EV Infrastructure

Boost_Crazy said:

In reply to mattm :

I somehow deleted my post. Oh well, trying to remember what I typed...

You are right about the battery size, but that wasn't my point. Larger vehicles will still require more power, more load on the grid vs. current EV's. 
 

As an early adopter, you probably aren't the best example. Hopefully you did the calculations before you bought your Tesla and decided it would work for your needs. But telling other people what works for you should work for them is like telling a 1 ton truck owner that he doesn't need his truck because your Ranger hauls everything that you need it to. But that is beside the point, and not really related to infrastructure. Level 3 chargers work well for you now. The charger to EV ratio is pretty favorable. Would it work as well for you if 30% of your town switched to EV's but the infrastructure didn't keep pace? 
 

A good analogy for electrical infrastructure is our highway infrastructure. Current EV's  added just a tiny amount of electrical traffic. You wouldn't even notice it on your commute. But if you concluded that adding traffic has no affect on your commute, you would be in for a rude awakening if traffic went up an order of magnitude and they didn't add any more lanes. Traffic would grind to a halt. Much like roads, electrical infrastructure needs to be sized for peak use. Size a road for average traffic over 24 hours, and you will have a very slow rush hour. Size an electrical system for average use, I hope you like resetting breakers. 
 

I think that was it. I'm sure I missed something. 

Don't worry. Elon Musk is a smart guy. He knows he will need more chargers. He'll install them as they are required.  
   You do realize use of the chargers is an additional income stream for him?  
   It's also a potential profit center for gas stations. They barely make a profit on the gas they sell  their profit is the stuff they sell in the store.   Having more people with time on their hands will add to the profit from charging. 

Super fast charging is a plus for gas stations , in and out in 15 minutes or so , 

but having someone take up a parking spot for hours is probably a money loser , 

I know it will all work out in the end  , the newer EVs will charge in 15 minutes or so , 

Has there been any studies on how long the average customer stays at a gas station , from pulling in to driving away .

As long as they keep "brewing" gasoline and diesel  the rest of us will live with what we are driving now and look harder at EVs when it's time to trade in or trade up :)

In reply to californiamilleghia :

Do yourself a favor.  Calculate how much you will spend in the next 5 years for gasoline.  Assume todays price because while we all would like gas to get cheaper that hasn't happened. I used to pay 19 cents a gallon when I first started driving.  
      I keep vehicles until they wear out and go to the junkyard. I buy new!   
   I'm tempted to trade in my 2016 Ford F-150 for the new Ford EV.  And it makes economic sense!!  ( Actuarial tables give me 12 more years). 

In reply to californiamilleghia :

The station owners keep talking about how they don't make any money on selling gas and diesel and that all the money is getting customers to come into the store to purchase drinks and snacks and stuff.  I would think that the gas stations would be pretty happy with the idea of rolling out some charging stations since that's an unattended thing and you've got nothing else to do but go inside and get a cup of coffee or some snacks.  Of course, the other side to that is if most of your charging is happening at home, stopping by the neighborhood gas station might not be a thing that you do very much anyway.

In reply to frenchyd :

Your paid off f150 will be cheaper over the next 12 years vs a new f150 lightening over the next 12 years. Especially since residual value 12 years from now doesn't matter to you since you're calculating to your death.

There certainly are some challenges with infrastructure that need to be overcome as the world moves to EVs but none of them are insurmountable and I haven't seen anything raised in discussions on message boards that I haven't seen in white papers or studies. 

Power companies make their money selling power.  They'll eventually figure out how to get the power needed to their customers. 

I suspect that how the grid in the US looks is going to change.  I think we're going to be seeing more smaller, diverse, power generation and storage locations with more integrated and interactive controls and shorter runs to the end users.  That's how the power system in Europe works.  They've got solar, wind, CNG peaking systems, landfill gas, batteries, flywheels and other power generation and storage systems scattered around.  All taking to a common controller.  Some are privately owned and some are government funded.

Matt Farrah of "The Smoking Tire" has had some recent experiences with EV charging. He's mentioned them on Instagram and gone into detail on his podcast. Basically, he made two road trips, one from LA to Vegas in his personal Mach E, and one from LA to Phoenix in a Lucid Air press car. In short, he ran into a lot of trouble with the charging infrastructure not working, or at least not working correctly. Credit card issues, app issues, supposedly high-voltage chargers not delivering what they are supposed to deliver, people parking in EV charging spots and leaving their cars there for days on end, etc. Matt's pretty pro-EV (he did buy a Mach E), so I don't see this as sour grapes, these are real issues that still need to be worked out.

