Durandal wrote:An advantage of a large kWh battery pack even if you don't need it will be longer life of the battery pack due to it being charged/discharged less, and when it is discharged, to a lower depth of discharge. A 60kWh battery pack that has 75% capacity remaining still offers a lot of range of 180 miles, while 75% remaining on a 40kWh is 120 miles. Even when it gets down to 50% capacity, the 60kWh would offer 120 mile range, versus the 80 mile range of the 40kWh at 50%. That will improve resale values as the usability of the vehicle still remains, years later.
Add to that cold weather, high way speed hits. Even a 200 mile EV becomes a 150 mile EV with no degradation. 40 kWh would be < 100 miles.
All this talk of whether 40 kwh or 60 kwh is "enough" reminds me of those days when we were thinking whether 1GB RAM was enough.
Hopefully in a few years 60 kWh is cheap enough for EVs around $15k. I think good range for US is 3 hours of highway driving in winter, with 20% buffer. This way you fast charge to 80% in 30 minutes and off you go for 3 more hours. About 400 miles EPA.
All this assuming, we won't have a nuke war soon.