how come no one talks about gas anxiety?

[onlinespending]

and no, I'm not talking about the kind of anxiety you might feel after eating a three bean chili. I'm talking about range anxiety with a gas powered car. I found myself getting more range anxiety driving my ICE car, than I have when ever driving an electric car.

First of all, like most people, a large majority of my driving miles occur within a pretty small radius of my home. It's commuting to/from work, running errands, picking up/dropping off the kids, going out around town, etc that accounts for most of our driving. With my ICE vehicle, whenever I was close to an empty tank I had to stress about finding the time to get to a gas station and fill up the tank. Because usually when I'm driving it's to be somewhere at a particular time, and my tank always seems to get close to E at the most inconvenient of times. Often I'd push it, hoping to find time on my way to work the next day, hitting 0 on the estimated miles remaining on numerous occasions. Doesn't get more stressful than that.

You know how many times the common scenarios I described above happen with an electric car? Virtually zero. Because there's nothing more anxiety reducing than waking up to a full "tank" every morning when I start my day. Talk about convenient. It'd be akin to having your own gas pump in your garage and always being able to top it off each night. I NEVER have to worry about range anxiety for 90+% of my driving, which cannot be said about an ICE vehicle.

For longer trips, yes, I have to plan a bit more than I would with an ICE car. But even with an ICE car there's at least some degree of planning with longer trips, even if it's simply to pull up the route on a map. So what's a couple extra minutes to scout out the chargers along the route? Which BTW, happens to be done for us with the help of Tesla's own navigation or various websites. And I've had some serious range anxiety on long trips even with ICE cars when driving cross country on I-80. You can go miles and miles without a stop for gas in the middle of nowhere.

 

[wdolson]

I've been nervous about running out of gas a few times when I had an ICE. One time I ran out of gas in an intersection in downtown LA when I was 16.

In more recent years I drove my Buick for 24 years and as it got older gunk built up in the tank. It effectively reduced the tank capacity by about 3 gallons. I once let it get a bit too low and the engine started sucking gunk. I was really sweating it getting to the gas station.

You are right, these days I never worry about range around town. I drove around yesterday a bit more than usual and it was one of the rare times I saw the range remaining drop below 200 miles.

 

[TaoJones]

Well, with so many antacids and alternative remedies on the market these days... Oh - different kind of gas. Let’s just let that thought, um, pass.

I guess people are just conditioned to fill up and go and then fill up again. And for the most part, the infrastructure supports this. There are exceptions, sure (note $8/gallon shyster outfits here and there), but with rare exception one can get most anywhere with gas.

It’s an interesting chicken and egg paradigm with a Tesla and the current SC network. I’ve been able to get everywhere I’ve wanted to go, from Bar Harbor, Maine to Key West to 125 miles northeast of Edmonton, Alberta (and could have gone further due to the L2 network but kept it SC-only).

Then again, I’d like to drive to Acapulco, Baja (del Norte and del Sur), and Alaska, but in the case of the latter I’m not willing to schlep 1900 miles each way old school, and in the former cases, we need 1-2 more SCs in mainland Mexico to get to Acapulco, and there are the not insignificant matters of a) securing sufficient insurance that covers full US shop rate in excess of $50/hour, and b) that pesky warranty-voiding thing the moment one’s chariot crosses the border.

So those cases aside, for continental travel at least, that leaves range anxiety, which lessens after a few road trips. Easy peasy.

On the other hand, if I had to drive an ICE, I’d have *gas anxiety* at the thought of having to breathe toxic fumes every few hundred miles and to listen to that racket emanating from all over the vehicle. Not to mention the stench. And those buttons and knobs all over the place... it’s just... so... uncivilized.

 

[gregd]

I think the biggest reason, besides familiarity, is that ICE cars don't have a big digital display right in front of their face that counts down the remaining miles in the tank, in real time. Yes, there's a gas gauge, but it's not the same as a counter. There's just something primal and anxiety-inducing about seeing that number drop.

Now that our cars can easily do an every-day's travels on a single charge, the best thing to do is be a bit less in-your-face about the battery's state, unless the car notices you're getting low.

 

[wdolson]

A lot of newer ICEs can display an estimate of the miles remaining. My SO gets nervous when her Subaru starts telling here she's getting down to 50 miles.

