I'll plus one here and say, NOBODY CARES if you have a 24, 30 or even a 40 kWh battery pack in your EV and it works great for you (edited to include 40 kWh pack fans in my rant as I currently have 40+ kWh pack in my Rav 4 and it is painfully not enough range and I can't even use the heater when I need it which my passengers hate). Awesome for you, you are an extreme outlier in the car buying public. Enough of these ridiculous irrelevant to the masses comments that keep taking up space on this forum; we all know you exist, no need to add little value to the discussion as it goes without saying.
I've driven 98,000 EV miles between my Leaf and RAV4 EV's over the last 6 years and my 2011 Leaf was incredibly Inconvenient and a real nightmare time suck to accommodate my regular 100 mile a day driving needs. I was wasting hours every week sitting at the quick charger. It was aweful, however, I did it because gas kills and we need to move as a society to solar powered transport. I can't tell you how stressful it is to get a low battery warning 2x a day for my daily commute and god forbid I wanted some cabin heat, I surely wouldn't make it. The 100 miles on a charge that Nissan advertised was a joke, the 71 EPA miles of my Leaf was also a joke in the cold after some degradation.
Some things for the 24, 30 and 40 kWh battery pack EV fan crowd to remember:
- Driving in the cold, ~half the year, reduces EV range by 20-30%.
- City people often live in apartments and can't charge everyday at their home and don't want to spend hours a day at the quick charger.
- People need range flexibility. For example, Country folk need range to drive into the city from their backwoods homes, incase it's not painfully obvious, most small and medium sized towns in the US don't have quick chargers yet and if they do, they have one and it's likely broken when you need it. Growing up in southern Oregon, we had to drive 45 miles one way to get to the nearest city with a movie theatre, karate lessons etc. We did this 3-4 times a week and sometimes we liked to go to the mall which was a 150 mile round trip.
- Increasing range and decreasing charge times are critically important to move from 1% to 100% of new car sales having a plug.
- Bigger batteries have a longer useful life which will help people who buy used cars or keep cars 10+ years.
- Driving 75mph reduces range. My dad is 78 and he still likes to drive 75-80 mph. I drive 75-80mph if I can afford the range reduction costs.
Chevy definitely got it right with the Bolt and a 238 mile range. That's basically 4x the EPA range of my 2011 Leaf which was a range limited nightmare. I would still be driving my 2011 Leaf today if they offered a 200 mile battery upgrade. Surprise, Nissan did not offer a battery upgrade. Boo hoo, I moved on.
Bring on the long range EV options. I'm ready, I paid my dues in 100's of hours I spent at the quick charger. And sure, keep the short range EV battery as an option for people who only drive a few thousand miles a year.
evnow said:
Durandal said:
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.
. 24/30/40 kWH is not enough range for mass EV adoption. I have a 46 kWh battery in my Rav 4 and it is not even good for 100 miles in the winter at freeway speeds. 
