A Gentle Introduction to Electric Vehicles (EVs)

Mark’s Blog

Purpose

In June 2020, my wife and I bought our first car: a fully electric 2018 Nissan Leaf. We did not know anyone who relied on an Electric Vehicle (EV) as their primary vehicle, so we had relatively little insight into the nuances of EV ownership. Where would we charge the car? How good was the range? We opted for a “Meh, we’ll figure it out as we go” approach.

Now, more than a year later, we have used our car in our daily lives and taken it on a few adventures. The purpose of this post is to share what we’ve learned as relatively early EV adopters and why we love it. I am hoping that you will read this if you are thinking about getting an EV as your next car and are a bit nervous about the whole thing. One of the biggest barriers to EV ownership is “range anxiety,” the fear that the range of the EV will be insufficient to get you where you need to go. I will cover range anxiety, among other things. I hope you will find this gentle introduction to EVs informative and maybe even a little entertaining.

The Case for EVs (Non-Environmental)

When I think about the benefits of EVs, the first thing that comes to my mind is the environmental benefits. While being good to the environment is a high priority for me and my wife, it may not be top-of-mind for everyone, which is why I’m going to start off by describing some of the less-obvious benefits of EV ownership.

Here are three non-environmental reasons to get an EV:

The Case for EVs (Environmental)

Okay, now the environmental stuff. No review of EVs would be complete without it. After all, if you are going through all the trouble of buying an EV you want to be darn sure that what you are doing is really, truly, actually going to help the environment. The good news is that, yes, the energy usage of an EV over its lifetime and the total greenhouse gas emissions beat gas cars by a factor of at least two. While a lot has already been written about the life-cycle analysis of EVs, I’ll just touch on two of the most important contributing factors and some common misconceptions surrounding them. For a more in-depth analysis, I recommend the episode Are Electric Cars Really Better for the Climate of the podcast How to Save a Planet.

The Efficiency Gap

Energy is energy, right? If you’ve taken a physics class, you know that energy is conserved. To move a vehicle from point A to point B takes roughly the same amount of energy whether the car is powered by gas, electricity, or sparkles and rainbows. Plus, the electricity that powers electric cars did not magically poof into existence. So how is it that EVs are so much better from an energy standpoint? The answer is two-fold.

First, electric motors are more efficient than combustion engines at converting stored energy into usable kinetic energy. That was a doozy of a sentence, so here’s another way to put it: “Zap zap is better than boom boom.” Okay, maybe I over-simplified. The point is that the same amount of stored energy will do a lot more work in an EV than it will in a gas vehicle. This is an unavoidable law of physics: every time energy is converted from one form to another, some of it gets lost as heat. When combustion happens, a great deal of energy is lost as heat. When an electric motor operates, it loses a lot less energy to heat. Gas vehicles are roughly 20-30% efficient, while EVs are closer to 90% efficient. Or, in other words, if a typical gas vehicle goes 25 miles on a single gallon of gas, an EV could go 75 miles using an amount of energy equivalent to the energy stored in that one gallon of gas.

But, wait, who cares if the electric motor is more efficient if the electric energy comes from a gas plant in the first place? Well, that brings us to the second piece of the efficiency puzzle. In the best-case scenario, the energy that powers the EV will come from an environmentally friendly source like solar power, wind power, hydropower, or nuclear power (which is at least better from a greenhouse gas standpoint). If you live somewhere that gets power predominantly from one of these sources, EVs are a clear win over gas vehicles. But what about the worst-case scenario where you get energy from a coal or gas power plant? Well, here’s the good news: the combustion that happens in power plants is more efficient than the combustion that happens inside internal combustion engines (ICEs). A bit like the economic concept of “economy of scale,” the combustion that happens in a power plant benefits from the fact that a lot of combustion is occurring all in one place. While an ICE might be between 20% and 30% efficient, a gas power plant will usually be 40% to 60% efficient, a twofold improvement.

