Kia officially launched the 2025 Ray EV in Korea with the same low starting price of under $21,000. However, the new model year gains additional features. With incentives, the entry-level electric car can be bought for as little as $15,000 (20 million won).
The “New Kia Ray” was reborn as an entry-level EV last year. After opening pre-orders last August, starting at around $20,500 (27.35 million won), the Kia Ray EV secured over 6,000 reservations in less than a month.
Obviously people often don’t drive very far for work or shopping, but many do maybe every weekend or once or twice per month take a longer trip to visit family or for leisure.
The car needs to be able to handle that, without being a huge pain to have to charge all the time.
The idea that 90% of trips are short is a moronic argument for selling EV with small batteries, unless people have multiple cars, which most people don’t unless they need to, and even then short range can be a problem, because dependency on the cars, means that both cars need to be able to fulfill the required tasks.
Edit:
Funny how this is downvoted, when mostly everybody agree the FIAT 500 sell badly because it has too little range for the price.
Even if only a few percent are short trips, it’s a pain to have to charge multiple times on a single trip occasionally, like once per week.
Visiting family out of town every weekend is 104 trips a year. Commuting each work day is 520 trips. That’s 16% of all those trips that are long distance.
Once you add in the grocery getting; the drives to school (only 10% of children walk or ride bikes); the doctors appointments; the local leisure related trips; I can see how 90% of trips could be short range - and that’s still accounting for taking a long weekly trip, which I don’t think most people do.
From the way you wrote, “The car needs to be able to handle that, without being a huge pain to charge all the time,” gives me the impression you don’t like electric vehicles and might not be open to any of these conversations without it turning into an argument. I could be misinterpreting your tone, and if so I apologise, but I don’t think the content nor the conclusion of that study should be called moronic.
I’m not disputing the 10% maybe even 2% short trips is true, I’m arguing it’s a bullshit argument for making cars with short range.
Which is false, I’m all for electric, and my next car will definitely be an electric. But not one that can’t handle what I do in weekends, which would be ridiculous.
For me that means 450 km range minimum. Which I may only need once per month, but the alternative would be to rent a car once per month, which is obviously idiotic, because it’s extra hassle and more expensive than buying the proper car to begin with.
Alternatively having to charge on the way, but the 450 km is for charging once, so less than that would mean charging twice or more, and I don’t want that extra time added on a trip that is already long.
Cars with smaller batteries, very often also charge slower.
I suppose that makes me an idiot?
We go out of town every few months for a weekend, and when we go somewhere that doesn’t have train service, I rent a car to make the trip. It’s around $100 (not including fuel) for the two days depending on which model they have at the time. Even if we did this every month, it’s a bit silly to suggest that it’s cheaper to have bought a vehicle with double the range for these infrequent occurrences of long distance travel. Especially so considering the largest cost of manufacturing an electric vehicle by a hefty margin is the battery pack.
From this list of the 19 vehicles with over 450km range, 10 of them are trucks or SUVs so we can ignore them from this discussion. Of the 9 remaining, only 4 of them cost $60k CAD or below:
This year’s Nissan Leaf can go 240km, at $28k. At your minimum, you’re looking to spend double the money to get a car that can go double the range. For the extra $28k spent on an Ioniq 6 or Model 3 over the Leaf, you could rent a car for the weekend getaway every single month for the next two decades.
Some years ago, I wanted to know if an electric car would fit my lifestyle. I drove a gasoline sedan at the time. I decided to refuel my car at the end of every day, and take notes on the distance I had driven and where the needle was on the gas gauge. I did this for two months in the summer, when I knew I did most of my driving. The data I collected about my own habits showed me I didn’t really drive a lot most days. There were only a handful of times I went over 100km in a day. The gas needle rarely dipped below three quarters full, and never below half.
There’s about 12,000 gas stations in Canada, and nearly 9,000 charging stations - up 30% last year. If you’re able to plug in for fifteen minutes or so at a destination you’re already stopping at, that really helps with the longer distance issue. It’s only getting easier to have a low range car as the years go by.
Regarding charging times
I wouldn’t say batteries charge slower because of their smaller capacity. The lower charging speed is probably a cost saving measure which makes it incompatible with the fastest charging stations around. The Nissan Leaf will gain 190km of range in 40 minutes, or 5km per minute. Tesla’s can get 280km in 15 minutes, or 18km per minute. That’s about a 4x difference, but it costs so much more to get there.
The Leaf has a capacity that per kilowatt provides 6km of range. The Model 3 gets 7km per kilowatt. Is one extra kilometre per kilowatt worth buying the equivalent of two Nissan Leafs? Not to me it isn’t.
In my view, driving out of town every other week is a poor argument for buying a vehicle with twice the range than it needs the other 339 days of the year.