You’re out of free articles.
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
Sign In or Create an Account.
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Service and acknowledge our Privacy Policy
Welcome to Heatmap
Thank you for registering with Heatmap. Climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our lives, a force reshaping our economy, our politics, and our culture. We hope to be your trusted, friendly, and insightful guide to that transformation. Please enjoy your free articles. You can check your profile here .
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Subscribe to get unlimited Access
Hey, you are out of free articles but you are only a few clicks away from full access. Subscribe below and take advantage of our introductory offer.
subscribe to get Unlimited access
Offer for a Heatmap News Unlimited Access subscription; please note that your subscription will renew automatically unless you cancel prior to renewal. Cancellation takes effect at the end of your current billing period. We will let you know in advance of any price changes. Taxes may apply. Offer terms are subject to change.
Create Your Account
Please Enter Your Password
Forgot your password?
Please enter the email address you use for your account so we can send you a link to reset your password:
Everything you need to know — including one big (potential) drawback.
The humble water heater, like your fridge or septic tank, is the type of home technology that you only notice if and when it breaks. For most homeowners, that’s every 13 years. But if you’re on a mission to decarbonize your life, you might want to rethink your current set-up, and perhaps consider a makeover. Per the Department of Energy, water heating accounts for roughly 18% of the average household’s energy use, making it the second largest energy expense in any home.
Back in April, the DOE released new residential water heater standards that it says will save American households approximately $7.6 billion per year on their energy bills “while significantly cutting energy waste and harmful carbon pollution.” The standards will also, in effect, phase out electric resistance water heaters, which currently account for half the U.S. market, in favor of more energy-efficient heat pump water heaters by 2029. If any of that confuses you, read on. We’re breaking down everything you need to know about this oft-forgotten, basement-dwelling home technology, from the taxonomy of water heater types to tax credit and rebate tips to product recommendations.
Andy Meyer is a senior program manager at Efficiency Maine, an independent agency that implements energy efficiency programs in the state. His team is responsible for providing resources on heat pump water heaters to Maine residents, who buy one out of every 10 purchased in the U.S.
Ben Foster is vice president of operations at Barnett Plumbing & Water Heaters, a leading heat pump water heater contractor in California. He’s also developed loaner water heater programs supported by TECH Clean California, and notes that most contractors don’t have access to loaner programs:
Joseph Wachunas is a senior project manager at the New Buildings Institute, a nonprofit working to reduce emissions and deliver climate solutions through the built environment. At NBI, he heads up the Advanced Water Heating Initiative, which aims to decarbonize water heating through heat pump water heaters.
“Heat pump water heaters are simple to install — any plumber or handy person can do it — but plumbers may not be familiar with them. So if you talk with a plumber who has concerns, consider calling another plumber,” Meyer told me. “Again, Mainers have installed over 70,000 in the last 12 years. They are no longer new.”
A heat pump water heater is made up of a compressor, storage tank, condenser, evaporator coil, fan, backup heating elements, and refrigerant. The compressor, located in the upper compartment of the water heater, uses refrigerant to heat the water in the storage tank (via the condenser, which acts as a heat exchanger). The evaporator coil and fan work to change refrigerant from liquid back to gas after the water has been heated. The backup electric heating elements kick in only in periods of high demand to ensure consistent hot water supply.
A common misconception about heat pumps in general is that they don’t work in colder climates. This is not at all the case — half of electric water heaters in Maine, for instance, are now heat pumps. As long as they are installed indoors and in an area where pipes won’t freeze (typically, a basement), heat pump water heaters work throughout the year in all climates, according to Meyer and Wachunas. The rule of thumb, per the DOE, is to install your heat pump water heater in locations that remain in the 40 degree to 90 degree Fahrenheit range year-round.
Per the DOE, replacing your standard electric water heater with a heat pump water heater can save you up to 10% on your electricity bill, reducing your water heating energy consumption and costs by up to 70%.
