With all due respect, that's panning people, broadly, as imbeciles. You are a smart guy, I do not accept the fact that you don't understand this. Jane and Joe Average generally understand the concept of gallons and litres as a measure of volume, and, can generally infer from how many gallons they put in their vehicle, how many miles they should be able to go.
You understand gallons as a unit of measure, correct? kWh, in the context of a battery, is basically the same concept.
Like my Jeep has an 88L tank, a BMW with a 94kWh battery is conceptually the same for the sake of this discussion. I can get roughly 500km of highway-biased driving out of 3/4 of a tank, the BMW can get x number of km out of 3/4 of a full 94kWh charge.
My Jeep tells me how many km I have for range, and I know that's going to have a fudge factor based on how I drive
The BMW tells you how many km you have for range, and you know there's going to be a fudge factor based on how you drive
Both of these are representative; are inferred from the available volume of stored energy available, as to how much range is available.
Like my Jeep gets 10mpg driving in town and 15 driving mixed-highway, the BMW will go a certain # of miles per kWh in town and a different figure on the highway.
Like with gasoline and diesel vehicles, the efficiency varies wildly from one vehicle and powertrain combo to another. But, these fundamental units of measure don't change. Vehicle A will get a different # of miles per kWh than Vehicle B, just like different vehicles have different fuel economy figures.
So, when I put 20 litres into my Jeep and it gives me 1/2 a tank, I have a reasonably good idea how far I can go and the range available displayed will be generally pretty close to that.
When you put 20kWh into the BMW and it gives you 1/2 a charge, you'd have a reasonably good idea how far you can go and the range displayed will be generally pretty close to that.
When you "square peg round hole" a wholly unrelated unit of measure into this situation, it loses its universal correctness. Miles travelled per hour is an understood rate of travel, and doesn't meaningfully change whether you are in the Bahamas or the arctic, whether you are driving a Kenworth or a Yugo. But, when you cram it into this scenario, all of a sudden that's cast into the ether as now "miles per hour" is wholly redefined as a variable, with dependants, such as state of charge, battery pre-conditioning, brand and model of vehicle, powertrain...etc. It could represent a charge rate of 10kW on a Tesla and 12kW on a BMW or 2kW on a Nissan Leaf, and it's never the exact same because of all of those dependents. It's a fundamental misuse of a unit of measure that already has a definition.
The disconnect here seems to stem from the fact that EV's take a lot longer to charge/fuel than gasoline cars, so where folks don't really care how many gallons per second the fuel pump is, knowing how "fast" the charger is, is useful. But instead of encouraging people to understand the rather basic electrical terminology, like they already understand gallons or litres, somebody decided it would be easier to just butcher an existing and defined unit of measure and shoehorn it in there.
Ultimately, if Bob pulls up to a 20kW charger and his vehicle has a pretty flat charge curve, he can expect to get 10kWh of capacity in 30 minutes. Like buying fuel, the charger (pump) will show how many kWh (gallons/litres) he ended up purchasing and what he paid for those kWh (gallons/litres). If that bumps him up to 50% state of charge (half a tank) then he'll have a pretty good idea of how far he can go, and the vehicle is going to tell him anyway, just like gas cars do. There's no reason to butcher mph here when you understand the base units.
This is going to become doubly important as more and more people buy EV's and charge at home. Your hydro bill isn't in miles, you pay for kWh, the same unit your EV stores power in. If you drive 500 miles a month and your EV gets 3.2 miles per kWh, then you can figure you'll use at least 156kWh to charge your EV (you'll use more due to losses, this will become apparent).
As we move toward more electrification, broadly, understanding and using electrical units should be second nature. We already see horrible misuse of electrical units by the media, we need to be encouraging knowledge on the subject, not celebrating and embracing ignorance through ridiculous workarounds.
