Someone needs to build convenience stores attached to charging stations. The money is in the store / lounge.
My guess is that eventually there will be fewer but larger charging site. Built beside major routes and close to a big grid connection. Have a few hundred MW's of charging all in one place. Much easier to maintain and more investable for large companies.
Is this demonstrated?
Visiting the gas station is an across-the-income-strata chore with recurring economics. Wealthy EV owners, on the other hand, charge at home--"the economic burden of installing home chargers" being unfeasiable "for many living in multi-family housing or renting" [1]. It's unclear whether electric trucks will charge en route, and if so, whether they'll have many people on board for long hauls. So you’re stuck, as a base case, with road trippers. An intermittent, lower-volume and presumably pro-cyclical market.
Put simply, the economics of gas stations don't map cleanly to EV charging.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13640...
This is largely a function of needed to charge in a garage.
I don't charge in my garage, I charge in my driveway. My garage is stupidly small. My previous car, a small Subaru BRZ, barely fit in my garage. It doesn't help that there's a pillar right in the middle of it, preventing anyone from opening the passenger door of any car parked.
If I parked my Model 3 in my garage, I'd have about two feet between the front bumper and the back wall of the garage.
I guess "Garage" is just shorthand for owning a single family home.
I hate having to rely on bathrooms inside businesses to relieve myself during road trips while charging. Sometimes they need a code and the business won't give it to you unless you buy something.
Agreed. But again, taking a pee isn't a long enough break to charge on a long trip. I'm assuming people will charge at home without the middleman fees, and only need public charging stations on long trips. You certainly can take a longer break a rest stop, I just tend to have longer stops for food.
I had one time during COVID I was on a trip and had to charge at like 10:30 PM. All the fast food places nearby were drive-through only. There was a Safeway, but apparently they closed their bathrooms at 10 PM. I was just lucky I didn't have to go urgently and was able to hold it until I got to my hotel an hour later.