The cure for electric vehicle range anxiety? It’s not bigger batteries, says Mercedes-Benz. It’s faster charging. Sure, a bigger battery will take you further between charges. But there are significant downsides.
A bigger battery not only takes up a lot more real estate in a vehicle but also adds a lot more cost and weight. Especially weight. The GMC Sierra EV AT4 pickup, for example, has a 205-kWh battery that delivers an impressive EPA-rated range of 478 miles. But the truck weighs a staggering 8,844 pounds, nearly 48 percent more than its internal combustion engine cousin, the Sierra AT4X AEV Edition.
That extra weight means more damage to roadways and a greater risk of death and injury to the occupants of other vehicles in a collision. What’s more, it takes 30 minutes to put 213 miles worth of energy back into the Sierra EV AT4’s battery on a 350-kW charger, while it takes less than 10 minutes to pump a tankful of gas into the AT4X AEV Edition, enough to take it 360 miles.
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