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120ish miles range is more than enough for majority of us drivers despite what people think. Yes long trip will require recharge (which will be quick with tiny battery) or a second car.
This is the near term EV future we should strive for vs expensive, heavy, and environmentally painful 300+ mi SUV and truck.
Alternative is PHEV+range extender like that byd truck
As someone who drove an original fiat 500e with a similar range, I can assure you this is not enough battery for anywhere but the market it’s designed for (South Korea). You will eat through that “best estimate” of 120 miles in a day’s worth of driving, especially with additional passengers and the AC running.
The average US daily drive is less than 40 miles. Accounting for outliers and a margin, let's conservatively say 60 miles. That's still probably more than most average commutes.
That's half the best case rated mileage, which is for sure more than the "realistic" mileage with a full vehicle and A/C running. There's no way that would reduce it by half, even from the best case rating.
You’re going to get 100 miles of real world range out of that 120 rating. Then you will lose 20 for running the AC. That’s 80 miles. If you add passengers, that’s another 20 you will lose. You’re now down to 60 miles of range. Better hope your commute is under 30 miles each way and that you don’t have to stop for groceries or something on the way home. Also that last 20 miles of battery power, the car is going to go into power saving mode and will turn off the AC.
Losing range has way more to do with speed than AC or an extra passenger. Taking side roads going 40 mph will give me a massive range boost vs the highway going 70-75 mph (2011 Leaf with "82 miles" range on the fully charged GOM).
I barely notice a difference with extra passengers and weight (which makes sense since an extra passenger adds about 0.5% to the cars weight.
And running heat kills battery much more than AC. AC will impact it a bit, but usually only about 5% in my estimation
Can confirm, I had a '11 Leaf SV in the boiling desert heat. I could get 85 miles out of it when the gom started at 70 (I think the highest I saw was 5.4mi/kW) but if you - hypothetically cough cough - ran it flat out at the 93mph top speed, it could eat through that 70ish gom in about 15 miles. Speeds above ~50 absolutely tank the Leaf's range.
Heat is bad unless your model has a heat pump. Late 1st gens had it (as an option, I think). I've heard it's more than worth the upgrade. But heat on the battery is way worse, as it kills cells fast. I lost 10% SoH (I think that's the correct term, been a while) in 4 months in the desert heat. Environment is the biggest factor by a massive margin for the Leaf. Range is short term pain but battery degradation is permanent and can only be solved with replacement. It's the one thing I didn't like about the Leaf - everything else is great.
How many miles a day did it actually get?
@lurker8008 @MyOpinion a lot of people have 2 cars so there is definitely scope for a smaller vehicle for around town.
(which will be quick with tiny battery) <
This is where you're wrong.
Charging is not linear. EV's battery only fast charging to about 80%, after that it would halt to a crawl. It would take way less time to charge a 60kWh battery from 20% to 70% (50% = 30kWh) than it would take to charge a 30kWh battery from 0% to 100%.
@lurker8008 @MyOpinion Mazda offers a series hybrid PHEV+range extender just not ever in Canada. I had a hard time sourcing new winter tires for my Fit because there is no Canadian market for small tires anymore.
Old used truck and a BEV is just great.
It was found recently that most trips were less than three miles, with only 2% of all trips made are more than 50 miles.
Obviously people often don't drive very far for work or shopping, but many do maybe every weekend or once or twice per month take a longer trip to visit family or for leisure.
The car needs to be able to handle that, without being a huge pain to have to charge all the time.
The idea that 90% of trips are short is a moronic argument for selling EV with small batteries, unless people have multiple cars, which most people don't unless they need to, and even then short range can be a problem, because dependency on the cars, means that both cars need to be able to fulfill the required tasks.
Edit:
Funny how this is downvoted, when mostly everybody agree the FIAT 500 sell badly because it has too little range for the price.
Even if only a few percent are short trips, it's a pain to have to charge multiple times on a single trip occasionally, like once per week.
Visiting family out of town every weekend is 104 trips a year. Commuting each work day is 520 trips. That's 16% of all those trips that are long distance.
Once you add in the grocery getting; the drives to school (only 10% of children walk or ride bikes); the doctors appointments; the local leisure related trips; I can see how 90% of trips could be short range - and that's still accounting for taking a long weekly trip, which I don't think most people do.
From the way you wrote, "The car needs to be able to handle that, without being a huge pain to charge all the time," gives me the impression you don't like electric vehicles and might not be open to any of these conversations without it turning into an argument. I could be misinterpreting your tone, and if so I apologise, but I don't think the content nor the conclusion of that study should be called moronic.
I'm not disputing the 10% maybe even 2% short trips is true, I'm arguing it's a bullshit argument for making cars with short range.
gives me the impression you don’t like electric vehicles
Which is false, I'm all for electric, and my next car will definitely be an electric. But not one that can't handle what I do in weekends, which would be ridiculous.
