TLDR: The charging infrastructure and charging capacity of vehicles is getting pretty good, but the logistics of the charging stations are awful and either have

TLDR: The charging infrastructure and charging capacity of vehicles is getting pretty good, but the logistics of the charging stations are awful and either have never been considered or were set down when charging was going to be a multiple hours long ordeal. I've been vicariously experiencing the adjustment to EV life through a busy of mine who recently got an Ioniq 5 (2024, so not the tesla charging port). He does not have access to charging at home but does have the 2 years of free* charging at Electrify America (EA) stations. The charge infrastructure isn't that bad for him. While EV stations aren't nearly as prevalent as gas stations, he has multiple EA station options within his regular driving radius, and far more of he were to leave the EA network. Though it's LA, so it's probably the best in the US. The biggest issue isn't finding a station or being confronted with nonfunctional chargers, it's the variability of charging duration among users and the pre-charging wait logistics. He gets 30 minutes of charging per day for free, but as long as he goes to a 350V charger, he'll hit 80% regardless of his initial charge state in under 30 minutes. Often, he's charging from around 40% to 80-something in under 15 minutes. The trouble starts with the uniqueness of his car's charging rate. Plenty of EVs are not designed to charge at that rate, and it's a waste to have them slowly stopping electrons from the fire hose of the highest voltage chargers. Combine mismatch that with the initial considerations of charge points/stations, when EVs took so long to charge that there was no point in considering a queue waiting to hook up because no one would ever wait for potentially hours and hours for the one car let along two or more car's ahead of them to charge and depart. So EV stations weren't designed like gas stations, they just get stuck in little pockets of empty space or on the periphery of a parking lot, probably marketed to the lot owners as a was to lie in potential shoppers who are going to have to spend the hour or more while they wait for their cars to charge doing something, so why not spending money at the mall or grocery store the chargers are in the lot of. Unfortunately, while that's how the EV stations have developed, that's not really how the cars have. Sure, he might get stuck at a charging station in line behind a Nissan Leaf on 10% battery, but it seems easy more likely he'll be in line for 1 of 3 chargers with 4 or 5 other fairly fast charging EVs. So now he's in the supermarket parking lot awkwardly positioned with a bunch of other EV drivers vigilantly minding a virtual queue communicated through raised eyebrows, grimaces, and expressive stink-eye. There's often probably enough time waiting his turn to go on and do some shopping, but there's no way to do that and maintain the queue. Once he's hooked up, there's usually only enough time to run through like it was a gas station convenience store.