Forget about EV range—and focus on this instead

Americans shopping for a new electric vehicle can choose from dozens of models available in hundreds of configurations, and the options keep growing. One way or another, they’ll have to narrow those choices as they select their next car. Many will compare style, price, and the brand’s reputation—as well as numbers that capture vehicle quality.

With EVs comprising less than one in ten new car purchases, most Americans are still forming their impressions and figuring out how to evaluate them. It remains to be seen whether they’ll ultimately care most about range, engine power, or something else entirely.

The answer will help define the EV market’s future. In the short term, EV customer satisfaction will be higher if the metrics that guide purchase decisions accurately reflect the qualities that ultimately matter to owners, rather than those the buyers think will matter. For better or worse, the metrics that rise to the fore will also influence automakers’ R&D investments as they strive to give their future models a leg up on the competition.

President-elect Donald Trump frequently disparaged EVs on the campaign trail, and his new administration is unlikely to prioritize their adoption. That being the case, automakers themselves will play an outsized role determining which evaluation criteria catch on with the public, particularly through the billions of dollars they spend annually on advertising. Because so many Americans are unfamiliar with EVs, they could assume that the metrics shared in ads are the ones they should prioritize.

In a new research paper published by the MIT Mobility Initiative, where I’m a senior fellow, I examined the metrics that U.S. carmakers are promoting through their EV marketing. I wanted to understand whether they’re laying the groundwork for satisfied customers and a robust EV market in the years ahead.

What I discovered is troubling. Rather than auguring a future of useful and efficient EVs, automakers are emphasizing metrics that portend disappointed customers, wasted resources, and needless road deaths.

The auto industry seems to be focused on the wrong numbers.

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Carmakers have long used carefully curated figures to shape consumer perceptions of their products. Featured metrics often reflect the cares of target customers; hauling capacity, for instance, is more likely to appear in an ad for a pickup truck than a sports car.

In the 1950s and 1960s, when engine technology was less advanced, many advertisements emphasized a vehicle’s horsepower. After the 1970s oil crisis triggered a spike in gas prices, car companies often publicized their models’ fuel economy, measured in miles per gallon. MPG and horsepower remain common metrics today, along with things like 0-60 times, torque, and engine cylinders.

Because of their unique capabilities and limitations, EVs require different measures of their respective strengths and weaknesses. An example: Since electric powertrains offer instant torque, virtually all models can accelerate at what would historically be considered blistering speeds. (GM has introduced SUVs capable of hitting 60 mph in under four seconds, comparable to many gas-powered sports cars.) At the same time, limited public charging stations have fed “range anxiety,” with prospective EV buyers concerned about running out of power, a fear that virtually never arises with gas cars.

Automakers make strategic decisions when they select metrics for their EV ads. Will they focus on numbers that are already familiar to owners of gas cars, or will they try to educate them about new ways to assess EV quality? Should they use metrics that make EVs look good, regardless of their utility on the road? How should they address range anxiety?

To see how car companies are navigating those decisions, I examined the landing pages for the 10 most popular EV models in the U.S. during 2023, capturing each metric that the carmaker shared with the public (I ignored the specifications typically buried within carmaker websites). I also noted which metrics are presented conspicuously, visible without the need for scrolling.

I found several clear patterns, starting with the prominence of EV range. Each website I reviewed shared the model’s range, almost always at the top of the page.

Kate Whitefoot, a professor of engineering and public policy at Carnegie Mellon, said she sees the logic behind such placement. “If you can advertise that EVs do have longer range, like up to 300 miles, then consumers are much more willing to purchase EVs and value them equally to gasoline vehicles.” Customer surveys have reached similar conclusions.

But there’s a wrinkle: Range anxiety is overblown. The average U.S. driver travels just 40 miles per day, and 19 of every 20 trips are under 30 miles. As the automotive journalist Ed Niedermeyer put it in a New York Times op-ed, “You want an electric car with a 300-mile range? When was the last time you drove 300 miles?”

By emphasizing range, automakers risk reinforcing misperceptions about their driving needs and elevating a metric that consumers may already weight more than they should. Furthermore, range estimates are not as ironclad as many people assume. Outside of a test track, range can vary by 30% or more depending on variables like topography, driving behavior, and weather, leading to unpleasant surprises for new EV owners planning long journeys. Rather than pursuing ever-lengthier ranges, a wiser way to curb range anxiety would be building a national network of reliable (not broken) public charging stations.