The number one mistake homeowners make when it comes to their water heaters is waiting until they’re broken to replace them. This severely limits your options for new water heaters — as Foster notes, no one “wants to go days without hot water, let alone weeks,” and it can take weeks or even months to fit your home for a heat pump water heater. (We’ll get into why a bit later.)
“A lot of contractors, if you want a heat pump and you have a leaking water heater that needs to be replaced today, they're just going to convince you to go with gas,” Foster said.
Some contractors have loaner water heater programs, so you can temporarily use a gas heater in an emergency situation, but these programs are few and far between. If you’ve had your water heater for 10 years or more — even if it’s working just fine — it might be time to think about replacing it. If you do, you’ll need to consider a few things about your home and lifestyle, especially if you’re considering a heat pump water heater:
Heat pump water heaters require a significant amount of space. Per Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, heat pump water heaters can require more than 6 feet of height clearance to account for their air filters, as well as a 3-foot diameter space to provide clearance for the drain pan and other connections. Additionally, the heat pump water heater should be positioned so the exhaust outlet is at least 8 inches away from a wall, door, or ceiling.
Also, since heat pump water heaters work by drawing heat from the surrounding air, they require 700 cubic feet of unenclosed space surrounding the water heater location. While it is possible to install a heat pump water heater in a location with insufficient air volume (for instance, by installing the water heater with a door equipped with top and bottom grills), this would require extra work from your contractor. Taking all these measurements into account, this basically means that a heat pump water heater requires a 10-foot by 9-foot room with an 8-foot-tall ceiling.
Heat pump water heaters also require monthly and yearly service, Meyer told me. You should change the water filter every two to six months, and clear the condensate lines to ensure your unit doesn’t get clogged with mold or bacteria. Additionally, if your unit is a hybrid, you’ll have to keep an eye on its anode rod, which can become corroded over time and lead to heating issues. You’ll have to flush your heat pump water heater annually to avoid corrosion.
If you’re going to DIY it, understanding your household’s water needs is key to sizing and installing a new heat pump water heater. First, determine your house’s peak hour demand (the maximum amount of water your house uses in one hour per day) using this worksheet from the DOE. You can then use that number (measured in gallons) to determine what size heat water heater to buy — look at the heater’s first hour rating, a.k.a. the amount of hot water the heater can supply per hour, starting with a tank full of hot water. You’ll want your heater’s first hour rating to be equal to (or ideally, higher than) your peak hour demand.
Though you should use the worksheet to determine your unique peak hour demand, a general rule is that households of one to two people should use a 50-gallon water heater, while households of three or more people should use a 65- to 80-gallon tank. The average family uses 50 gallons of hot water per day, Wachunas explained. “So even if you have lots of showers in the morning, your heat pump in two to four hours will heat that water back up and you have plenty of extra supply.”
If you’re between two sizes of heat pump water heaters, always upsize, Foster said. This ensures that the heat pump is the primary source of heat, as opposed to the much less efficient backup electric mechanisms. In other words, it’s far more efficient (and less expensive!) for a larger heat pump water heater to heat a few extra gallons of water using the heat pump than it is for a smaller heat pump water heater to have to use its electric elements to keep up with excess demand.
Since many heat pump water heaters have certain voltage requirements, you may have to upgrade your electrical panel for 240-volt hardwired service. The cost and time involved in having your service upgraded can vary and depends on whether the power lines coming into your house are above ground. If they’re underground, Foster explained, a contractor will have to excavate and run new cables, which can take over a year. The best way to determine if you’ll need to upgrade your service is to have a trusted contractor do an assessment on your home. (This is also why it’s essential to plan in advance.)