In reply to yupididit :

I'm thinking of operating costs.    Payments would be less than  $300 a month after trade in /sale. Fuel costs would be around $250   Oil change and maintenance  $20  so it gets very close indeed.  I'd lose the first 6 years but once paid off I'd be ahead.  
 The only reason I won't pull the trigger is the added length of a 4 seater compared to my regular cab.  The added power is very, very tempting. 

Paul_VR6 (Forum Supporter) said:

tuna55 said:

In reply to Boost_C

 

It's just a false equivalency argument. You could make the same case for anything. 

I'd agree here. I've heard it from the horse's mouth (contacts at grid operators like PJM or NYISO and utilities like PG&E, etc) that personal charging won't be much strain. Most will happen off peak and actually be helpful for balancing load. The small amout of fast charging during the day is but a small blip and if there increased renewable glut, could help balance as well. The grid of today needs a lot to shift to a more renewable generation anyway and incorporating charging into that scheme to hit decarbonization goals isn't an additional specific problem to be solved (at least not a huge one). 

Now commercial uses may cause different problems like city bussing for example as they may need to have a different charging profile. Or if diesel replacement becomes real anytime soon (we may see H2 burning engines before battery trucks for long haul due to weight) it can cause additional strain. All solveable with enough planning. Although transmission and distribution cost money, we know how to do that.

Just to add on, because I didn't type very well earlier.

If we were all taking horses around still, and some industrious folks were starting to make gasoline powered cars, we would be having the same discussion.

"But there's no way we can transport all of that fuel all over the country to match the range of these engines! Right now I can just feed my horse anywhere I find grain or grass. Using an engine means I have to figure out where I can find the right fuel for my car wherever I go!"

Yeah EVs will need more infrastructure. So will more cars with engines. So will more houses being built. Like every other thing that has ever happened in any civilization ever, nobody is going to instantly remove all 285 million cars from the US roads and instantly replace them with EVs. Coca Cola didn't design their distribution system from zero to 1.9B daily servings on day 1. There was nobody in the board room telling the factory that they can't sell coke yet because they first have to figure out how to handle that volume. Apple didn't deliver all 700 million of the phones currently used in the world in a day either. To argue this point is basically to say "I'm scared of change". Every person who has bought an EV on this message board is saying that they are currently saving money, time, and downtime as compared with the vehicles they replaced, with only benefits to their convenience and driving enjoyment. Maybe pay attention to them?

californiamilleghia said:

Super fast charging is a plus for gas stations , in and out in 15 minutes or so , 

but having someone take up a parking spot for hours is probably a money loser , 

I know it will all work out in the end  , the newer EVs will charge in 15 minutes or so , 

Has there been any studies on how long the average customer stays at a gas station , from pulling in to driving away .

As long as they keep "brewing" gasoline and diesel  the rest of us will live with what we are driving now and look harder at EVs when it's time to trade in or trade up :)

An EV parked "for hours" isn't charging, it's parked :) Or it's on a charger that's not designed for fast charging, which was a choice of the business that installed it. That's the sort of charger you put outside a movie theater, not at the equivalent of a highway gas station.  Or you put it in your parking garage at work, so you don't have a whole bunch of cars hitting the juice at max draw all at the same time at the beginning of the work day.

This is not a study, but I have a number of EV-owning friends who do serious road trips in their EVs. I've shared some of their experiences in the past, and on long road trips it actually takes a bit of planning to have the humans ready to leave before the car is. It would be really interesting to know just how long people spend stopped at gas stations, though - I suspect it's one of those numbers that's quite different in reality than in people's perceptions. 

Boost_Crazy said:

In reply to RevRico :

In reply to Boost_Crazy :

I don't understand your concern. I get what you're saying, but there a few things that just don't make sense.

Like why should an office building have charging at every spot? If you don't have enough juice to get to and from work, you need a current vehicle or place to live, or job. The days of 50 mile ranges are already behind us. A handful of charging spots at every building would add up, but no need for every single spot to charge, and no way they're all being used at the same time. 

Do you stop and get fuel every single day? Then why would you need to charge every single day.

Cruise through any neighborhood, every 2 hours for a week. See just how many people are home at any given time. The thought of everyone in a neighborhood plugging in and charging at the same time every single day sounds like a super extreme edge case. 

I get the grid concern, to a point, but I really don't think it's the problem you think it is. 
 

