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How to choose the right electric car

Posted Tuesday, May 16, 2023

Which One is Best for You?

When you are going from a gas car to an electric car, you may be wondering on how to choose the right electric car for you. The two main factors to consider when researching your first EV are range and charging.

Range: When choosing the right electric car, your car needs to make it to where you want to go. And with a little buffer for peace of mind and unexpected detours/errands. The considerations vary significantly between daily driving and longer trips. You also have to take into account the type of driving - highway speed is affecting your fuel economy a lot more than in gas cars.

Daily Commute: range is the key characteristic that will tell you which EVs will work for you. Many newer EVs are rated well above 200 miles. But there are plenty of used vehicles with far lower range that will work for most commuters. Before choosing an electric car, try to figure out how much you drive on a long day. A day when you do your work commute, run a couple of errands, and go out in the evening (to a friend's, dinner, a movie, etc.). If that adds up to 50 miles for you, then you'll probably want an EV with at least 65 miles of range. That buffer will help you avoid range anxiety, account for a bit of degradation for several years, and for some efficiency loss during the winter.

Travel: what kind of trips does the vehicle have to be able to complete? Some get an EV as their second car for daily driving and never take it on trips. But if you do want to use it for trips, you want to decide how many charging stops you're comfortable with. You also have to account for less range at highway speeds. You rarely want to have to charge above 80% in order to make it to the next charger, because the charging will slow down quite a bit as the battery gets close to full.

Charging: Refueling your vehicle by charging the battery is very different in several aspects for daily commuting versus longer trips.

Daily Commute: If you drive less than ~40 miles per day, you can fully replenish your battery overnight with just a regular household outlet (120V) with the charge cord (aka "level 1 charger") that comes with most EVs. You recover about 3.5-4 miles of range for every hour of charging (less with larger, heavier vehicles). If you drive more than 40 miles a day, a level 1 charger won’t be fast enough to fill up your battery overnight. In this case, you may want to consider installing a level 2 charger (240V). A level 2 charger will fully charge just about any EV overnight.

Travel: While some hotels make Level 2 chargers available for charging overnight, most charging on long trips will use public level 3 charging stations. These stations will vary in how fast they charge your EV, depending mainly on your EV, the station itself, and how full your battery is. They typically take less than an hour to charge to 80%. If you intend to take long trips frequently, then the Tesla charging network has the fastest and most reliable stations. Since Teslas are also among the vehicles that can accept the most power, the travel experience today is usually much better in a Tesla than most other EVs. Most other cars use CCS - they're fast enough, but often not maintained as well as Tesla stations. Nissan Leafs and Kia Soul EVs use CHAdeMO chargers, which are harder to find, so you have to plan ahead a bit more.

The intention of this article is to get you thinking about the most important factors of electric car ownership. And help you decide which electric car will do the best job for your scenario. We have helped thousands of EV drivers find the EV that works best for their personal situation.