Study: Electric Cars Can Handle 87 Percent of Trips

Nathan Collins reports the results of a new study published in the Nature Energy journal finding that relatively low-cost electric vehicles can handle 87 percent of daily driving needs.

The study effectively refutes the "range anxiety" (i.e., fear that electric cars can't travel far enough before needing a charge), considered a barrier to wider market acceptance of electric cars.

To answer the question of whether "range anxiety" stood up to rational scrutiny, Jessika Trancik, an associate professor of Energy Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and fellow researchers "combined data from the National Household and Transportation Survey; GPS data from more than 117,000 individual drivers in California, Georgia, and Texas; and weather data, which gave the team a way to estimate how much air conditioning drivers used on their trips." The experiment relied on the Nissan Leaf—a relatively affordable model of electric car.

The researchers also argue for two "key innovations" that could pave the way for widespread adoption of electric cars.