Electric-car range: why Japanese needs differ so radically from the U.S.
2016 Nissan Leaf SL fast-charging at NRG evGo Freedom Station, Hudson Valley, NY, Dec 2015
It was one of the fresh battery-electric vehicles anticipated for this year, a mid-size sedan from a global maker that remains the 2nd highest-volume hybrid maker in the world.
Then the news hit earlier this week: the all-electric Honda Clarity EV would have a rated battery range around . Eighty miles.
From the justifications they suggested, we surmise the communications staff at American Honda Motor Company know they have a challenge on their palms.
But assuming it’s harshly accurate, the 80-mile range of the upcoming Clarity EV brings to the fore an awkward truth for U.S. buyers.
That is that the needs of drivers in Japan differ radically from those in North America—and often take precedence in the eyes of product planners.
That conclusion goes after discussion in latest months with executives at two Asian automakers, both of whom declined to be identified or go on the record.
2017 Honda Clarity Fuel Cell
And the electric-car range issue highlights the extreme U.S. reliance on individual vehicles for all transportation brief of that provided by airplanes.
In both Japan and almost every European country, residents have access to clean, reliable, pervasive mass transit both for urban travel and, crucially, travel inbetween city pairs up to three hundred miles apart.
But the frequent trains and interurban bus services regularly used by ems of millions of middle-class Japanese and Europeans are almost entirely absent from U.S. travel plans.
Outside Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor and the West Coast, train travel is either a slow and scenic holiday option or totally absent.
And when was the last time most U.S. readers of this site railed a Greyhound, Trailways, or other bus service?
The presence of reliable and affordable mass transit helps cut the average distance traveled in individual vehicles outside North America significantly.
Chevrolet Bolt EV self-driving prototype
According to a explore of eight industrialized countries seven years ago, the U.S. leads all large nations in the miles covered each year by vehicles on its roads.
The average U.S. resident travels 8,100 miles a year in vehicles—or twenty two miles a day. Four-fifths of U.S. cars travel less than forty miles a day, in fact.
In Japan, the comparable figure is Two,500 miles—or about 6.8 miles a day.
For the one-fifth of U.S. trips that exceed forty miles, however, an electrified car with a range of eighty miles just doesn’t cut it when you factor in high-speed highway travel, cold weather, and public charging infrastructure that varies greatly depending on location.
In Japan, trips over forty miles are more likely to be covered by train than by car. And large swathes of the country’s most densely populated areas now have pervasive DC fast-charging sites for electrical cars.
Which is why, in the eyes of Japanese automakers who may not lift their eyes from the home market when considering their greenest models, eighty miles for a battery-electric car may seem flawlessly reasonable.