Basements are always the best places for heat pump water heaters, regardless of climate. Other common locations for installation include garages, interior rooms, and rooms outside the thermal envelope, like attached sheds and utility rooms. The garage does not have to be insulated if outdoor temperatures are usually above 50°F, but if temperatures dip below freezing and the garage is uninsulated, it’d be best to consider another location. Interior rooms, like laundry or IT rooms, are a great choice because a heat pump water heater can utilize any waste heat generated by the equipment in the room. Finally, rooms outside the thermal envelope, like attached sheds, can be even more efficient than interior spaces in hot or warm climates because of the excess hot air.
Feeling ready to go shopping? Here’s everything you need to know about the buying and installation process.
This plug-in model caused quite a stir when it came out two years ago, and for good reason. Its low voltage allows it to be plugged into a standard outlet, making it a great fit for smaller homes with fewer residents, or anyone in need of a quick fix. (This is also a relatively foolproof choice for DIYers because of the quick and easy installation process.) For those wanting a model with a bit more flexibility but still an easy install, there’s the A.O. Smith Signature 900 Plug-in Hybrid, which is more expensive but has the added benefit of back-up electric resistance elements that help with higher hot water demand. Alternatively, you can go for the 120-Volt Rheem ProTerra Plug-in Water Heater with HydroBoost, which utilizes a mixing valve for maximum hot water output.
If app functionality is especially important to you, Rheem’s ProTerra line might be particularly appealing. The EcoNet app allows users to monitor the hot water heater from their phone, with status updates on potential leaks as well as compressor health, hot water availability and the unit’s set water temperature.
Another solid choice for larger families, for roughly the same price, is A.O. Smith’s Signature 900 80-Gal. For further durability, consider Bradford White’s Aerotherm Series water heaters, which can only be purchased through a qualified contractor, but are frequently praised for their resilience and anti-microbial technology.
Split-system heat pump water heaters are the answer for truly huge houses, where the heat pump itself is outside while the storage tank remains inside. “You can chain together as many heat pump units as you want with as many storage tanks as you want,” Foster said. “So you can create as big a system as you want.” While split-system heat pump water heaters are much less widely-available in the U.S. than they are in Asia and Europe, you can purchase this one online. SANCO is also shipping a new fifth generation unit soon, Quit Carbon advises, which may prove more cost-effective and will qualify for more rebates in California.
The quietest HPWH on the market, at 45 decibels, is made by A.O. Smith, according to Foster. It’s available in 50, 65, and 80 gallon sizes, so it can accommodate a variety of household types. Another quiet option is LG’s Inverter Heat Pump Water Heater, though LG is much newer to the heat pump water heater game than Rheem and A.O. Smith, so it may be more difficult to find qualified contractors.
Three more expert contractors I spoke with — Nate Adams, a longtime HVAC insulation and sealing contractor in West Virginia who specializes in electrification retrofits for homeowners; John Semmelhack, an HVAC consultant and the owner of Think Little, a building science consulting firm specializing in mechanical system design for passive house and net-zero energy homes; and Tim Portman, the owner of Portman Mechanical, specializing in electrification, heating and cooling, and home performance — had concerns about heat pump water heater installations.
Adams said heaters he’s installed have had a 50% failure rate, while Portman and Semmelhack cite a 60% failure rate. These issues have seemingly cropped up after 2018 and are almost entirely occurring with A.O. Smith and Rheem’s fifth generation of water heater models; older generations performed and continue to perform much better. “All my installs from 2014-2018 are still running to my knowledge,” says Adams. “Which is a big part of my frustration— we had this figured out already.”
The specific causes of these failures vary, spanning from tanks bursting to heat pumps losing charge, according to Adams. Semmelhack and Portman, meanwhile, pointed mainly to refrigerant leaks and compressor issues. (A.O. Smith and Rheem did not respond to requests for comment.) “All of the failures are happening inside the first year of operation,” noted Semmelhack. “So it's happening pretty quick, which makes us think that it's a factory problem and not an environmental problem inside the household.”
Semmelhack and Portman are hopeful about Cala’s new heat pump water heaters, which use an AI-powered control system to forecast hot water demand and heat the water in the tank accordingly with a heat pump. They’re aiming to start shipping those units in 2025, and you can preorder and learn more here.
