It’s really the only reason I haven’t bought one, as I regularly travel across Pennsylvania from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia and especially in the wintertime I understand the range is even less because of the cold.
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Batteries are expensive and heavy, and very temperature dependent, batteries also hold less charge the more you recharge them, batteries charge slower the closer to full they are. Petroleum is energy dense, relatively inefficient, and while engines lose power the longer they run, it is not dramatic for the lifetime of a vehicle.
The goal is also not really the same. Most cars only drive maybe 50km in a day most of the time. So if have a small battery that you recharge daily overnight it’s fairly efficient. A big battery on a big heavy car would also potentially take a long time to charge even at a special fast charger. You are generally better to nearly empty the battery and charge to 80% twice than to have a battery twice the size charge once, since that would probably take 3x as long (or more) for the same energy, but since batteries are heavy, doubling the range requires more than double the battery.
So now we have the problem that batteries are better to have a shorter range and charge frequently, running into the problem of a charging network that is sparse compared to petroleum.
Oh and batteries lose quite a lot of range when cold (depending on how cold).this means if you live somewhere warm (southern us or Mediterranean), you will get more range than further north (or far south). But estimates are based on averages for large regions.
For a fixed battery size, getting more range is hard since electric motors are very efficient, and reducing drag while not using power and complying with safety rules is quite hard.
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