Placebo on Wheels: AAA Charging Trucks Seek to Remedy EV Range Anxiety, Prove Mostly Unneeded

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Some years ago, “range anxiety” was both a valid concern and one of those fear-factor buzzwords bandied about by industry pessimists who didn’t think electric cars could ever be a thing the American public would embrace. Either people would be seriously stressing out over their available range, some experts prognosticated, or those who hadn’t been adequately white-knuckling would be stranded by the side of the road, helplessly waiting for the next expensive flatbed tow truck to come along.

Today, with hundreds of thousands of electric cars taking to American streets and highways, there is no epidemic of EVs stranded along the roadside. Experts estimate that, as we’ve seen so far in road-tripping with our long-term Model S, electric-car owners seldom tap into the bottom 20 percent or so of their driving range, especially in unknown territory; while that may be a problem in itself, since every bit of capacity costs weight and money, they’re seldom making those sorts of disabling mistakes.

In fact, a well-promoted program started several years ago by AAA to rescue stranded electric-car drivers who weren’t keeping track of their range and ran flat out has turned out to be very lonely—sub in, if you will images of a Maytag repairman, waiting by the phone.

“It seems that folks who drive an electric vehicle are very aware of the range of that electric vehicle,” said Greg Brannon, AAA director of automotive engineering and industry relations. “Our feeling is that they keep a pretty close eye on it and manage their drive accordingly—much more so than a driver of a gasoline vehicle.”

Currently the service remains in a pilot phase, available in areas surrounding Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Denver, Phoenix, and Orlando, generally with several such trucks per market. The first unit was deployed in 2011. The EV rescue trucks were conceived in part as an R&D project, with sourcing of hardware varied and the build itself by a range of upfitters. The trucks all use onboard generators—powered by diesel, gasoline, or LP natural gas—and are capable of providing 240-volt Level 2 charging, with most also compatible with Level 3 fast charging (good for all three standards: CHAdeMo, CCS, and Tesla Supercharger).

Like a Jerrycan, But with Electrons

The original idea behind the program was to provide something close to what AAA provided in adding a couple of gallons of fuel if you were to run out. “We wanted our EV customers to enjoy that same service in a relatively short amount of time,” said Brannon. Using a Level 2 charger, 30 minutes of charging should get the driver off the road and home, to a public charger, or at the very least to a truck stop to haggle over a normal AC socket and settle in for a long wait. On Level 3, 15 minutes can yield approximately 15 to 20 miles of driving range.

One of every four U.S. households can claim AAA membership (there are now 56 million members in the United States and Canada), and Brannon cites internal data suggesting that the organization’s ratio of EV adoption is comparable to that of the American motoring public as a whole. More than 250,000 new pure-electric vehicles have been registered in the United States since 2009, compared with more than 260 million passenger vehicles currently registered, so for every registered EV, there are more than 1,000 vehicles with gas tanks that can be filled reasonably quickly.

AAA’s program could be rolled out to more major metro areas and regions, but Brannon calls nationwide demand for such services “fairly low” based on what they’ve seen in these more EV-saturated markets. He estimates the number of individual service calls due to EVs running out of charge to be “in the thousands, but not tens of thousands, of incidents.”

Other reasons for roadside assistance—reasons shared with gasoline vehicles, such as flat tires and keys locked in the car—are far more common reasons for service calls from drivers of EVs and gasoline vehicles alike. Brannon points out, however, one of every three new vehicles sold now don’t come with a spare tire, and EVs tend to fall into that category, since their manufacturers are trying especially hard to save weight.

EV Drivers Aren’t “How Low Can You Go” Thrill Jockeys

In 2015, about a half a million of AAA’s 32 million total roadside assistance calls were from drivers who ran out of gas. So it’s almost certain that, adjusted for mileage and use, motorists more frequently run out of gas than out of charge. AAA cautioned earlier this year that, as more vehicles are equipped with trip computers and increasingly precise low-fuel-warning systems, a growing number of drivers are pushing the range limits between fill-ups and perhaps relying too much on trip-computer predictive range systems that are merely guessing.

And there’s mounting research that drivers think differently about EV range. According to research from Thomas Franke of Chemnitz University of Technology in Germany, the majority of EV owners quickly apply coping skills and stress-buffering behaviors, and establish a minimum of the available range that they won’t go below—that psychological safety buffer of 15 to 20 percent.

Besides, most modern electric cars make it very, very hard to run out of charge accidentally. A recent Kia Soul EV we drove, for instance, started warning us when the battery slipped below 25 percent charge (at which time we had nearly that many miles remaining); by the time it fell below 10 percent, it was chiming once per minute. Some models, we’ve experienced, will defer to ever slower “turtle” modes that will at the very least let you limp along to a safe parking place or a wide shoulder.

While today’s EV drivers—quite possibly a far more self-aware set of drivers than the average—may not be running themselves out of charge very often, as electric cars roll into the mainstream we may see behaviors change. “EVs are the future. It’s just a question of how quickly and how many,” said Brannon, who admitted that things may change as these cars reach a wider ownership group than geeky early adopters. When they do, it’s good to know that AAA has a handle on what to do when more volume and demand is there.

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