Log in
To continue reading, log in to your account.
Create a Free Account
To unlock more free articles, please create a free account.
On Neil Jacobs’ confirmation hearing, OBBBA costs, and Saudi Aramco
Current conditions: Temperatures are climbing toward 100 degrees Fahrenheit in central and eastern Texas, complicating recovery efforts after the floods • More than 10,000 people have been evacuated in southwestern China due to flooding from the remnants of Typhoon Danas • Mebane, North Carolina, has less than two days of drinking water left after its water treatment plant sustained damage from Tropical Storm Chantal.
Neil Jacobs, President Trump’s nominee to head the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, fielded questions from the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee on Wednesday about how to prevent future catastrophes like the Texas floods, Politico reports. “If confirmed, I want to ensure that staffing weather service offices is a top priority,” Jacobs said, even as the administration has cut more than 2,000 staff positions this year. Jacobs also told senators that he supports the president’s 2026 budget, which would further cut $2.2 billion from NOAA, including funding for the maintenance of weather models that accurately forecast the Texas storms. During the hearing, Jacobs acknowledged that humans have an “influence” on the climate, and said he’d direct NOAA to embrace “new technologies” and partner with industry “to advance global observing systems.”
Jacobs previously served as the acting NOAA administrator from 2019 through the end of Trump’s first term, and is perhaps best remembered for his role in the “Sharpiegate” press conference, in which he modified a map of Hurricane Dorian’s storm track to match Trump’s mistaken claim that it would hit southern Alabama. The NOAA Science Council subsequently investigated Jacobs and found he had violated the organization’s scientific integrity policy.
The Republican budget reconciliation bill could increase household energy costs by $170 per year by 2035 and $353 per year by 2040, according to a new analysis by Evergreen Action, a climate policy group. “Biden-era provisions, now cut by the GOP spending plan, were making it more affordable for families to install solar panels to lower utility bills,” the report found. The law also cut building energy efficiency credits that had helped Americans reduce their bills by an estimated $1,250 per year. Instead, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will increase wholesale electricity prices almost 75% by 2035, as well as eliminate 760,000 jobs by the end of the decade. Separately, an analysis by the nonpartisan think tank Center for American Progress found that the OBBBA could increase average electricity costs by $110 per household as soon as next year, and up to $200 annually in some states.
EIA
Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil company Saudi Aramco is in talks with Commonwealth LNG in Louisiana to buy liquified natural gas, Reuters reports. The discussion is reportedly for 2 million tons per year of the facility’s 9.4 million-ton annual export capacity, which would help “cement Aramco’s push into the global LNG market as it accelerates efforts to diversify beyond crude oil exports” and be the “strongest signal yet that Aramco intends to take a material position in the U.S. LNG sector,” OilPrice.com notes. LNG demand is expected to grow 50% globally by 2030, but as my colleague Emily Pontecorvo has reported, President Trump’s tariffs could make it harder for LNG projects still in early development, like Commonwealth, to succeed. “For the moment, U.S. LNG is still interesting,” Anne-Sophie Corbeau, a research scholar focused on natural gas at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, told Emily. “But if costs increase too much, maybe people will start to wonder.”
Ford confirmed this week that its $3 billion electric vehicle battery plant in Michigan will still qualify for federal tax credits due to eleventh-hour tweaks to the bill’s language, The New York Times reports. Though Ford had said it would build its factory regardless of what happened to the credits, the company’s executive chairman had previously called them “crucial” to the construction of the facility and the employment of the 1,700 people expected to work there. Ford’s battery plant is located in Michigan’s Calhoun County, which Trump won by a margin of 56%. The last-minute tweaks to save the credits to the benefit of Ford “suggest that at least some Republican lawmakers were aware that cuts in the bill would strike their constituents the hardest,” the Times writes.