 

[Asymmetry]

mine is tuned to BP Ron98. car only gets 300km to a tank. so share this anxiety.

talk to ICE tuners than run E85. their range is garbage

 

[GatorGuy]

The Tesla is really super convenient when doing daily drives around the city. The thought of never having to fill it up at a gas station makes me happy. I wish my wife would make the switch because she consistently attracts unwanted attention at gas stations. She also is one of the worst offenders of driving her car as close to empty as possible. It's fifty-fifty of when I have to drive her car if there is enough gas to get where you are going.

However the reason people do this is because they can. There are gas stations every 50 feet and to "fill up" only requires 5 minutes. Driving an ICE car requires no to little pre-planning. When I made long road trips, the only thing I planned was the fastest way to get there. When you're driving, and you come up on a long stretch with no gas stations, you hope off and fill up.

BTW, I'm a new owner so I haven't done any long road trips but depending on where you're going, not only do u need to look for chargers but u may need to monitor elevation, wind direction and speed and temperature. All of which can have drastic effects on range. For ICE cars the only one of those that really effected your mileage was elevation and it probably is no where near as much for EVs.

In my experience, ICE cars are also very good at estimating their range. When it tells u, that 50 miles are left, you are usually good for 50 miles unless you have recently changed your driving habits. Yesterday I used 80 rated miles of range to drive 20 miles. Of course I drive hard and fast but I was never able to get my MPG to go down like that on the street with my Audi. And I tried.

But EVs are a different animal. For me and how I drive it, it's turning into a very convenient one.

 

[MorrisonHiker]

A lot of newer ICEs can display an estimate of the miles remaining. My SO gets nervous when her Subaru starts telling here she's getting down to 50 miles.

lol. My father always fills up as soon as get gets below half a tank ( OMG!). I was always more like Kramer and would push it to the limit. Even though the low fuel light in my CR-V stopped working about 15 years earlier, I knew how far I could go based on how far the needle was below the E. Most of the time, I had less than a gallon remaining whenever I filled up. I only ran out of gas once...when I put over 400 miles on a tank and I was just 5 miles to my destination. Doh!

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Because it's gas irritation rather than gas anxiety.
- there's usually a gas station in close proximity, so you don't have to go much out of your way to stop at one
- filling up is fast, measured in mile per minute instead of miles per hour
- the time cost of an additional stop to fill up is usually only a few minutes, so if you're a nervous type you can fill up early.

 

[tranzndance]

Because it's gas irritation rather than gas anxiety.
- there's usually a gas station in close proximity, so you don't have to go much out of your way to stop at one
- filling up is fast, measured in mile per minute instead of miles per hour
- the time cost of an additional stop to fill up is usually only a few minutes, so if you're a nervous type you can fill up early.

Good point that it's more of an "ugh!" than an "uh-oh". I have experienced an "uh-oh" with a gas car. Fortunately, I lived near a gas station and an auto parts store so I was able to get a gas canister and get gas by walking to both places. I might have walked to the gas station to learn that I needed to buy the gas canister separately, though. My husband envies that I no longer have to go to the gas station, and he does for his ICE car. I did, and will, visit the gas station to get my car washed if I don't have time to do it by hand, which is often the case these days.

 

[Rockster]

I have no gasoline anxiety because the office park where I work has a refueling service. Any time I show up at work needing gas, I just open the refueling app on my phone, drag a pin to my car on the map view, request refueling, pop open my fuel door, and go into work. I get a text message and an invoice a little later after the gasoline truck comes by and fills my car. Other than road trips in the ICE vehicle, I haven't refueled my own car in over 18 months.

These days are about to be over, though, as we just picked up our Model 3 and now we're a two EV family. In a matter of days the ICE car goes bye-bye.

 

[JayyyDeee]

OP are you seriously overlooking the fact that you can fill up in 5 minutes or less and you can literally do it almost anywhere? <--this is why I hate the Tesla cult they are blind to the obvious


The perfect example I have is I had 220 km range in my Model S and I drove down to Bellingham from Vancouver(to get the szechuan sauce). Google maps says the round trip is 180km I think awesome I can make it to the super charger back in Canada when I go home. When I am about to head home I have about 80km range left cause it was cold and I drove fast. My options then were drive 80km(round trip)out of my way to the Burlington supercharger for find a local charger and charge at a level 2. Luckily I found a pub that offered charging to its guests and nursed a beer for a little under an hour just so I could make it to the super charger with about 15km left on Model S.

 

[Rocky_H]

it was cold and I drove fast.

And you are complaining that it's someone else's fault that you can't achieve the EPA rating of a vehicle? At least you admitted that you drove aggressively, using up the extra range.

-this is why I hate the Tesla cult they are blind to the obvious

Some people are realistic; that's not cultish.