It's a concern for the growing number of cities that are writing it into their energy code. It will be a requirement for new construction in these cities, and will likely roll over to existing properties doing improvements. Commutes in the area can get stupid long, we actually call them super commuters. Notice that the initial city pushing this is San Jose- which sees commuters from as far away as Sacramento. I never said every spot. They are requiring a specific percentage of parking spaces to have chargers, and a specific number more to be chargers ready- piped and capacity in the service. I don't have the numbers in front of me, but it's many times greater than what you see in parking lots today. If you install 2000A of EV charging, you need to have 2000A available. You can't just hope people don't plug in at the same time. The more people move to EV's, the more competition there will be for charging. What seems easy right now with less than 1% of the cars being EV, will change drastically when we hit higher percentages- especially once we pass the point that we can currently support. Home charging helps, to a point. That power has to come from somewhere, and it has to get to your house. The push away from traditional generation towards solar, and the move to overnight car charging creates a large delta between when the power is generated and when it is used. Hence the need for storage. Also, don't forget that as EV's are more readily adopted, it won't be small cars like most of the EV's currently on the market. They will be large SUV's and trucks, with bigger batteries. 

The San Jose rules are interesting, and they're definitely one of the US cities that is furthest ahead in both EV adoption and planning. Note that having a spot capable of delivering 40A does not mean the spot HAS to deliver 40A, it's not unusual for chargers to split the power delivery across a couple of connectors. Superchargers work like that in some areas, they're marked as to which ones share a circuit so you know if you'll be sharing power. IIRC this is only on the urban ones, not the highway ones. The San Jose rules do allow for a management system, and if I'm reading it right the garage only needs the ability to deliver a minimum of 8A per spot. But I might not be reading it  right, as I don't really speak legalese.

ae86andkp61 (Forum Supporter) said:

Keith Tanner said:

In reply to ae86andkp61 (Forum Supporter) :

You're responding to me, but I'm not sure exactly what you're responding to. I'll make a guess based on your comments. 

-----

All the studies I've seen show that a very high percentage of charging is done at home. 80% is a number quoted by the DOE, and I suspect that's on the low side for a modern longer range EV. But it's all about averages. Speaking of which, Americans drive an average of 31 miles per day.

I think we're saying the same thing two different ways.  The part I was taking exception to was the assertion that you don't need charging at home, but I think I unnecessarily narrowed in on one statement in your overall discussion.

The "can't charge at home" demographic is one that's often held up as a reason why EVs can never work. Charging at home is by far the most convenient option for both the owner and the grid. But it's possible to own an EV without at-home charging, it's just more like owning an ICE. I have a couple of friends who do it and IIRC we have at least one person on the forum who does it as well. That's what I was talking about, how that sort of owner has different charging patterns and needs than the commuter who charges at home every night or the road tripper that just needs a recharge on the way to the next city.

tuna55 said:

If we were all taking horses around still, and some industrious folks were starting to make gasoline powered cars, we would be having the same discussion.

That's where my thoughts keep going to. Proposing our current gasoline infrastructure to a theoretical world where none of it existed would be a completely wacko crazy person idea. "You want us to drill random holes in the ground, find some magical fluid we need to transport halfway around the world to then somehow convert it into an even more magical fluid we will then transport halfway around the world again, store it for a while, then haul it again to a place we'll put it back in a hole in the ground, then suck it back out of that hole and stick it in a box that will then burn it to carry people around so they can buy gum and cigarettes? What the heck?"

Compared to that, 100% EV adoption is cake. Bigger wires, larger transformers, just more of what we already have and already make. Yes it's a challenge, but it's a solved problem. About 20 years ago we went from overhead wires to buried wires and that was a big job but went just fine. Then about 5 years ago we wanted to add a chiller that ran on 480v when we didn't have 480v power, and so had to add an additional service entrance. That was also a big job but went fine. These are all surmountable problems, and they're just continuations of projects that people have been doing for decades. No big deal.

In reply to dculberson :

Don't forget that you need several different versions of that fluid or you could destroy your machine, and the fluid can give you cancer if you don't die from the fumes that come off it when you burn it. Don't even think about drinking it - but if you mix it with the stuff you drink you can't use it to power your machine. Also, the fluid has to stay fresh or it will cause various parts of your machine to stop working. There's no way you'd build up that setup from scratch, it could only happen by slow evolution over decades.

Am I the only one thinking that ICE infrastructure is actually over built in a lot of areas? Especially since once a place is a gas station is extremely difficult to make the land into anything else?

