The fear of being stranded while waiting for a tow truck because an electric vehicle runs out of charge is enough to drive many people to stay in gas vehicles. But here’s the good news: Fortunately, this outcome is very rare. And if you’re ready to take the plunge and buy an electric car, you’ll definitely find yourself a lot less anxious than you were initially.
People at Battery health startup Frequently has compiled a year-end retrospective into 10 chartsOne particular data set caught my attention. A study conducted by the company showed that range anxiety decreases the longer you own and drive an electric car. Based on 2025 data from the nonprofit group Bridging the deficit in Americathere is persistent range anxiety among 48% of buyers before purchasing an electric vehicle, but it then drops to 22% after actually owning the vehicle.
In other words, once you actually drive an electric car, most of your range concerns will go away. What’s more, Plug In America data shows that pre-purchase range anxiety is down 21.7% from 2024 — meaning that as cars are generally longer in range and access to charging improves, many buyers don’t have the level of range concerns they did even a year ago.
Frequent domain anxiety chart
Photo by: Repeated
This is not the first time a repeat study has been conducted It has been shown that range anxiety decreases with actual time and usage. In late 2023, another survey indicated that 78% of electric vehicle owners reported that feelings of range anxiety decrease with familiarity, experience, and understanding of their driving habits. And in 2025, a modern electric car is usually better at driving long distances than it was in 2023, certainly with more charging options along the way.
Why does this happen? Basically, it all comes down to a simple and very valid idea but not a very exciting selling point: maybe you don’t need as wide a scale as you think.
The average American drives, at most, 30 to 40 miles per day. For modern electric vehicles, Average range is about 300 miles. This also happened It improved over timeas he did Public charger availability. So, just as you’re unlikely to completely empty your gas-powered car’s tank during normal daily driving, you won’t even scratch the surface of how much range your electric car has — or what it actually needs.
“But what about road trips?”, you might ask. Sure, it requires a little more planning than a gas car, but for all the reasons above, it’s getting easier and easier to implement. And even if you buy an electric car with a lot of range, you won’t use it all of the time.
“Across all electric vehicles, the weighted average range utilization is just 12.6%,” Recurrent said. “Even the wealthiest owners (those who have purchased 350+ miles of electric vehicles) still leave 88%+ of their range unused most days.”
This is definitely something I’ve experienced myself. “The only real worry I’ve had when testing hundreds of electric cars (and owning my own) was a winter road trip in a Mercedes-AMG with only about 200 miles of range, and trying to catch a flight out of Austin after leaving Beaumont, Texas in a somewhat inefficient Ford F-150 Lightning. For the most part, it’s never a problem.”
In reality, When I bought my Kia EV6 it had 282 miles on itI’ll keep it 100% charged at first to “get the most” out of it. But once I actually started living with the car, and started examining my driving habits and energy use, I now feel very happy Keep it 80% charged almost all the time Unless I have a long flight ahead. It’s just something you stop worrying about over time.
Here in America, especially, we tend to expect our cars to do everything for us — for all our daily driving needs, the vacation trip, and the one time a year a relative comes to visit and take their kids with us. Electric cars are getting better at handling all of this, but more of us should consider purchasing the type of car that meets our actual needs and not just our evolving uses.
Then again, we’d never say no to more range. but The way things areWe won’t have to.
Contact the author: patrick.george@insideevs.com