 

[wdolson]

The Tesla is really super convenient when doing daily drives around the city. The thought of never having to fill it up at a gas station makes me happy. I wish my wife would make the switch because she consistently attracts unwanted attention at gas stations. She also is one of the worst offenders of driving her car as close to empty as possible. It's fifty-fifty of when I have to drive her car if there is enough gas to get where you are going.

However the reason people do this is because they can. There are gas stations every 50 feet and to "fill up" only requires 5 minutes. Driving an ICE car requires no to little pre-planning. When I made long road trips, the only thing I planned was the fastest way to get there. When you're driving, and you come up on a long stretch with no gas stations, you hope off and fill up.

BTW, I'm a new owner so I haven't done any long road trips but depending on where you're going, not only do u need to look for chargers but u may need to monitor elevation, wind direction and speed and temperature. All of which can have drastic effects on range. For ICE cars the only one of those that really effected your mileage was elevation and it probably is no where near as much for EVs.

In my experience, ICE cars are also very good at estimating their range. When it tells u, that 50 miles are left, you are usually good for 50 miles unless you have recently changed your driving habits. Yesterday I used 80 rated miles of range to drive 20 miles. Of course I drive hard and fast but I was never able to get my MPG to go down like that on the street with my Audi. And I tried.

But EVs are a different animal. For me and how I drive it, it's turning into a very convenient one.

ICE are very inefficient to begin with, so if you drive hard and reduce efficiency further, you don't notice it as much as you do in an EV which has very high efficiency when driven in its optimum zone. Most ICE are about 20% efficient at their best and can drop to around 15 when driving hard. A good hybrid driven carefully might get 35%. An EV driven in the sweet spot is around 90% efficient, but unfortunately that is around 25 to 40 mph at constant speed. However driving 65 on the highway it can still be 70% or better.

Because the potential efficiency is so much higher for an EV, everything that hurts efficiency has more impact.

As for supercharging on the highway, the Tesla supercharger network was mostly laid out with the original S 60 in mind. The oldest superchargers are mostly spaced about 180 miles apart. A 60 can just make it between them if driven carefully even in cold conditions. A longer range, newer Tesla should be able to make it even driving hard.

I haven't been on a road trip since the fall of 2016, but I found I was having to charge when the car still had over 100 miles of range left because of the spacing of the superchargers. And I was keeping up with traffic on the highway and climbed the Siskyus doing 90 mph (the pass at the top is a little over 4000 ft). I did have the wind and elevation app open much of the time, and I did have the bad luck of bucking some headwinds going both south and north. I was a bit nervous at the start because it was the first time I was hitting more than one supercharger in a day and I planned everything, but I was a lot less concerned on the way back.

The newness of it still made it a bit of an adventure, but overall the anxiety level was pretty much null.

lol. My father always fills up as soon as get gets below half a tank ( OMG!). I was always more like Kramer and would push it to the limit. Even though the low fuel light in my CR-V stopped working about 15 years earlier, I knew how far I could go based on how far the needle was below the E. Most of the time, I had less than a gallon remaining whenever I filled up. I only ran out of gas once...when I put over 400 miles on a tank and I was just 5 miles to my destination. Doh!

The low fuel light on my Buick became intermittent, but if it did start coming on, I knew it was about to start sucking sludge.

 

[FlyF4]

Interesting reading all this and hearing the different perspectives. Frankly speaking, I have NEVER had range / gas anxiety in my 50 years that I recall. I think that comes from the fact that I was flying planes before I even owned a car! Make sure there is enough JP5 in the tank to get where we are going before heading out. No sense falling out of the sky

So I hop in the car, check the gauge, make a quick mental calculation and if in doubt, get gas now.

 

[wdolson]

OP are you seriously overlooking the fact that you can fill up in 5 minutes or less and you can literally do it almost anywhere? <--this is why I hate the Tesla cult they are blind to the obvious


The perfect example I have is I had 220 km range in my Model S and I drove down to Bellingham from Vancouver(to get the szechuan sauce). Google maps says the round trip is 180km I think awesome I can make it to the super charger back in Canada when I go home. When I am about to head home I have about 80km range left cause it was cold and I drove fast. My options then were drive 80km(round trip)out of my way to the Burlington supercharger for find a local charger and charge at a level 2. Luckily I found a pub that offered charging to its guests and nursed a beer for a little under an hour just so I could make it to the super charger with about 15km left on Model S.