Obviously not everywhere, I just think back to my old house. In the 11 miles from the turnpike to my house there are (now) 18 gas stations JUST on the main highway. Not counting the dozens off the main highway. 

Is that what people expect EV infrastructure to be? 

Obviously companies wouldn't be building them if they didn't think they were profitable, but why do you need 100+ pumps on an 11 miles stretch of road?

In reply to tuna55 :

In reply to Boost_Crazy :

This is a silly argument. If you changed the words, you could argue the same for getting gasoline (it will never work, if everyone during rush hour had to stop and get fuel ..) golly you could apply this to buying a coke. Of course, if everyone did -anything- all at once, things would break. Happily, that's not how anything ever happens. 

It's just a false equivalency argument. You could make the same case for anything. 

Plus everyone on here who actually owns an ev is telling you over and over that they hardly ever destination charge. People charge at night when the grid is lazy anyway. The new giant housing development down the street is a dramatically more difficult scenario. 
 

I'm not arguing anything. It is a fact that the current infrastructure can't support widespread EV adoption and it's a fact that adding to it will take time and money. I don't understand the resistance (pun intended) to the idea that switching cars from gas to electric will require more electricity, and that electricity needs to be generated and distributed. I've explained- through first hand experience with electrical distribution- that current electrical services are not sized to handle the increased load. I've shared the code changes of a leading city that identifies and addresses the issue. 

Your gasoline example is the real false equivalency.  You are forgetting that our gasoline distribution infrastructure has been built up over years to meet the current demand of 99% of the cars on the road. To be equivalent, we would need to remove most of the pumps and gas stations in service, at which point you most definitely will have distribution issues. 

I think I know where the disconnect is. You are falling into the same trap that many "experts" have. Most everyone agrees that if our passenger vehicle fleet switched to electric, it would be about a 25% increase in electric demand. Scale as needed for less than 100% adoption. Some people point out that our grid overall can handle an extra 25% because that's not too far off our peak usage. That's flawed because it's possible to return to our peak useage plus EV's increased demand, but ignoring that- our electrical distribution is not a bucket of electricity. You can't just spoon it out when and where it's needed. Every point of service it limited by breaker, bus, wire sizing. Adding the current less than 1% of EV's was relatively easy. But as we add more, we will bump against hard limits that need to be replaced. If you and your neighbor both have 200A services on your houses, you have 400A available between the both of you. But just because he's gone for the day and his house is shut down, doesn't mean that you can now draw 400A from your service. It doesn't work that way, yet that is the assumption made when people say we have enough capacity overall. 

The gasoline infrastructure was built up over time, but we also have time to build up the electrical infrastructure. Even if every vehicle sold from today forward was an EV, the fleet only turns over at a couple of percent per year. It would take a long time to get to 25% EV and I'm not sure we could actually get to 99% in my lifetime unless there's a Cash For Oil Burners program.

The good news is that we know how to do what needs to be done, there's no wait for some sort of technology to come out of the lab. If I was counseling a high schooler as to what trade to enter, I'd probably recommend electrician over mechanic at this point :)

In reply to Boost_Crazy :

Sorry dude, you're pretty far off on this one. You're missing a bunch of important things. I, too used to work in power generation. Adoption rates of EVs sure show that the energy demands will be a blip on the radar as compared to housing demands, green energy initiatives, and peak usage incentives. Almost all charging will take place off peak, and there are plenty of power plants idling anyway. 

In reply to tuna55 :

You have completely missed the point. Reread my last paragraph. Generation and distribution are completely different things. How much power we generate is meaningless unless you can get it to the car. The physical equipment between the two has real limits. EV charging is an additional load. It doesn't matter what percentage of the load it is or what the power plant can supply if that load puts it over the limit of what the physical equipment can distribute. 

Say the clutch in your car can only hold 200HP. Your transmission breaks at 300HP. But your engine makes 400HP so you can run 12's no problem? I've shown you that the clutch (circuit breakers) will let go at 200hp. I've shown you that the transmission (bussing and wire) fail at 300hp. Show me how you ran a 12 with no clutch or transmission, 

In reply to RevRico :

Am I the only one thinking that ICE infrastructure is actually over built in a lot of areas? Especially since once a place is a gas station is extremely difficult to make the land into anything else?

Obviously not everywhere, I just think back to my old house. In the 11 miles from the turnpike to my house there are (now) 18 gas stations JUST on the main highway. Not counting the dozens off the main highway. 

Is that what people expect EV infrastructure to be? 

Obviously companies wouldn't be building them if they didn't think they were profitable, but why do you need 100+ pumps on an 11 miles stretch of road?

