johnlocke said:
Back in the day (60's and 70's) , cars had 20 gal fuel tanks and got 12-14 MPG. That gives a 240 mile range. Cars like a Pinto or Vega had 12 gal fuel tanks and got 20 MPG. Again a 240 mi range. It wasn't until the mid 70's and the fuel shortages that manufacturers started putting in larger gas tanks so you wouldn't have to fill up as often. Hardly anyone drives more than 3-4 hrs. at a time. Most people need a break after 3 hrs of driving (or sooner if you're chugging that Big Gulp). 300 miles is the upper limit of what most people need and the bottom end is something over 200 miles for convenience. Since you can charge at home every night and don't need to look for a gas station on the way, something around 150 miles is actually more than sufficient. The only real problem with shorter range cars is going to be battery degradation due to more frequent charging. If you solve that and enable really Fast Charging ( say 5-10 min to 90%) then range is a non-issue. If you can do either shallow discharge or 2-3 days between charging sessions batteries would last a lot longer even in their current form. That's why the trend is toward bigger batteries and longer ranges. Elon Musk has given a range of 1000-1500 full discharge cycles as the lifetime of a battery in normal use. For a 60 KWH battery, that's 200,000-300,000 miles of operation. Even a 30 KWH Nissan battery in a cool climate (Say Ireland) could do 90,000-130,000 miles. A bigger battery isn't necessary for more range but rather to reduce the frequency of charge cycles or to encourage shallower charge and discharge events.
It depends on where you live and if you plan to still have a traditional gasoline or gasoline hybrid.
Rivian is targeting 400 miles for a reason - if you are going up in our mountains , you need both the miles and the elevation. Someday there may be fast charging stations in the national parks - but at every forest service trail-head and campground? Probably not.
So the solution is either having two vehicles, having one that takes gas for those trips, or having a lot more range in one of your EV's
In other countries or parts of this country, 150 can do everything. Here it can't. Heck the nearest town is almost 90 miles away.
Now the nice thing is that most families have at least two cars, so replacing one of them with a 150mi EV is a no-brainier.