Abstract The choice of battery range (all-electric driving range) for battery electric vehicles (BEVs) is an important issue for both BEV adopters and BEV makers. This paper proposes a model to identify the minimum BEV battery range that can satisfy given travel demands, considering the opportunities to charge at existing public charging stations and the uncertainties in charging decision making. We conducted a stated preference survey to study the charging decision making and analyzed the data using the Latent Class model to generate the model coefficients for charging decisions making. The proposed approach can better identify the needed battery range than the often-used simplified charging rules. We applied the model to a case study of Beijing to evaluate the needed battery range for taxis and private vehicles. For taxis, BEVs with 220-mile battery range are able to satisfy the travel demands for about 90% of the drivers. For private vehicles, a 300-mile range is needed to cover the travel demands of 90% of the drivers, while a 100-mile range battery is able to satisfy the need for 80% of the private drivers. Simplified charging rules tend to underestimate the range needs for taxis but overestimate the range needs for private vehicles.