Reminder: You don’t drive as much as you think

When talking about electric vehicles, everyone bemoans the fact that you can’t drive 600 miles in one and recharge in 5 seconds. The thing is, we don’t drive as much as we think we do, and planning for a “what if” scenario that will never happen is costing us money and efficiency.

To bring this point home, the U.S. Department of Energy has a nifty chart that breaks down “Average Annual Vehicle Miles Traveled by Major Vehicle Category.” The two categories that apply to normal, everyday drivers are the “Car” and the “Light Truck/Van.” A light truck, by the government’s definition, is anything that’s not a car. So, a small SUV is a light truck. A four-door coupe SUV is a light truck. A Ford F-150 is a light truck. These are also miles driven, meaning some were with just one person in the car, while the others were fully loaded. Some of the pickup trucks were just hauling air, while others were doing real work.

In the light truck category, the total miles driven for 12 months is 11,318. For the car category, that number is a little less at 10,573. If you don’t include leap years or the inaccuracies that come with determining precise time measurements, you can safely say that, on average, a light truck is driven 31 miles per day and a car is driven 29.2 miles per day. Both of those numbers are rounded to the nearest tenth of a mile.

Being average means some people drive less than that, and some people drive way more than that. If you drive way more than that, good for you. Maybe an electric vehicle isn’t right for you. But if you’re near the average, and most of you are, because again, that’s how averages work, then you will be fine with a 240-mile F-150 Lighting or a 261-mile Hyundai Kona EV.