Range Anxiety

I’m On Vacation

So today marks my first official vacation day in Mexico. Mexico is my happy place. I thought, in the spirit of being on a break, I would blog about something completely unrelated to personal finance. I know, I know. Although you may not believe me, I’m really not going to talk about financial independence, investment accounts, or side hustles. No really! I expect you, my fine reader, to keep me to task. No financial talk. Instead we will discuss range anxiety.

Range Anxiety

What, you have never heard of range anxiety?

People who drive electric cars spend a lot of time worrying about how far they will be able to drive on a single charge.  For instance, I bought my car because I knew I needed to be able to drive at least 100 miles a day, and I preferred to not have to stop and spend hours recharging .

Little did I know that the 240 mile range reported was only for ideal conditions.  Temperature below zero?  Expect the range to be significantly reduced.

No one wants to be left stranded on the road in the cold with no power!

Hence, I have put together a few considerations for all those, like me, who suffer from range anxiety.

Adequate Charging

The first, most obvious question, did you charge enough?  What’s enough?  That, of course, depends on how far you want to drive and how much energy do you want to expend per period of time.  Does this charge have to last a day?  A week?  40 years?

There are all sorts of complex  calculators you can find on the web, but a good rule of thumb is to multiply 25 times the number of miles you drive for each 5 minutes.

You have to be careful.  It is easy to fall into the one more hour phenomena.  This is the unfortunate situation in which you keep delaying pulling the trigger, and refuse to unhook from the charger and begin your trip.  Some get so much anxiety, that they never stop charging and delay the journey indefinitely.

Adequate Planning

Have you thought about your energy draw down strategy? It is well know that if you hit a cold snap at the beginning of your journey, you may expend more than you planned, and later run into range issues.  This is called sequence of usage risk.

Are you willing to be frugal with energy if you come upon hard times it?  If your sequence of usage is suboptimal, can you turn the heat down and use the Butt warmers instead?

Some are willing to mitigate range anxiety by planning a scheduled recharge a few miles down the road.  Even though sitting back on the charger  may feel like a failure, it may be a chance to grab a bite to eat or take a walk.

In Summary

Don’t let range anxiety keep you from meeting your travel dreams.  With adequate planning and a little flexibility, you should have no problem having enough energy to meet all your goals!

Happy driving.

Doc G signing off from Mexico.

See? Not a single financial topic.  Not even a mention of early retirement!