Even level 1 charging (as you call it "overnight slow charging") gives you ~5 miles per hour and only requires a cheap charger of ~200 bucks. Charge it from 8PM to 6AM and you get 50 miles of range. If you have a <50 mile commute, you can charge from 8PM to 6AM, and your work commute is taken care of. Charge a little longer on weekends and you can budget further.
This situation might not work for everyone! Street parking of course makes this nearly impossible. But A LOT of Americans have a <50 mile commute, and a garage with an outlet. For these people, they're saving money every day, and never have to use a gas station ever again. In this situation you'll pay off that initial $200 in ~8 months. But even disregarding financial savings, many may simply prefer the tradeoff of not having to go to gas stations in exchange for plugging in when they return home.
Then, if you need to go on a >200 mile trip, you have to use a public charger, and the math is less favorable as those will cost more and you'll have to hang out for a bit. But once again, you need to consider how often this is an occurance for you. For some people, it's weekly (or daily!). For some it's once a month or once a year. I agree that we're not at the place where from cost savings alone, it is maximally effective for everyone, but I don't think it's unrealistic for a very large portion of Americans.
A large percentage of personal vehicles mostly take short distance trips between which they spend the vast majority of their life parked at one of a handful of consistent locations. Even with slow charging, EVs have ample opportunity to "refuel" with no additional time investment. As for monetary cost, the electricity to refuel an EV can be generated by a huge number of sources to leverage the cheapest (or greenest if that's what you want to optimize for) ones and be centralized to take advantage of economies of scale. Even if the electricity is fossil fuel generated, a power plant can be far more efficient at turning that fossil fuel into energy than your car engine can.
This is different than saying this charging reality is true for everyone right this second, but they key point is that it's possible for EVs while it is fundamentally impossible for traditional internal combustion vehicles. Your ICE car is never going to be able to be refueled at home overnight or at work during the day. It will never be able to take advantage of solar or wind or nuclear energy. Refueling an ICE car might be fairly convenient now, but this is as good as it gets, it's never going to get any better. My current situation doesn't allow me to charge an EV at work or home, so it would be marginally less convenient for me. But that's pretty fixable in the grand scheme of things, while I'm never going to be able to refuel my ICE car while I sleep.
Anyone doing the comparison between ICE and EV now and not accounting for all the extra upside room to grow EVs still have (and ICE does not) is definitely missing the forest for the trees.
> Factor in your time hunting for a charger
Not really an issue, there is a large variety of apps to navigate you to a charger and check availiability beforehand.
> waiting around for the car
In my experience when on the highway the time you need for a break (toilet, eating, relaxing) is equal or less than the time the car needs to charge. If you are shopping, your car will be done charging before you finish.
> Usually you need to install some infrastructure or deal with overnight slow charging.
If you are just using the car in the city for short trips you only need to change every 1-2 weeks. In that case you can just go to a quick charge station which many gas stations are installing now in paralell to their pumps.
The problem I see right now: While consumer prices are 0.3€/kWh at home, quick chargers demand 0.65€/kWh, which is insane.
Fully 70 countries in the world generate more than 50% of their energy from renewables [1], and it's climbing rapidly.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_renewable...
Burn it in a combined cycle power plant to convert it to electricity and there are still substantial loses to waste heat but much less than when burning it an ICE car. There will be some smaller losses in the power grid and charging infrastructure to get that electricity into your battery, and some small losses in your EV's electric powertrain, but in the end around 40% of the energy of the fuel ends up going toward propelling your vehicle.