You hit the nail on the head. Our gas infrastructure is not sized just to meet demand. If it was, we would just have large gas stations 200 miles apart. It's sized for convenience. The majority of drivers switching to EV's in the coming years will expect the same. Especially with the long "refuel" times of EV's. That is one the reasons what San Jose is pushing for so many charging stations. Not because that is what is physically required to charge the cars, but because that is what the believe is needed to encourage adoption. They say so right in the code. But once you put out those chargers, they need to be supported by the electrical distribution. It doesn't matter if they are all being used at the same time or not. If you add 30, 40A chargers to a parking lot, you can't just hope people don't use them all at the same time. Or just let the breaker trip and no one gets a charge. You can schedule them, but who wants to plug into a charger that doesn't turn on? And that is only mitigation, there is still a minimum load that you need to size the distribution equipment to support. We are adding potential loads. It doesn't matter how much they are actually used, the equipment needs to be sized appropriately for the potential load. 

In reply to Boost_Crazy :

I didn't miss it, it simply is largely unimportant. Some tiny fraction of the drivers out there will be destination charging at all, the vast majority will charge at night when the rest of the grid isn't doing hardly anything. The data on this board from real people completely supports this.

I'm pretty much done explaining this to you, though. Check back with me in ten years and we'll check on the disruptions to the grid based on EV adoption. Neither of us have any say in policy other than I've purchased an EV which I regularly charge and you have not.

Boost_Crazy said:

In reply to tuna55 :

In reply to Boost_Crazy :

This is a silly argument. If you changed the words, you could argue the same for getting gasoline (it will never work, if everyone during rush hour had to stop and get fuel ..) golly you could apply this to buying a coke. Of course, if everyone did -anything- all at once, things would break. Happily, that's not how anything ever happens. 

 

It's just a false equivalency argument. You could make the same case for anything. 

 

Plus everyone on here who actually owns an ev is telling you over and over that they hardly ever destination charge. People charge at night when the grid is lazy anyway. The new giant housing development down the street is a dramatically more difficult scenario. 
 

I'm not arguing anything. It is a fact that the current infrastructure can't support widespread EV adoption and it's a fact that adding to it will take time and money. I don't understand the resistance (pun intended) to the idea that switching cars from gas to electric will require more electricity, and that electricity needs to be generated and distributed. I've explained- through first hand experience with electrical distribution- that current electrical services are not sized to handle the increased load. I've shared the code changes of a leading city that identifies and addresses the issue. 

Your gasoline example is the real false equivalency.  You are forgetting that our gasoline distribution infrastructure has been built up over years to meet the current demand of 99% of the cars on the road. To be equivalent, we would need to remove most of the pumps and gas stations in service, at which point you most definitely will have distribution issues. 

I think I know where the disconnect is. You are falling into the same trap that many "experts" have. Most everyone agrees that if our passenger vehicle fleet switched to electric, it would be about a 25% increase in electric demand. Scale as needed for less than 100% adoption. Some people point out that our grid overall can handle an extra 25% because that's not too far off our peak usage. That's flawed because it's possible to return to our peak useage plus EV's increased demand, but ignoring that- our electrical distribution is not a bucket of electricity. You can't just spoon it out when and where it's needed. Every point of service it limited by breaker, bus, wire sizing. Adding the current less than 1% of EV's was relatively easy. But as we add more, we will bump against hard limits that need to be replaced. If you and your neighbor both have 200A services on your houses, you have 400A available between the both of you. But just because he's gone for the day and his house is shut down, doesn't mean that you can now draw 400A from your service. It doesn't work that way, yet that is the assumption made when people say we have enough capacity overall. 

You would be correct if everybody plugged in at exactly noon.   That isn't going to happen any more than every car will go to the gas station to fill up at exactly noon. 
 Instead, You're going to go home, plug your EV in as you walk into the house and sometime later in the evening when the loads are reduced to a tiny fraction of day time loads your EV will start charging. Basically how an alarm clock works. 
     31 miles a day is the average use of cars.  So maybe your car charges from 3:37 am to 4:12 am, then  it's full. 
    You'll have a full tank of electrons enough to go more than 200 miles.  But tomorrow you'll drive your 31 miles again. 
  Once a year when you go on vacation you'll need to plug in on the road.  Since your folks live within a hundred miles or so you can probably visit them without the need to top up at their house.   If it's more than that plug into the garage  or where the Christmas lights are. 
  Don't worry.  You can wait for others to show you how to adjust to the change.  
   I'm sure the old farmers were just as confused when the Ford Model T replaced the horse.  

