The electric car debate is always about range, when the thing that actually decides satisfaction is charging access. This quiz measures your circumstances across six areas in 18 questions — charging at home, your distance pattern, climate and terrain, budget, how you use the car, and the network around you — then gives you a suitability score out of 100 and names the real blocker, along with what to do about it.
18 questions · Science
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The electric car conversation is always framed around range, when the thing that actually determines satisfaction is charging access. For someone with a socket where they park, an EV is a car that starts full every morning and never visits a petrol station. For someone parking on the street, the same car becomes a task to plan several times a week. The US Department of Energy's guidance points the same way: most drivers charge overnight at home, and for many people an ordinary socket overnight covers daily needs.
So the first step in "should I buy an electric car" isn't choosing a car. It's solving the place the car sleeps.
Winter range is the most exaggerated and most poorly explained part of the subject. According to US Department of Energy measurements, at around −7 °C range falls by roughly 41% with the cabin heater running. At the same temperature with the heater off, the loss is only about 12%. In other words the bill is for heating the cabin rather than for the cold itself: roughly two-thirds of the extra energy goes there.
What that means in practice: preheating the car while it's still plugged in takes the heating energy from the socket instead of the battery and saves most of your winter range. Using the seat and steering wheel heaters instead of the cabin heater works on the same logic. If you live somewhere cold there's one more thing to check on the spec sheet: a heat pump. It makes a real difference to winter range and it isn't fitted to every model.
People choose cars for their worst-case day: the 600 km holiday drive they make once a year. But the car spends 360 days in town. The right question isn't "how many kilometres of range" but these two: what is my daily distance and how often do I drive far. Daily use is almost always covered with room to spare; the decision turns on the frequency of long journeys.
One technical detail worth knowing when planning those: rapid charging is fast until the battery is around 80% full, then slows noticeably. So the habit of filling right up costs time on a motorway; short, frequent stops get you there sooner overall.
Doing your everyday charging on DC chargers is both expensive and not ideal for the battery.
A Department of Energy study suggests EV batteries may last 12 to 15 years in moderate climates and 8 to 12 years in severe ones, and manufacturers cover the pack under a separate, long warranty. The habits that extend life are simpler than people expect: don't routinely charge to 100% for daily use, don't leave the car sitting at a very low state of charge, and treat rapid DC charging as the exception rather than the routine.
If you're buying used, the number that matters isn't the mileage but the battery's remaining health. Asking for a report on it is as ordinary a request as asking for an inspection on a petrol car.
To be honest about it, an EV struggles in this picture: you park on the street, there's no charging at home or at work, you drive long distances often, winters are hard, and there's only one car in the household. If three of those apply together, a plug-in hybrid causes far less friction — daily driving on electricity, no planning on long trips. That isn't a step backwards, it's a choice that fits the circumstances; and when the circumstances change, moving to a full EV will be easy.
Note: this quiz is a general suitability check. Incentives, taxes and electricity prices vary by country and change over time, so for exact costs use current local tariffs and the figures your dealer gives you.