Thanks for reading EV Cents by Recurrent. Each edition brings you clear, data-driven insights from 1 billion miles of EV driving to help you better understand your car and the market.
The fear that fixes itself
Ask Andrew Wright what's really holding EVs back, and he doesn't hesitate.
Not the price.
Not the product.
It's charging… or more precisely, the fear of charging.
"It's a perception issue," says Wright, managing partner of Vinart Dealerships in eastern Pennsylvania, whose stores sell everything from gas to hybrid to fully electric.
People drive past gas stations on every corner, he explains, and simply don't see charging parity to feel the same comfort.
Here's what makes his read worth sitting with: the data says the fear is real, right up until you actually own the car.
When Recurrent surveyed drivers and shoppers, 76% of people who didn't yet own an EV worried about range. Among current EV drivers, nearly 59% reported none at all.
The single most anxious group was shoppers one to two years out from their first EV purchase. After that, the worry drops off and keeps dropping. By five years of ownership, almost everyone rates their range anxiety below a 1 on a 0–4 scale, even on long trips.
The on-the-ground numbers show why the fear fades. Across a study of 10,000 Teslas on the Recurrent platform, drivers dipped below 10% charge in just 0.46% of observations, and below 1% in fewer than 0.05%. Running an EV to empty is a rarity.
So why does the worry loom so large before you own one? Wright points to a mental model people carry over from gas cars.
"People are so accustomed to going to the gas station and filling up the tank," he says. With home charging, people do not commonly use public chargers, and when they do it’s not to fully charge. "You stop in, you hook up to the charger, you sit there for five minutes or whatever, you get enough juice to get home or to your destination."
The gas-station habit says every stop is a full fill-up. An EV says top up to get home, then charge overnight while you sleep.
None of this means charging infrastructure is finished. But if someone is holding off on an EV because they are picturing themselves stuck on the shoulder, the data is reassuring.
From the Market
When the pump says stop.
A gas pickup owner in the Northwest told us that he went to fill his truck and reached a breaking point. Many gas stations cap credit card authorizations at $200, and his fill-up blew right past it, forcing him to start a second transaction just to finish topping up.
That was the last straw. He traded for an F-150 Lightning the same week.
It's one anecdote, but the math behind it is real. Pennsylvania gas averaged $4.57 a gallon in early May, up from $3.30 a year earlier. In Washington State, drivers are staring down $7 a gallon. For a thirsty full-size truck, that's the difference between a routine fill-up and a eye-opening budget event.
When a single tank starts tripping the pump's fraud limit, the math gets hard to ignore
Ask Recurrent
Question: "How important is peak charging speed when comparing EV options?"
A big peak-kilowatt number on a spec sheet can mislead you. An EV only hits its top charging rate within a narrow window. What really matters is the charging curve: how fast the rate tapers as the battery fills. A car that peaks at 250 kW but drops off a cliff can lose to one that peaks lower and holds steady.
It also helps to remember how people actually charge. Almost no one sits at a fast charger from 0 to 100% since speeds slow after 80%.
That's why Recurrent leans on one practical number: how long it takes to add 100 miles of range. It bakes in the charging curve and reflects the real time you'd spend at a charger on a trip. The 2026 average is about 16 minutes, but the spread between models is enormous. The popular Ioniq 5 can add 100 miles in 9 minutes.
If you charge at home, this doesn’t matter day to day. But if you take frequent road trips, time to add 100 miles might be the single most important number in your decision.
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