There’s a broader problem, too: An industrywide focus on EV range poses societal risks that affect all Americans, not just EV purchasers. The easiest way to lengthen the distance an EV can travel between charges is to expand its battery pack. Bigger batteries increase the cost of an EV by thousands of dollars, and they require more minerals like cobalt and lithium, whose extraction and processing exact a toll on the environment. Larger batteries are also heavier, conveying more force in a crash and traveling further before coming to a halt in an emergency. As a result, they place people walking, biking, and inside smaller vehicles at greater danger.

Like range, acceleration—the second-most popular metric across EV websites—also raises safety concerns. “Quicker acceleration can encourage speeding,” notes a recent Road to Zero study, “which is one of the most important factors in crash injury outcomes.” Virtually all EVs currently on the market accelerate at scorching speeds due to basic advantages in powertrain design. In China, EVs’ fast pickup speeds have already been linked to their soaring insurance costs.

Although lightning-fast acceleration may impress prospective EV owners, it provides negligible value on public roads. As I wrote previously in Fast Company, even today’s slowest gas cars, which can reach 60 mph in around 10 seconds, are quick enough to fulfill drivers’ daily needs. It would be difficult to imagine a more futile basis for comparing EV models.

In the short term, “it’s helpful to show that EVs have superior performance, but it’s dangerous for competition across carmakers” said Ben Prochazka, Executive Director of the Electrification Coalition. “It’s a real tension.”

By focusing on range and acceleration, EV advertisements are presenting the public with metrics that respond to widespread fears (even if they’re exaggerated) and are borrowed from the ICE era (even if they’re no longer relevant). That approach may boost short-term sales, but it carries risk. New EV owners who pay more for a vehicle with extended range are likely to find they seldom use it, and those initially excited about blazing acceleration will discover it is impractical. Meanwhile, automakers focused on those metrics will design bigger, heavier cars that are more expensive, environmentally harmful, and dangerous.

Vehicle charging time, the EV websites’ third-most popular metric, is less problematic. Because pumping a car full of electrons takes more time than filling it with gas, charge time is an important and unfamiliar performance measure. Consumers should be well-informed about it, with automakers competing to design models that power up quickly.

But for that to happen, the market must reward models with superior charging performance. Based on current advertising, it’s not clear that will happen. The reason: Car companies calculate charge time in vastly different ways. Tesla’s websites for the Model 3 and Model X share the range available after 15 minutes of charging, but the Rivian R1S page uses 20 minutes as its benchmark. Sites for the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and Volkswagen ID.4, meanwhile, show the time needed to charge a battery from 10% to 80%. With so many different methodologies, even an informed consumer will struggle to make apples-to-apples comparisons. By settling on a consistent charging metric (including set assumptions about variables like charger speed and weather), automakers could simplify the EV purchasing process.

Scanning automaker websites, I encountered occasional mention of other metrics such as horsepower, cargo space, and torque. But only once—on the BMW i4’s page—did I find any reference to miles per kilowatt hour, a battery efficiency measure that many auto experts say is essential to the future of the EV industry. The efficiency gap between currently available EV models can be stark: A goliath-like GMC Hummer EV gets 1.5 miles per kWh, barely a third as much as a Lucid Air. Over time, a more efficient EV market would consume fewer resources and require less energy to transport people where they want to go. In contrast to range and acceleration, it would also nudge automakers toward lighter and smaller models.

“People should care whether they are using energy needlessly or not,” said Satish Upta, a professor of engineering at Michigan State University.

But that may not happen in the absence of consumer education. “Owners of gas-powered cars care about miles-per-gallon, because there’s a direct correlation with how much you’re paying at the pump,” Patrick George, the editor-in-chief of InsideEVs, told me. For now, he observed, the link between energy bills and EV efficiency remains nebulous for many people.

To their credit, federal officials have tried to elevate awareness of vehicle efficiency measures. Regulators placed MPGe, an estimate of how far an EV can travel on the energy contained within a gallon of gas, at the center of the Monroney sticker affixed to new cars sold at a dealership. A bill introduced in Congress earlier this year proposed providing financial incentives to encourage buying more efficient vehicles, including electric ones. However, it’s unlikely to pass the current Congress or find favor with the incoming administration. The fact that most EV makers omit efficiency from their ads suggests they’re unconcerned by the dearth of consumers who currently prioritize it.

If so, that is a mistake. An EV market that minimizes waste would produce cars that are more practical, boosting customer satisfaction and catalyzing the shift away from gas models. Automakers can help the planet—and themselves—by talking more about EV efficiency, and less about numbers that don’t matter as much as many people think.