Italy and Spain are on track to shutter their last remaining mainland coal power plants in the next several months, marking “a major milestone in Europe’s transition to a predominantly renewables-based power system by 2035,” Beyond Fossil Fuels reported Wednesday. To date, 15 European countries now have coal-free grids following Ireland’s move away from coal in 2025.
Italy is set to complete its transition from coal by the end of the summer with the closure of its last two plants, in keeping with the government’s 2017 phase-out target of 2025. Two coal plants in Sardinia will remain operational until 2028 due to complications with an undersea grid connection cable. In Spain, the nation’s largest coal plant will be entirely converted to fossil gas by the end of the year, while two smaller plants are also on track to shut down in the immediate future. Once they do, Spain’s only coal-power plant will be in the Balearic Islands, with an expected phase-out date of 2030.
“Climate change makes this a battle with a ratchet. There are some things you just can’t come back from. The ratchet has clicked, and there is no return. So it is urgent — it is time for us all to wake up and fight.” — Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island in his 300th climate speech on the Senate floor Wednesday night.
Some of the Loan Programs Office’s signature programs are hollowed-out shells.
With a stroke of President Trump’s Sharpie, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act is now law, stripping the Department of Energy’s Loan Programs Office of much of its lending power. The law rescinds unobligated credit subsidies for a number of the office’s key programs, including portions of the $3.6 billion allocated to the Loan Guarantee Program, $5 billion for the Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment Program, $3 billion for the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program, and $75 million for the Tribal Energy Loan Guarantee Program.
Just three years ago, the Inflation Reduction Act supercharged LPO, originally established in 2005 to help stand up innovative new clean energy technologies that weren’t yet considered bankable for the private sector, expanding its lending authority to roughly $400 billion. While OBBBA leaves much of the office’s theoretical lending authority intact, eliminating credit subsidies means that it no longer really has the tools to make use of those dollars.
Credit subsidies represent the expected cost to the government of providing a loan or a loan guarantee — including the possibility of a default — and thus how much money Congress must set aside to cover these potential losses. So by axing these subsidies, Congress is effectively limiting the amount of lending that the LPO can undertake, given that many third-party lenders would be reluctant to finance riskier, more novel, or larger projects in the absence of federal credit support.
“The LPO is statutorily allowed to take loans on its books to finance these projects in these categories, but it has no credit subsidy by which to take the risk required to do so,” Advait Arun, senior associate of energy finance at the Center for Public Enterprise and a Heatmap contributor, told me.
The particular programs that have been eliminated support new and improved energy technologies, clean energy infrastructure, fuel efficient vehicles, and help native communities access energy project financing. The long-running Loan Guarantee Program and the advanced vehicles program in particular are behind some of the best known LPO efforts, supporting companies such as Tesla, Ford, and NextEra Energy, and projects such as Georgia’s Vogtle nuclear reactors, the Thacker Pass lithium mine, and Shepherd’s Flat, one of the world’s largest wind farms.
The Loan Guarantees Program is “the big Kahuna,” Arun told me. “This is the longest-standing program of the LPO. So to see this defunded is like, you’re decapitating the LPO’s crown jewel.”
The program only has about $11 million left over in credit subsidies, consisting of funding that it received prior to the IRA’s appropriations. That won’t be enough to make any meaningful loans, Arun said, and is more likely to be used to “keep a skeleton crew online” for any remaining administrative tasks.
Then there’s the Energy Infrastructure Reinvestment Program, which the IRA stood up with a whopping $250 billion in lending authority to transition and transform existing fossil fuel infrastructure for clean energy purposes. Now, OBBBA has axed the program’s remaining $5 billion in credit subsidies and replaced it with $1 billion in new subsidies for projects that “retool, repower, repurpose, or replace” existing energy infrastructure, with a focus on expanding capacity and output as opposed to decarbonizing the economy. It also refashioned the program as the predictably-named “Energy Dominance Financing” initiative.