The biggest hit on range in the winter is running the heat. The winter of 2016-2017 I ran the heat pretty much like I would with my old ICE and saw a pretty big hit in energy usage. This winter I did a lot of pre-heating before leaving. If I had time I got the car up to 90F while still plugged in. For short trips I didn't need to run the heat at all.

On my trip odometer I have the lifetime miles and Wh/Mi displayed with trip B. On many trips this winter I returned home at or below my lifetime energy use per mile. Here west of the Cascades the winters are mild enough many days I can get away with that, though when the weather turns very cold, I do have to use the heat. In colder parts of the world, using the heat in the winter is not negotiable.

Driving an EV is different from an ICE. There are a few drawbacks like longer fueling time and even the best of them (like the Model 3 LR and the S 100D) are still only on the low end of the ICE world's range.

But every technology has drawbacks. Early in the 20th century there were three competing "horseless carriage" technologies. All were superior to the existing standard: horses. In part because of the lack of "tailpipe" emissions common to horses. A major issue that was impacting major cities was how to deal with the manure problem. Not only was it a vector for disease, but the sheet volume was overwhelming city sanitation departments.

The three horseless carriage technologies were steam, electric, and gasoline. Steam had amazing power once you got a full head of steam up, but they were very dangerous in accidents and it took a very long time to warm up. Electric cars were competing with gasoline for a while even though a bunch of lead-acid batteries were the only way to go and you had to rely on electricity which wasn't as widespread as it is today. Gasoline became the clear winner only after the electric starter was invented. A lot of people ended up breaking arms starting gasoline cars and it required more arm strength than a lot of people had.

Despite the drawbacks of gasoline power: could be smelly, could catch fire, required regular maintenance, was more expensive initial investment than horses, and horses could sometimes be fed for free, the technology won out and horses became a hobby item for the most part, though they are still used in some deep off road conditions.

Owning a car required completely different approach to transportation over horses. Instead of a stable, you had a garage. Instead of having the vet check the horse, you had to take the car to the mechanic. Instead of buying horse feed or turning them out to your pasture, you had to buy gasoline.

The differences between gasoline cars and horses is much greater than between ICE and EVs, but there are differences.

 

[FlyF4]

And you are complaining that it's someone else's fault that you can't achieve the EPA rating of a vehicle? At least you admitted that you drove aggressively, using up the extra range.

Some people are realistic; that's not cultish.

Oh come on Rocky, you know we are all a cult and all blind. Come drink our cool aide yes, you know I am being sarcastic
Never amazes me that someone has a bad experience because they didn't plan or understand what they were doing, and now the rest of us are also stupid.

Frankly, after all my drives in the Tesla, I am no longer a fan of the "5 minute fill-up" mentality. I feel a lot better at the end of my drive that I can stop to eat, use the restroom, rest, stretch, etc. and still not have to wait for the car to charge. I never had that feeling in the ICE because I was in the rat race mode of fill it up fast and get back on the road to drive for long hours and then fill like crap went I get there and not enjoy the drive.

So Jayyy, help me out here because I am stupid and blind and in a cult Why are you here if you hate our cult? I am actually really curious.

 

[Uncle Paul]

More people run out of gas every day than run out of electricity.

Gas gauges are horribly in accurate and inconclusive. They tend to show full for a long time, then when get below 50% they drain much more quickly. With a gas gauge when you get low, you usuallly do not know precisely how many miles you can still get without running dry. Due to this people run out of gas every day.

Tesla recommends you start out every morning with a charged up battery. Usually no need to stop for additional fuel until you can get back home and plug in. For long distance travel they have an extensive Supercharger system strategically located along travel routes. Often free or far less expensive than buying overtaxed gasoline.

 

[ucmndd]

There are very few places in America (or the developed world for that matter) where there aren't three gas stations in a 20 mile radius. They all dispense the same product, more or less immediately, and all you need is cash or a card to be on your way.

That's why nobody talks about gas anxiety.

I'm not saying EV range anxiety is really warranted for 95% of drivers and situations - but running out of juice in a strange location, without the proper adapter, network membership, extension cord, or 5 hours to spare for a L2 charge is still a thing, at least potentially.

 

[gavine]

.
I'm not saying EV range anxiety is really warranted for 95% of drivers and situations - but running out of juice in a strange location, without the proper adapter, network membership, extension cord, or 5 hours to spare for a L2 charge is still a thing, at least potentially.

If you run out of charge and need 5 hours of charging you really didn’t plan well at all or you are extremely far off the beating path. Theoretically, your destination or a Supercharger should be fairly close-by at that point so really you should only need to charge a little bit to get there.

The mindset of needing to fully charge to 100% at every charger is false.