It's not like it's a gas pump at all though. A gas pump spends a lot of energy to move liquid from a reservoir. An electric charger is "merely" a plug or an outlet to an electric circuit. Existing outlets work just fine! We've made these shiny free standing things with crazy cables and fun new connectors that sometimes connect to more exotic circuits with higher voltages (though that's not guaranteed, I've seen Level 1 chargers in the fancy charger form factor that may as well just be a wall plug).

Yeah, electricity has a cost, but when was the last time you checked your utility rates? Electricity itself is stupid cheap, it's a commodity, as it should be. Depending on city and time of day, you are talking dimes per kilowatt-hour. When was the last time you were asked to pay 45 cents for the energy you used to charge your phone in a café, restaurant, or at an airport?

For mostly one-off, random charges at places you are only at for a couple of hours, existing parking costs can and should cover it.

Sure, you do that every day for a month and those cents add up to dollars, and that's why a lot of the chargers are more like clubs where you pay monthly dues. Which is a business model that almost works as intended, except to really work well it should just be part of your monthly utility bill with your electric company with no extra middle men in the way.

But right now the vast majority of public chargers, at least in the US, are costing a whole lot more than the raw electricity prices. They've got tons of service fees they cost to pay for their "subsidized" installation costs. It is a bit of a racket, and should be better regulated.

Which is also why it's a psychological game they are playing right now to make you think that you need expensive chargers everywhere, because it is marketing that makes them (outrageous amounts of) money. The wall outlet at your home is good enough. A wall outlet from your employer would be good enough. An electrician can install an extra outlet on a circuit for sometimes dozens of dollars (after the basic service charges of making an appointment), and if you are more the DIY sort you can pick up most of what you need in a Lowe's or Home Depot and watch a YouTube video or three. You probably don't need to invest thousands of dollars into a gas pump looking charger. If you want to worry about the cost of electricity you are adding to the electric bill of whatever building it is you don't even have to install an extra meter, just do the math, round up a bit and pay that. While you are doing the math, maybe do the math on everybody's cell phone charging while they are in the building?

Yes, there's going to be a need/use case for superchargers at Level 3+, especially for long distance travel, but all the public chargers in the middle (Level 1 and Level 2) that are fancier than just a boring old wall outlet are in many ways a psychological game that charging is more of a service and less of a commoditized utility than it actually is. Electricity doesn't magically get 5000% more expensive because it's coming out of a machine made up to look like a gas pump with lightning bolts painted on the side and a fancy cable with a silly looking connector.