The Battery Problem

From an environmental standpoint, one of the most unfortunate parts of an EV is its battery. There is no getting around the fact that mining the precious metals that are in car batteries is an energy-intensive affair and uses some non-renewable resources. That is why a full life-cycle analysis is important to really understand the complete picture of EV’s environmental impact. Were it not for the issues of battery manufacturing and recycling, a typical EV would come out to roughly a 3x improvement over the ICE alternatives in terms of emissions. When the battery manufacturing is taken into account, that lead narrows slightly to something more like 2x. Still, the point remains: everyone switching their cars to EVs tomorrow would be as good for the world as removing half of the cars on the road. That seems like a pretty good deal.

The Electric Vehicle Market

My wife and I bought our car in June 2020. At that time, Tesla was the dominant EV dealer on the market but did not offer a model in the budget we had set for ourselves. Nissan offered a comparatively budget-friendly car: the Nissan Leaf. The Nissan Leaf underwent a significant overhaul in 2018, which gave the 2018-or-newer models a boost in range. We opted to get a certified pre-owned 2018 Leaf with fewer than 10,000 miles on it. It cost us $18,500.

A lot of car companies are rolling out their first mass-market EVs in the next two or three years and it is impressive how much the technology seems to have progressed in just the past few years. The price of a new Tesla keeps coming down and many of the newer competitors entering the market (Ford, Chevy, Nissan, and more) boast ranges over 250 miles, making our three-year-old Leaf seem like it’s already a dinosaur. I guess if we let it get compressed under mud for millions of years then we can combust it? Okay, maybe that’s too meta. At any rate, I’m really not complaining: as I’ll mention at length in the “Range Anxiety” section, our range is more than sufficient for all the day-to-day driving that we need to do. For longer trips, we’ve learned how to incorporate it into our trip planning. A lot of the new models entering the market have base versions with ranges of 250+ miles and even offer “extended range” versions that can go 300+ miles on a single charge. While an extended range is nice to have, you might find that it is not really worth the added cost.

If you do decide to buy a used EV, be sure to check which charging standard it uses for fast charging. Most manufacturers have settled on using the “CCS” standard for Level 3 charging, which means that older cars with the “CHAdeMO” standard are going to have less new infrastructure built for them. It’s not a deal-breaker, especially since you are probably going to be doing a vast majority of your charging using Level 1 or 2 charging (see the next section), but it’s something to consider. Likewise, if you are going to go the used car route, be sure to check when the model underwent its most recent major revision. Given the rate at which EV technology is progressing, the major revisions often offer substantial upgrades over their predecessors.

Charging

Charging an electric car is slightly more complicated than charging your phone, but only slightly. Here is the hip, cool, insider lingo you need to know.

Types of Charging:

Overall, it’s not rocket science. In fact, rockets are probably not going to be electric for quite some time.

Range Anxiety

Okay, here we are. The scary boogeyman. How do we deal with the fact that our 2018 Nissan Leaf can only go a lowly 150 miles on a full charge? Here is the bottom line: we discovered that we drive 150+ miles in a single stretch a lot less often than we thought. And a corollary: we use fast chargers a lot less often than we thought we would.

Now, I know what you might be thinking… how are these people so oblivious that they didn’t even know how often they drive more than 150 miles? Well, here’s the thing: when we were in the process of buying our electric car, our occasional long-distance trips were at the top of our minds. We were not thinking about our boring, everyday usage, even though everyday usage accounts for a vast majority of our time driving. This made us overestimate how often we would worry about the car’s range. To put it another way, in a typical month we might go on one long-distance trip. That means that on twenty-nine out of thirty days we don’t even give our car’s range a second thought. It is only on those rare long-distance journeys that we need to watch the battery reading. For those rare days, a decent route plan and a little flexibility get us wherever we need to go. I’ll cover that in more detail in a moment.

If you are on the fence about buying an electric car, consider doing the following: over the next month, count the mileage you drive each day. How many days out of the month do you drive more than 75% of the range of the car you are considering buying? Those are the only days you would worry about your car’s range. Remember that you can typically fully charge your car overnight, which is why I suggest measuring the mileage per day.

For some perspective: New York City to Boston is 215 miles. San Francisco to Reno is 220 miles. Seattle to Portland is 180 miles. If a train leaves Cincinnati traveling at 120 miles per hour… is it electric? Just kidding… I know nothing about Cincinnati.

