Range limits of electric vehicles

Battery electric vehicles are critically reviewed in terms of their limited driving range. There are different possible ways to increase their range, e. g. developing charging infrastructure or using larger batteries. Both options require investments which a user of a battery electric vehicle will have to bear, either directly or indirectly. Thus in this paper we want to determine which investment is lower per capita: an investment in infrastructure or battery size. We simulate battery states of charge for a large set of driving profiles to obtain the minimal battery capacity necessary per user to replace his or her car with a battery electric vehicle. A distinction between the payers of infrastructure investment leads to the main results: if all users had the same battery smaller than 25 kWh and those who needed additional infrastructure to cope with their trips had to carry the additional investment, it would always be cheaper to invest in additional battery size. This could be the case if infrastructure was built by a company. If the additional cost for infrastructure was borne by all BEV-users with same battery sizes, which could be the case if the government built it, and the battery size was larger than 10 kWh, it would be less expensive to invest in infrastructure.