Contrary to popular opinion on Internet forums, almost all car trips in the US are less than thirty miles long and about 80% of all trips are less than ten miles long despite the country being pretty big.
21.5k km per year is the average driving distance in US: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar8.htm
Multiply it for 30 years and you get 645k km.
It seems to me that it’s well below 900k km.
Do you have any official data that contradicts the US department for transportation to prove your assumption?
Not sure where you live, but at least 50% of the time I am driving my car I am probably putting over 100 miles on it per trip. My weekly trip for groceries might be the only one where I am driving a shorter range.
The article discusses this. It's talking about a "commuter trip". As it points out, this is pretty similar for other wealthy nations. In the US, for example, 60% of drives cover a total distance less than 10km.
> 93% of trips are less than 30 miles, but the vast majority of drivers take occasional trips
But they still take these occasional trips, and getting there in an expected way is important to people.
So I think the relevant statistic is not what % of trips are short, but what % of owners take a trip that may induce range anxiety once every few years or more? If I knew I had a big road trip planned for two years from now it'd still affect my choice for a new car today, if I felt that I might be limited by range.
I live in the western part of the US (Colorado) and 600 miles doesn't actually take that long to drive. I regularly drive to my parent's house - which is about 550 miles - in 8 hours. I'm essentially driving the speed limit the entire way with no slowdowns except for one or two gas/restroom breaks. I would imagine driving that distance in GB would involve a much lower average speed.
I have always assumed this is why distances in the US (reasonably far away from the coasts) are "not that far".
> In the US? The number of times people drive 500 miles straight is basically never despite what people here will claim.
At least on the west coast (distances are longer) that's quite common. San Francisco to Los Angeles is ~400 miles. A day trip is ~800 miles, done it often.
San Francisco to Portland is ~600 miles, done that very often as well.
"Americans drive a staggering number of miles — close to three trillion every year, according to the government. (That is half a light-year, or 120 million trips around the world.)"
It's not often that you see light-years used as a unit associated with driving!
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