Okay, enough skirting this issue: every once in a while, your car’s range just isn’t going to get you where you want to go on one charge. Maybe it’s a ski trip with friends or a hike in a national park or maybe you were visited by the ghost of your dead father who told you that you needed to avenge his murder in Wall, South Dakota. Whatever the reason, there will be times that you want to go a long way in a single day. For those days, we turn our attention to the wonderful world of… route planning!

When you own an EV, you start to think a little differently about your trips. While I don’t know much about your life and your choices, dear reader, I do know that, for me, three hours is a lot of time to spend in a car without a break. Rather than quick-charging stops being like gas station stops, you incorporate the stops into your route and plan around them. Maybe you go for a quick bite to eat or a full dinner or you pick up groceries. Or, if it’s a vacation, you find an interesting destination along the route with a nearby charger and incorporate it into the trip. Especially if you are doing your long drives for leisure, you probably have some flexibility to work with. To drive the point home (pun intended), I’ll give some examples of trips we’ve taken with our Leaf and how we worked charging stops into our drives.

While most of the trips that I’ll describe below were planned with Google Maps (to find routes) and the Chargepoint app (to find charging stations), we recently discovered a new app, called A Better Route Planner, which does both in one place. It is a great tool for planning long trips with EVs by finding good waypoints to stop for Level 3 charging. As EVs gain wider adoption, there is likely to be a proliferation of similar tools. For now, A Better Route Planner is an important tool in any EV owner’s toolkit.

Example Road Trip: Snoqualmie Pass, WA

During the winter of 2021, we took our car to go skiing, traveling from Bellevue, WA to The Summit at Snoqualmie ski area. Because of the cold weather and the steep uphill climb into the mountain pass, the battery performance was worse than expected for the mileage. Still, the ski area has 6 electric car charging stations. We plugged the car in while we were skiing and came back ~6 hours later to a fully charged car for the trip back.

Example Road Trip: Moclips, WA

In the Spring of 2021, we traveled from Bellevue, WA to Moclips, WA. The total mileage is listed as ~140 miles. We left on the trip right after work. An hour and a half later, we stopped at a Level 3 charger in Olympia, WA. The charger was located near several restaurants, so we got takeout food from one of them and ate it outside while the car finished charging (we did not eat inside due to COVID). On the way back a few days later, we stopped at the same Level 3 charging station but instead went grocery shopping to pick up the groceries we needed for the coming week.

Example Road Trip: Forks, WA

In the early summer of 2021, we traveled from Bellevue, WA to Forks, WA. The total mileage is listed as ~140 miles. We decided to stop at an EV charging station near Port Angeles, WA. As with our trip to Moclips, we left after work, so we planned to eat dinner while our car charged. This time, the charging station was not near any restaurants, so we arranged to pick up food ten minutes before getting to the charging station and ate it at a picnic table near the charging station. On the way back, we stopped at the same charging station and had dinner in a similar manner.

Example Road Trip: Leavenworth, WA

In the middle of summer 2021, we traveled from Bothell, WA to Leavenworth, WA. Although we did not really need to stop along the way, since we were only going 100 miles, we decided to make a dinner stop in Skykomish, WA, where we charged at an adjacent Level 3 charger. At our destination, there were no Level 2 chargers, so we found an outdoor outlet and, with permission from the hotel manager, plugged in our car to Level 1 charge overnight. On our way home, we went the whole distance without stopping to charge.

Example Road Trip: Olympic National Park, WA

In the late summer of 2021, we went on a week-long trip around the Olympic National Park. It was a multi-day trip with several stops along the way. For all of the days around the park, our range was enough to get us between attractions and we could charge overnight at a Level 1 or a Level 2 station. Only the first and last days required Level 3 stops, since those consisted of the most mileage. The first day consisted of 190 miles of driving, so a stop was mandatory. We charged at a Level 3 station that recently opened outside of Olympia, WA. It was early in the evening and we were planning to get dinner at our destination, so, instead of getting a bite to eat, we went shopping for the snacks that we planned to bring on our upcoming hikes. The last day consisted of 160 miles of driving. We spent the early afternoon hiking Hurricane Ridge, so we had worked up quite the appetite. On our way back, we stopped at another recently-opened Level 3 station in Port Angeles, WA, where we re-charged our car and ourselves: the car ate moving electrons and we ate sandwiches at a local cafe.

