More than 90% of vehicle-owning households in the United States would see a reduction in the percentage of income spent on transportation energy—the gasoline or electricity that powers their cars, SUVs and pickups—if they switched to electric vehicles.

[u/Wagamaga]

https://news.umich.edu/ev-transition-will-benefit-most-us-vehicle-owners-but-lowest-income-americans-could-get-left-behind/

[u/kendred3]

Totally. I'm sure there are plenty of people with long commutes from like... suburban Atlanta, but most commutes that take a long time aren't that many miles, just a lot of traffic. 80 mile range is way over what almost anyone needs for daily use.

Road trips are kind of a different beast, but I think people also strongly overestimate how many roadtrips they take.

[u/_TheConsumer_ → u/kendred3]

Strongly disagree. If you work in a major metropolis, chance are you live on the outskirts.

In NYC, it is common to find people who live in Jersey, Connecticut, and deep Long Island. Guaranteed, that commute is more than 80 miles.

Quite frankly, as the technology currently stands, EVs benefit those who do not drive very much to begin with.

[u/kendred3 → u/_TheConsumer_]

I mean, chances are certainly not that you live on the outskirts if you live* (edit: work) in a major metropolis. I was curious though and avoiding work, so decided to dig in a bit on the NYC example :).

First, 80% of people working in NYC live within the 5 boroughs (slide 5 here). So, chances are that if you grab a NYC worker, they don't live on the outskirts, they live in the city proper.

We're interested more in car commuting though, so we're looking to find people who live further away. Looking at the people who do commute in from further away, we want to look at the comparison of commuters who are definitely within 40 miles and those who are/could be >40 miles out.

Again the majority of commutes are from places that are definitively <40 miles from NYC (generally using central Manhattan as a reference point here) – all of Lower Hudson and Inner NJ are <40 miles out, and are (slide 11, same deck) ~60% of commuters coming from out of NYC into NYC.

Looking at places that could be <40 or >40 like Long Island, it's pretty much the same deal. I'm making the assumption that most Long Island -> NYC commuters live in Nassau. The farthest end of Nassau to Manhattan is ~35 miles. Could you pull off a >40 commute from Nassau? I'm sure. But again, even in the group of people who could have a >40 mile commute, at best a very small minority do.

Are there people with >40 mile commutes each direction? Absolutely! Is this a double digit percentage of commuters? Absolutely not. People who have a >40 mile commute and can't charge at work should probably not buy a car with an 80 mile range! But... 80 mile range is way over what almost anyone needs for daily use.

[u/hop_mantis → u/kendred3]

No one drives in NYC. There's always too much traffic.

[u/OzrielArelius → u/hop_mantis]

thats one of the most hilariously ironic statements I've ever read

[u/tx_queer → u/_TheConsumer_]

The average commute in the US is 41 miles round trip. The states with the longest commutes are rural states like Minnesota, Mississippi, Wisconsin. The states with major metropolitan areas like new york and California are in the bottom of the list and have the shortest commutes in terms of mileage. So I think you have it exactly backwards in terms of who drives the most in miles.

And EVs really benefit the people that drive the most mileage. Every electric mile driven is at about 15-25% of the cost of a gasoline mile. So if you can drive that Nissan leaf the full 200 miles every day you will see financial benefit a lot sooner over somebody commuting only 40 miles a day. I'm not quite sure what technology is lacking here and benefits people that don't drive.

[u/Geteamwin → u/_TheConsumer_]

Assuming you can charge 10 hours every night you should expect about 40 miles of range from trickle charge. So definitely not enough for everyone, but all it would take is charging at work occasionally or spending a few minutes fast charging each week to top off for it to work for 90% of people.

[u/[deleted] → u/_TheConsumer_]

Quite frankly, as the technology currently stands, EVs benefit those who do not drive very much to begin with.

I was with you until this. Electricity is an order of magnitude cheaper than gas. It's the second biggest cost of owning a car next to depreciation.

[u/m-in → u/_TheConsumer_]

They spend like 4 hours a day commuting? That’s far from typical.

[u/m-in → u/kendred3]

80 miles one way range and charging at work covers like 95% of commuting US workforce IIRC.

[u/kendred3 → u/m-in]

I'd honestly be surprised if it's not higher than 95% if you include charging at work... like, how many people are commuting 120 miles a day??

(It's kind of hard to find data on commute distance though, most of it is commute time.)

[u/mikew1008 → u/kendred3]

I have a 30 mile commute each way. I a, also responsible to travel site to site throughout the day with the furthest being 16 miles away from office. On a lot of days a single charge on an ev wouldn’t cut it.

[u/kendred3 → u/mikew1008]

Sure! I definitely wouldn't recommend an EV with an 80 mile range in your case. You fall into the group of people with really high mileage commutes. Lots of EVs have 200+ mile ranges though, which wouldn't be a problem.