So this article was at the of my news feed

https://slate.com/technology/2022/05/electric-vehicles-level-1-chargers-policy.html

I’ll through in add some solar on top of the mall, add some carports that include solar panels, I get lots of ads for those. All of a sudden generation and distribution aren’t such a big problem - oh other than big energy doesn’t get to be a middleman.

frenchyd said:

Boost_Crazy said:

In reply to tuna55 :

In reply to Boost_Crazy :

This is a silly argument. If you changed the words, you could argue the same for getting gasoline (it will never work, if everyone during rush hour had to stop and get fuel ..) golly you could apply this to buying a coke. Of course, if everyone did -anything- all at once, things would break. Happily, that's not how anything ever happens. 

 

It's just a false equivalency argument. You could make the same case for anything. 

 

Plus everyone on here who actually owns an ev is telling you over and over that they hardly ever destination charge. People charge at night when the grid is lazy anyway. The new giant housing development down the street is a dramatically more difficult scenario. 
 

I'm not arguing anything. It is a fact that the current infrastructure can't support widespread EV adoption and it's a fact that adding to it will take time and money. I don't understand the resistance (pun intended) to the idea that switching cars from gas to electric will require more electricity, and that electricity needs to be generated and distributed. I've explained- through first hand experience with electrical distribution- that current electrical services are not sized to handle the increased load. I've shared the code changes of a leading city that identifies and addresses the issue. 

Your gasoline example is the real false equivalency.  You are forgetting that our gasoline distribution infrastructure has been built up over years to meet the current demand of 99% of the cars on the road. To be equivalent, we would need to remove most of the pumps and gas stations in service, at which point you most definitely will have distribution issues. 

I think I know where the disconnect is. You are falling into the same trap that many "experts" have. Most everyone agrees that if our passenger vehicle fleet switched to electric, it would be about a 25% increase in electric demand. Scale as needed for less than 100% adoption. Some people point out that our grid overall can handle an extra 25% because that's not too far off our peak usage. That's flawed because it's possible to return to our peak useage plus EV's increased demand, but ignoring that- our electrical distribution is not a bucket of electricity. You can't just spoon it out when and where it's needed. Every point of service it limited by breaker, bus, wire sizing. Adding the current less than 1% of EV's was relatively easy. But as we add more, we will bump against hard limits that need to be replaced. If you and your neighbor both have 200A services on your houses, you have 400A available between the both of you. But just because he's gone for the day and his house is shut down, doesn't mean that you can now draw 400A from your service. It doesn't work that way, yet that is the assumption made when people say we have enough capacity overall. 

You would be correct if everybody plugged in at exactly noon.   That isn't going to happen any more than every car will go to the gas station to fill up at exactly noon.     That's stuff we've been doing for a long time.  It's how an alarm clock works. 
 Instead, You're going to go home, plug your EV in as you walk into the house and sometime later in the evening when the loads are reduced to a tiny fraction of day time loads your EV will start charging. 
     31 miles a day is the average use of cars.  So maybe your car charges from 3:37 am to 4:12 am, then  it's full. 
    You'll have a full tank of electrons enough to go more than 200 miles.  But tomorrow you'll drive your 31 miles again. 
  Once a year when you go on vacation you'll need to plug in on the road.  Since your folks live within a hundred miles or so you can probably visit them without the need to top up at their house.   If it's more than that plug into the garage  or where the Christmas lights are. 
  Don't worry.  You can wait for others to show you how to adjust to the change.  
   I'm sure the old farmers were just as confused when the Ford Model T replaced the horse.  

Nailed it here.

RevRico said:

Am I the only one thinking that ICE infrastructure is actually over built in a lot of areas? Especially since once a place is a gas station is extremely difficult to make the land into anything else?

 

Obviously not everywhere, I just think back to my old house. In the 11 miles from the turnpike to my house there are (now) 18 gas stations JUST on the main highway. Not counting the dozens off the main highway. 

Is that what people expect EV infrastructure to be? 

Obviously companies wouldn't be building them if they didn't think they were profitable, but why do you need 100+ pumps on an 11 miles stretch of road?

I trust the market to deal with  how many chargers are needed and where.   When I was a kid gas stations sold gas to draw in customers to have their car fixed.  Eventually there would be 4 gas stations on every busy intersection. 
 Now they sell gas to sell the coffee, pop, and stuff in the store.  They won't care if it's gas or electricity, they just want the customers.