For me that means 450 km range minimum. Which I may only need once per month, but the alternative would be to rent a car once per month, which is obviously idiotic, because it's extra hassle and more expensive than buying the proper car to begin with.
Alternatively having to charge on the way, but the 450 km is for charging once, so less than that would mean charging twice or more, and I don't want that extra time added on a trip that is already long.
Cars with smaller batteries, very often also charge slower.
I suppose that makes me an idiot?
We go out of town every few months for a weekend, and when we go somewhere that doesn't have train service, I rent a car to make the trip. It's around $100 (not including fuel) for the two days depending on which model they have at the time. Even if we did this every month, it's a bit silly to suggest that it's cheaper to have bought a vehicle with double the range for these infrequent occurrences of long distance travel. Especially so considering the largest cost of manufacturing an electric vehicle by a hefty margin is the battery pack.
From this list of the 19 vehicles with over 450km range, 10 of them are trucks or SUVs so we can ignore them from this discussion. Of the 9 remaining, only 4 of them cost $60k CAD or below:
This year's Nissan Leaf can go 240km, at $28k. At your minimum, you're looking to spend double the money to get a car that can go double the range. For the extra $28k spent on an Ioniq 6 or Model 3 over the Leaf, you could rent a car for the weekend getaway every single month for the next two decades.
Some years ago, I wanted to know if an electric car would fit my lifestyle. I drove a gasoline sedan at the time. I decided to refuel my car at the end of every day, and take notes on the distance I had driven and where the needle was on the gas gauge. I did this for two months in the summer, when I knew I did most of my driving. The data I collected about my own habits showed me I didn't really drive a lot most days. There were only a handful of times I went over 100km in a day. The gas needle rarely dipped below three quarters full, and never below half.
There's about 12,000 gas stations in Canada, and nearly 9,000 charging stations - up 30% last year. If you're able to plug in for fifteen minutes or so at a destination you're already stopping at, that really helps with the longer distance issue. It's only getting easier to have a low range car as the years go by.
Regarding charging times
I wouldn't say batteries charge slower because of their smaller capacity. The lower charging speed is probably a cost saving measure which makes it incompatible with the fastest charging stations around. The Nissan Leaf will gain 190km of range in 40 minutes, or 5km per minute. Tesla's can get 280km in 15 minutes, or 18km per minute. That's about a 4x difference, but it costs so much more to get there.
The Leaf has a capacity that per kilowatt provides 6km of range. The Model 3 gets 7km per kilowatt. Is one extra kilometre per kilowatt worth buying the equivalent of two Nissan Leafs? Not to me it isn't.
In my view, driving out of town every other week is a poor argument for buying a vehicle with twice the range than it needs the other 339 days of the year.
The headline should specify Korea. I mean, I know it was too good to be true I guess.
I'm still too broke for that. Can I just steal one with a stick with the end shaved to be approximately the same dimensions as a usb A connector?
No, no no. They fixed opting not to put a cheap anti theft device in a decade of cars by "updating software" and installing "dont steal this" window stickers. Some lucky devils that couldn't get software got a new metal ring in their steering column, and then a sticker. You could even go to your local police department in some locations and get a free, ridiculously useless steering wheel lock, if you heard about it. Mail them to customers? Nah, that might cost money.
Dont worry, they only did this in the US. Every other nation has laws about having an immobilizer in cars, but not the good ol' USA. Kia even had them in the same models sold elsewhere, just not the US models.
It only affected about 1 million people so far though, who have at best had to go in and have a half ass fix applied at a dealership while being upsold. That just leaves 7 million unprotected cars out there.
At worst, whats a few thousand stolen cars and even more shattered windows among friends? Surely no fine or penalty should occur.
Ohh, also, the software update doesn't seem to be working.
Neat, how long till we find out they did something insane like all use the same key or are all running a web server that allows access to the gas and brakes directly without authentication?
Edit: to be clear, no issue with the goal of more electric vehicles. But Kia is having some real deep seated quality issues the last... 13 years according to my insurance agent. They won't even touch a Kia without factory installed push button ignition since 2011. Then there's the whole "we're leaking all your data and access to your car thing"
Oh Christ why is it so ugly
I thought the box-shaped car fad died out 10 years ago
It's literally a miniature Kia Soul which is hilarious. I don't think it looks that bad and the boxy design is quite functional.
Please bring to North America
"We hear you! Here is another hideous SUV with absolutely awful, wildly inefficient energy-to-range figures. Enjoy!"
Nice design, but only goes about 100 miles to the charge. That’s unacceptable in today’s market. It will go even fewer miles with additional passengers and the air conditioning turned on. I’d imagine they put a small battery in it to hit that lower price point.
It's for the Korean market. It'll get you from Seoul to the east coast on a single charge and there's high-speed rail just about everywhere for your longer journeys. Perfectly fine for most people in such a small, densely-populated country.
That’s fine but people elsewhere shouldn’t get too excited about it. When the price is listed in US dollars as some sort of bargain instead of the currency where it’s sold, it gets misleading.
Probably because it's reported by english-speakers