The new-old program — which the law extended through 2028 — no longer requires LPO-funded infrastructure to reduce or sequester emissions, broadening the office’s lending authority to include support for fossil fuel and critical minerals projects. It also adds language encouraging the LPO to “support or enable the provision of known or forecastable electric supply,” which Arun fears is a “backend way of penalizing the addition of renewable energy” on previously developed land.
“Under the Trump administration’s direction, [the LPO] can use that term, ‘known and forecastable,’ to actually just say, well, guess what? Renewables are not known or forecastable because they are intermittent due to the weather,” Arun told me. So while government and private industry were once excited about, say, turning sites originally developed for coal mining or coal ash disposal into solar and battery facilities, those days are probably over.
Carbon capture in particular stands to suffer from this reprogramming, Arun said, explaining that while the Biden LPO saw potential in adding carbon capture to natural gas and coal plants, its current incarnation will no longer allocate funding in any meaningful amount “because reducing emissions is no longer part of the LPO’s mandate.” Some policymakers and clean energy developers had also hoped that excess renewable energy would make it economically feasible to power the production of hydrogen fuel with renewable energy. But with this law — and really each passing day under Trump — a mass buildout of solar and wind seems less and less likely, making it doubtful that green hydrogen will move down the cost curve.
As bleak as this looks, it’s better than it could have been. There was no guarantee that Trump would keep the LPO around at all. Even in this denuded state, the office can still fund the expansion of existing nuclear projects, and perhaps even the buildout of transmission lines or battery projects on brownfield sites, Arun said, depending on how LPO’s leadership ends up interpreting what it means to “increase the capacity output of operating infrastructure.”
But in many ways, what happened with the LPO looks like another instance of the Trump administration picking winners and losers: Yes to clean, firm energy and fossil fuels, no to solar, wind, and electric vehicles.
Take the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing Program, for example. OBBBA nixed both its credit subsidies and its tens of billions of dollars in lending authority. That’s hardly a surprise, given that the Bush administration created the program in 2007 explicitly to support the domestic development and manufacture of fuel-efficient vehicles and components. But it means that unlike the LPO programs for which lending authority still stands, even if Congress wanted to, it could not redesign the advanced vehicles program to serve a more Trump-aligned purpose. Safer, I suppose, to cut off any opening for funding EVs and hybrids.
The latest LPO rescissions add to the growing list of reasons the private sector has to be wary of the consistently inconsistent landscape for federal funding, Arun told me. He worries that slashing the LPO’s authority at the same time as there’s so much uncertainty around tax credit eligibility will lead some companies to forgo federal funding opportunities altogether.
“We’ll see if private developers even want to play around with the LPO,” Arun told me, “given the uncertainty around the rest of the federal landscape here.”
Electric vehicle batteries are more efficient at lower speeds — which, with electricity prices rising, could make us finally slow down.
The contours of a 30-year-old TV commercial linger in my head. The spot, whose production value matched that of local access programming, aired on the Armed Forces Network in the 1990s when the Air Force had stationed my father overseas. In the lo-fi video, two identical military green vehicles are given the same amount of fuel and the same course to drive. The truck traveling 10 miles per hour faster takes the lead, then sputters to a stop when it runs out of gas. The slower one eventually zips by, a mechanical tortoise triumphant over the hare. The message was clear: slow down and save energy.
That a car uses a lot more energy to go fast is nothing new. Anyone who remembers the 55 miles per hour national speed limit of the 1970s and 80s put in place to counter oil shortages knows this logic all too well. But in the time of electric vehicles, when driving too fast slashes a car’s range and burns through increasingly expensive electricity, the speed penalty is front and center again. And maybe that’s not a bad thing.
You certainly can notice the cost of lead-footedness in a gasoline-powered car. It’s simpler today, when lots of vehicles have digital displays that show the miles per gallon you’re getting, than in the old days when you had to do the math yourself. An EV puts the hard efficiency math right in front of you. Battery life is often displayed in terms of estimated miles of range remaining, and those miles evaporate before your eyes if you climb a mountain or accelerate like a drag racer.
