Range Anxiety is dead

Ok, Range Anxiety isn't dead, but Range Anxiety being used as an excuse of why electric vehicles will never reach mass adoption is dead. It's not a reason hurting EV sales. How do I know this? Well if it were, THERE WOULDN'T BE YEAR LONG LEAD TIMES ON MANY EVs! From this July '22 article on Electric Vehicle shortages from Vanity Fair:

"The wait time for a new Tesla Model Y, the company’s latest crossover, is?estimated?to be as long as almost a year. The wait is about as long for most of Tesla’s other car models, including the?S?and?X.?Elon Musk’s fancy E.V.s aren’t the only ones with astounding wait times. Volkswagen CEO?Herbert Diess?recently said?the electric varieties of his company’s cars, which include the Porsche Taycan, Volkswagen ID.4, and Audi E-Tron, are all “basically sold out…in Europe and in the United States” for the rest of the year. Orders for Ford’s Mustang Mach-E luxury SUV are?closed?for the year too.

Consumer demand for electric trucks, meanwhile, is so strong that some manufacturers have stopped taking new orders indefinitely. That’s the case for Ford’s electric pickup truck, called the Lightning, which has an astounding three-year wait,?according to?Kelley Blue Book. Tesla’s Cybertruck, scheduled to go into production in 2023, also has so many preorders that Musk said earlier this year that his company would stop taking new reservations. “We have more orders of the first Cybertrucks than we could possibly fulfill for three years after the start of production,” Musk?said?at the 2022?Financial Times?Future of the Car conference in May. There’s so much demand for Rivian, a slick new electric truck?backed?by?Jeff Bezos,?that used models are selling online for almost?double the price?of a new one."

Not to mention Cadillac Lyriq and Ioniq 5 that have stopped taking pre-orders.

And yes, I realize that ALL cars are in short supply these days, but demand for electric cars is extremely high and supply chain issues will keep availability low for years to come.

All the false narratives about lack of charging hurting adoption are just that.

What are the takeaways?

• Demand for EVs is currently outstripping supply and this will probably remain the case for the next few years as supply chains remain strained
• Supply chain constraints are also hitting DCFC companies and utilities as chargers and utility transformers can have lead times of 1 year!
• The Bipartisan Infrastructure and Jobs Act is just going to add fuel (ha!) to these supply chain constraints and I honestly have no clue how utilities and state grant offices and local permitting authorities will be able to process all the new DCFC installations in a timely manner.
• The next time you see some neighbor on FB or Wall Street Journal article or some LinkedIn 2nd connection who works in the oil industry say something like "Electric Vehicles will never work because of lack of charging..." tell them they are demonstrably wrong.

To be clear, providing charging - that works reliably - for those who lack a charger at their residence (L2/DCFC) or need one on road trips (DCFC) is extremely, extremely important. It's what I spend my days working on and as an EV driver who has been stranded by a non-functioning DCFC I realize the emotional scars that are imparted (hyperbole..but still). There are a lot of groups working hard to get EV Charging infrastructure in the ground. Reliability is certainly an issue and it needs to get better. Issues exist but everything is improving.

In summary: A lack of EV Charging infrastructure isn't hurting EV adoption.