Couple Squabbles on Dash Cam About How Inconvenient Husband’s EV Is, Exposing Realities of Range Anxiety
One of the most talked about hesitations for EV adoption in the U.S. is range anxiety. While many OEMs have produced electric models that offer relatively longer ranges than their predecessors, folks still frequently find themselves in inconvenient range scenarios.
One couple recently posted their real-life frustration on the husband’s Instagram account, flying_wheels. You can watch the video play out where it’s embedded below.
The clip, titled “The Realities of EV Ownership,” opens with Craig Stowell’s wife reading a text out loud. “We’re going to be a little later than expected. My husband has to charge his car because he didn’t plan accordingly.”
But it’s not that simple. Craig begins explaining to viewers that his wife is not happy with him. but that the car basically misestimated his remaining range.
“I had 150 miles of range, we had to go 30 minutes away, which is 26 miles on the highway,” Craigs says, “26 miles back, and I have to pick up my daughter as well. So, under 60 miles total.”
He goes on, “We’re now at 46 miles of range left. So we haven’t even driven the 60 miles yet, and we’ve used over 100 miles of range. [We] need to stop at a charging station before we go pick up our daughter. Which isn’t like, ‘Hey, let’s go fill up the car, we need to get some gas.’ We need to wait 30 minutes and go get some lunch.”
The car is a $103,000 Audi e-tron. Per Audi, the car has an EPA-estimated range of 285 miles. When Craig fully charges it at home overnight, the display will show about a 270-mile range.
Craig turns the camera to the dash and shows us that he’s not speeding, is on a flat highway, and has the EV in efficiency mode.
The couple starts arguing. Craig’s wife is agitated over being late to pick up their daughter.
“Why didn’t you charge it?” she asks.
“I had it at 150 miles! I didn’t need to charge it,” he responds, “We aren’t driving 150 miles; I should be completely fine.”
Craig’s wife is just silently looking out the window at this point.
Commenters are remarking about the factors to consider when estimating your range. Lower temperatures, for instance, negatively affect EV range.
You can see other vids by Craig showing additional EV ownership frustrations with the e-tron that are more infrastructural in nature, like the one embedded below.
In this clip, Craig explains how their road trip didn’t have any charging stations on the way to their hotel. The hotel offered charging but neglected to plug in the e-tron as requested during their stay. Since the remaining range wouldn’t get them back home, and there wasn’t a charging station on the route back, the couple had to drive 20 minutes in the opposite direction to get to a charging station.
