We've had an EV for about 6 months now -- no way to charge at home. I will admit to being a special case, in that I have no problems at all charging the car, but the experience has led to some insights.

First, why I'm a special case. I live in Japan. Compared to Canada (and I assume most of the US), the charger situation here is amazing. We've done a fair few road trips now and it seems like no matter where we go, there is a fast charger within 2-5 km. At least 25% of the rest stops on the highway have them. A large percentage of "michi no eki" (Road station -- essentially farmers markets) have them -- to the point where the other day we were on a road trip and were very surprised to see a michi no eki that didn't didn't have one. Family Mart convenience store often has one (something like 1 in 10, I would guess). Aeon (big shopping mall) has one or two (and often 15-20 200V chargers) and every Nissan and Mitsubishi dealership has one.

This is really the future, I think. It costs millions to make a gas station. It costs thousands to put in a fast charger. You can put one anywhere because we already have the electrical infrastructure in place. I know several restaurants that have put them in.

At the moment, there is way more infrastructure than demand, so I very rarely have to wait. If, for some reason I do, then I drive 2km the road and charge there. It's hard to know if this will get better or worse as things scale up, but for the moment it's pretty good.

I'm also in a good situation in that I work from home. When I want to charge the car (a couple of times a week), I drive to the Family Mart, plug in, pick up a few groceries and then work for 30 minutes to an hour. They have a table (with power, even) for people to work at. It's air conditioned. It's so convenient, it's crazy.

However, it's the same thing when we travel. Our car only has a 30 kWh range, so we have to stop relatively frequently. But since there are chargers all over the place, we just stop and walk around. We often end up buying small things, or having a snack. We've seen so many amazing things since we got the EV because we're forced to stop and hang out in the small towns.

I think people are going to cash in on this. You are going to see small towns with parking lots with validated charging. People are going to drive by, stop, pick up a few things and carry on. Already the rest stops in Japan are absolutely geared for this: the have souvenir stores, restaurants and even things like clothing stores.

I think this is going to be a thing because compared to a gas station, it's cheap and it's also really nice. I thought I would dread charging the car. It's actually one of the best parts of my week. I get out and meet people. I slow down a bit. I get some shopping done.

Canada is kind of a difficult problem because it has 25x the land area and 1/4 the population of Japan. It's going to be tough. Also, they don't have any particular reason for someone to invest money in the infrastructure. Nissan and Mitsubishi are doubtlessly scared stiff of the time when Toyota and Honda enter the market. They want to own that charging infrastructure -- so they are going crazy right now. But I think it's actually inevitable, so if you have a fair amount of capital and are looking for a long term investment, I think this is a good one.