This is no academic concern, like trying to boost one’s fuel efficiency through hypermiling techniques such as gentle acceleration, downhill coasting, and killing the AC. In six years of owning a Tesla Model 3, I’ve pushed its range limits trying to reach far-flung national parks and other destinations where fast chargers are scarce. I’ve found myself in numerous situations where I’ve set the cruise control at exactly the speed limit or slightly below to make sure the car would reach the one and only charging depot in the vicinity. For particularly close calls, I’ve puttered white-knuckled with one eye on Tesla’s in-car energy app — and felt my stomach drop when I found myself underperforming its expectations.
Fortunately, slow works. Three years ago I managed a comfortable round-trip from what was then the closest Tesla Supercharger to Crater Lake National Park by driving there down a 55-mile-per-hour two-lane highway; at freeway speed, my little battery probably wouldn’t have made it. Today, my fully charged Model 3 might make it something like 130 to 140 miles at interstate speed, depending on elevation. Go a little slower and it comes close to matching the 200 miles of supposed range.
Fear is the speed-killer, sure. The chance of being stranded with a dead battery is enough for any driver to be scared straight into observing the posted limit. But having all that data at the ready had already started to affect my driving habits even when there was no danger of stranding myself. It’s hard to watch the range drop when you slam the accelerator without thinking of the Interstellar meme about how much this little maneuver is going to cost us. With the price of electricity at the fast charger rising, I’m much more conscious of wasting a few kilowatt-hours by being in a hurry.
The difference is stunningly clear in the kind of controlled range tests that car sites and EV influencers have been conducting. For example, the State of Charge YouTube channel recently drove the Cadillac Escalade IQ, the fully electric version of the status SUV that is officially rated at 465 miles of range. Driven at exactly 70 miles per hour until it ran out of juice, the big EV exceeded that estimate by traveling 481 miles. With the speedometer held at 60 miles per hour, however, the vehicle went 607 miles — more than 100 miles more.
Granted, the Caddy’s comically large 205 kilowatt-hour battery — more than three times as big as the one in my little Tesla — does the lion’s share of the work in allowing it to go so very many miles. A peek into State of Charge’s data, though, makes it clear what 10 miles per hour can do. Dropping from 70 miles per hour to 60 caused the car’s miles per kilowatt-hour figure to rise from 2.1 to 2.6 or 2.7.
That’s not to say EV ownership turns every driver into an energy-obsessed hypermiler. One blessing of the huge batteries that go into Cadillac EVs and Rivians is freeing their drivers from some of the mental burden of range calculations. With driving ranges reaching well above 300 miles, you’re going to make it to the next plug even if you drive like a maniac.
Even so, the increased awareness of the cost of electricity might make some of us reconsider the casual speeding we all do just to take a few minutes off the trip. That’s a good thing for public safety: Big EV batteries make these vehicles heavier than other cars, on average, and thus potentially more dangerous in auto accidents. And slowing down will be especially relevant as electricity prices outpace inflation. Consumer electricity prices are up nearly 5% over last year and are poised to get worse: The budget reconciliation bill signed by President Trump last week won’t help, as one projection sees it leading to an increase in annual energy bills of up to $290 by 2035.
To be honest, the biggest problem of slowing down a little isn’t really the extra time it takes to get someplace. It’s trying to conserve in a world where 5 to 10 miles per hour over the speed limit is the expectation. I once had to cross 140 miles of wind-swept New Mexico expanse from Albuquerque to Gallup on a single charge, a task that required driving 55 miles per hour in a 65 zone of the interstate, holding on tight as semi trucks flew past me in revved aggravation. We made it. But if you really want to make your electrons go farther, then be prepared to become the target of road rage by the hasty and the aggrieved.