And, as the article hints at, refuelling with gas takes minutes vs. hours for electric. It'll probably take a couple orders of magnitude more electric chargers than gas stations to support the same number of each vehicle type.

But on the other hand electric cars can be charged at home …

Depending on how many people have a place with a power outlet (ok, a garage) in close proximity to their car and depending on how many people frequently drive less than their range per day (and less than their maybe underpowered power outlet can charge in one night) that might save on quite some public outlets. But I don’t know the numbers.

I know many people where this would apply, though. And those outlets are included in this number, anyway. Which kinda supports my assumption: I think you might be able to get away with actually many fewer public power outlets than gas stations.

FYI, to own a car in Japan, you must have a legal verified parking spot that you own. For most people, that probably means land in the same area as your home. So even without a garage, they should still be able to install an outlet on their own property.

edit: There's a culture difference with regards to driving that I explained in another comment just now. Reading some of the other comments further down makes me think that very few people commenting here understand the laws and culture behind driving in Japan.

Cool! I obviously didn't know that. So that use case is probably quite common in Japan (if the other factors line up, but I don't see why they wouldn't, frequently).

In the US and Europe having your own, dedicated place to put your car is probably more or less weakly coordinated with owning a car (maybe less in the US, where at least in some places owning a car is more of a requirement?). Just because being able to afford a car is probably weakly coordinated with being able to afford your own spot. But this regulation should make that even more so in Japan.

This is true. A police officer will visit your home and verify your parking spot before you are allowed to purchase a car here. It's also worth noting that many people live in high-rise buildings or other multi-tenant buildings where a private charger could be put to service for more than one vehicle.

Every Nissan dealership has a charger, and I've never seen any queue for it, but it's almost always occupied.

Yep, commenters here don't understand the cultural and legislative backgrounds of Japanese driving. However, that is not the issue here.

For some commenters the article (or its headline) serves the sole purpose of self-adulation: Keeping your bias working. Adding 'stats' to back your argument. Something to numb other peoples criticism in a discussion.

In that sense, any subleties of Japanese culture would actually hurt.

But still, the needed breakthrough requires the companies to add their charging infrastructure, and connect those to the backends to allow the grid to take out spikes.

The majority of e-car owners would be comfortable to charge the car at the company parking lot (for cheap), and then even allow the grid to unload some power in case of spikes, when they can offer good incentives, like promises to keep them at 95% at the end of the workday and monetary incentives for taking out power when needed in the city.

The big problem are still expensive spikes, and with all those batteries it would be much cheaper to handle them. The best strategy is to arrange that with the parking lots of the big companies.

I suspect that the number of homes in Japan with a garage is very small - also ignores the problems that the grid will have if a non trivial number of people come home and all put their car on charge at around the same time

Even worse in the USA where you have 110v in homes rather than 240 V which is common in Europe.

The majority of US homes have 240 available, it just isn't used for most outlets. The bigger issue might be the amp rating of older grid connections.

Yep thats what id call a cooker circuit - in the uk with 240 v we can get 415v on that sort of circuit.

The article includes home chargers in its calculations. Even if everybody with an EV has their own private charger at home, some quick mental math indicates 1000 times more chargers (public + private) than gas stations.