my 3 days a week 45-mile round trip commute and some dad-taxi on the weekends.

I got the CA Route 1 edition because I didn’t give a shit about the B&O stereo or power liftgate, and was willing to save ~$3k over the extended range Premium trim.

It has a range of 312 if I topped it out, but i never charge above 80%.

I can go almost 2 weeks on a full charge, but what I find I do is run to a low-cost or even free L2 charger in my area and walk my dog, or ride my bike for a 2-3 hours, something I already would have been doing, and charge for less than $0.07/kw.

If I were to road trip in the thing, which someday i might, it’s the rate of charge that is more important than 20-70 mile differences in range. If I can cut charging to 20 minutes every 4-5 hours of driving, It’s an hour wasted charging on my way to Chicago from the East Coast. Considering I would have already had a 30 minute stop or two in there for a regular drive, it’s not that far from the norm.

With the current infrastructure and a car that charges at ~80kw/h I’m sitting for 40 minutes. So it’s not desirable for longer trips. Thankfully I have other cars to choose from if that’s the case, and for what I save commuting, I could rent a car for any future road trips and get something legit built to do a highway distance.

As it sits, I am spending more per mile on tires than propulsion with my current commute and charging scheme. ($1200 tires going 40k miles =$0.03/mile, 6.66 kwh charging at $0.50/hr returning 3.2 miles/kw = $0.023/mile)

So your answer is, range isn’t the issue, it’s how fast you get the range back that matters.