Battery Performance

Forgive me, Newton, for I have sinned. I have lied to the good people about Your fundamental laws of physics and for that, I am sorry.

Yes, dear reader, this is where I admit I have been lying to you this whole time. I wrote this post for non-EV owners considering purchasing their first EV. For that reason, when I talked about a car’s range and charging speed, I generally did so in terms of mileage. That is often how EVs are advertised and so I was trying to be consistent with the terms you might encounter while shopping around. Once you own an EV, though, you are much more likely to talk about your car’s performance on routes in terms of the percentage of battery used.

The reason we tend to talk in terms of battery percentage and not mileage is that not all miles consume the same amount of energy. Elevation gain will drain your EV’s battery faster than flat terrain, while a long downhill section might drain hardly more than a few percent. Temperature is also an important factor. If it is very cold outside, your battery will not perform as well. Your driving speed will also play a role, since driving faster means more wind resistance. Thus, you are much more likely to say “Going from Point A to Point B used 70% of our battery” than you would say “Going from Point A to Point B used 100 miles of our range.”

Most EVs include an estimate of the remaining mileage, which accounts for the car’s current state of charge (percentage) and present road conditions. Unfortunately, in our Leaf, this estimate is not terribly reliable because it only accounts for current conditions and not where you are planning to go. Thankfully, you do not need to master complex physics formulas in order to own an EV (although if you want to, I’m not stopping you). Instead, you can outsource the job to route-planning apps like A Better Route Planner. And lest you think I am a shill for that one app, I’ll add that Google Maps is slowly rolling out EV route planning features. Some cars even come with their own route planners built-in. While no route-planning app is perfect, I’ve found that A Better Route Planner can consistently predict our car’s battery usage, in terms of percentage, to within a few percentage points.

As a fun aside, after owning an EV for a little while, you will gain a newfound appreciation of physics and will have a ton of “EV fun facts” to share. For example, here is a counter-intuitive fact: when driving on the highway on a hot day, it is often more efficient to cool your car by running the A/C than by opening the windows. Opening the windows increases your car’s drag and ultimately forces your car to use more energy than just running the A/C. You can wow all of your friends by sharing this fun fact at parties. I would do it, myself, but for some odd reason, no one invites me to parties anymore.

Okay, time to come clean about one more lie. Charging is not uniform. As your battery gets closer to 100%, your rate of charging slows. Charging your EV from 10% to 80% will be faster than charging it from 30% to 100%. This behavior protects the long-term health of your battery, but it does mean that claims about car charging speed come with a caveat. When car companies tell you about how a car can fast-charge “80% in 30 minutes,” they are usually referring to the first 80%. The numbers I quoted above have a similar caveat. Thankfully, if you are going on a long trip that requires Level 3 charging, your trip planning app will account for this behavior. It might recommend that you get back on the road after charging your car to just 80%, without waiting until you get all the way to 100%.

Finally, like all batteries, the battery in your EV will experience a gradual degradation in its maximum charge as it ages. This is not something I have had much personal experience with, yet. I do know some ballpark numbers which I keep in the back of my mind: after 5 years, you should expect your battery to hold ~10% less charge than when it was brand new. That number can slide up to 20% if you frequently use Level 3 chargers. The dealership where we purchased our car assesses the health of our battery when we bring the car in for regular tune-ups. I imagine most auto service centers will offer this service in the near future if they don’t already.

Closing Thoughts

If you are considering buying an EV, I hope you found this post helpful. I tried to include everything that I wish I had known in my first year of EV ownership. I really enjoy driving an EV and hope you will, too. If you read the whole thing, congratulations! You are a nerd.

For those of you that just scrolled down to the bottom, here is a short summary of everything we learned:

Appendix: Comments from a Physicist (Oct 2021)

A physicist friend of mine, who also owns a Nissan Leaf, read this essay and offered more detailed explanations for some of the things that I hand-waived over: