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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It all has to do with energy density: how much energy is stored within a certain mass of your energy storage mechanism. Battery-powered electric vehicles have a rechargeable battery as their energy store, which typically has an energy density of around 260-270 Wh/kg. For comparison, gasoline has an energy density of 12,200 Wh/Kg. Yes, electric motors are far more efficient at converting that stored energy to useable energy (about 90% efficiency vs about 30% for internal combustion engines), but that massive gap in energy density is hard to overcome.
Let’s do the math. A typical BEV battery is 454 kg. At an energy density of 265 Wh/kg, that’s 120,130 Wh of stored energy. Assuming a 90% motor efficiency, that’s 108,279 Wh that will be used to power the car. Meanwhile, a typical gas-powered car can store around 60 kg of fuel. At an energy density of 12,200 Wh/kg, that’s a total of 732,000 Wh of energy. At a 30% engine efficiency, that’s 219,300 Wh of energy that will power the car.
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