Chinese EV Drivers Rolling Past Range Anxiety

I’ve said it before many times — even a decade ago when EV range was much lower and EV charging stations were much less abundant: range anxiety is massively overhyped and seems to plague non-EV drivers much more than EV drivers. As one reader explained it, it’s really anxiety about range anxiety, or range anxiety anxiety, that is the problem, and that’s people thinking about buying an EV being concerned about whether they’d get range anxiety. Once you get an EV, if you have home charging (or even workplace charging), you typically learn that EVs are much more convenient and you typically never run into an actual range problem in which your EV battery dies or almost dies.

Anyway, news out of China now is that “range anxiety” is drifting away as EV adoption rises and EV charging infrastructure in the country grows. Note that fully electric vehicles are up to 30% of all auto sales in China this year, and plugin vehicles overall are up to 48% of sales. Even people who go on long road trips are now finding them easy to take with an EV. “For Li Dongsheng, a new energy vehicle owner, a road trip of around 1,000 kilometers from Southwest China to the North once triggered ‘range anxiety’. However, during this year’s five-day May Day holiday, the journey proved unexpectedly smooth,” China Daily reports.

“At the Fuping service area in Northwest China’s Shaanxi province, Li’s vehicle gained 400 km of range with just a 10-minute charge. ‘With more charging piles along the expressway, long-distance travel in my NEV is no longer a worry,’ Li said.”

More stories like that populate the article. China Daily also notes that EV charging grew 56% year over year on the first day of the May Day holiday, according to data from the National Energy Administration. Again, some specific examples of new infrastructure were provided, as well as a note on BYD’s new super-fast EV charging capability — 5 minutes from 10% to 70% charge, and 9 minutes to 97% charge.

China now has more than 21 million charging posts.

So, as the EV market has matured in China — and has clearly been going mainstream — EV charging infrastructure has kept up with demand and even become extensive enough that charging is less of a concern than ever. Beyond that, it’s gotten super quick and is getting to be quite comparable with filling up a car with gas/petrol/diesel. However, gas/petrol/diesel cars can’t fuel up at home or at work like electric vehicles can. So, frankly, electric cars are becoming much more convenient than fossil fueled cars.

As you go along the technology adoption curve, buyers are less and less confident changing to a new technology, so you need these kinds of improvements to get them onboard. As everyone with an EV knows, the two most popular questions from non-EV owners are “How long does it take to charge?” and “How far you can drive?” Even lacking all of the context around more convenient charging while parked in a normal parking spot (at home, work, the grocery store, etc.), with the answer to the former question becoming “about as long as it takes to fill up a gas car,” a big barrier to further EV adoption goes away. And that’s what’s happening in China now. The US should get there in … about 30 years. I’m kidding, but we are clearly quite far behind the Red Dragon currently.

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