A few possible answers and solutions:

1) People who live in urban residential areas in Europe don't typically drive very far on a daily basis. So charging doesn't have to be as common a thing as it is in the US.

2) Charging stations at work places. I don't know the numbers, but I would assume a decent percentage of Europeans who drive to work have a parking lot at their jobsite.

3) Highway rest stops. The "travel plaza" type of rest stop is common in europe and could accommodate intercity travelers.

4) Battery swapping technology may help down the road.

5) A charging service (a truck with a big ass battery) that your car or you calls for and uses the car's gps to find and charge it.

6) Your car auto drives itself to the charging station and drives back during off hours.

7) All this is moot, electric and self driving technology will so absolutely revolutionize transportation that these problems will not be applicable.

There are other places we could imagine setting up chargers too, like at grocery markets or other stores. Because Tesla batteries (and some but not all other EVs) are massively oversized for a typical single day's drive, you probably only need to charge every 1-2 weeks unless you are taking a trip, in which case you use superchargers or such.

Right now, it's not great. I say this having looked into an EV recently as an option. At the moment, my personal conclusion is that I'd need to rent a garage space, and then pay to have a charging point installed.

There are a small but growing number of street chargers available, albeit owned by different groups (presumably with rules and different payment routes) and with different changing and connection specifications. [1]

And of course, even if you're lucky enough to live fairly near a charging point, this doesn't make an EV comparable to an ICE car - as you then have the hassle/worry of finding a charging point, leaving your car where while it charges, and then presumably returning and moving it again, so as to free up the bay for someone else.

It's not insurmountable, but would take serious commitment from local government to change things significantly for street parking. I suspect it will come with time, critical mass of EVs, and some degree of homogenisation of the voltage and connector specs.

[1] https://www.plugshare.com

I assume that sooner or later cities will just put charging columns on the street, like these: https://www.emcaustria.at/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/IMG_380...

They don't need to support fast charging, 10kW AC would be more than enough when people charge overnight, and low power chargers like that should be pretty cheap to install at scale.

I think the real future here is when automation develops enough so these cars can drive itself to and from a parking location nearby. This will free up the space on these streets taken up by existing cars, allow more space for traffic and for stops for passengers to get in and out of vehicles.

You don't have gas pumps by street parking. Why should EVs be any different? Don't let your charge get so low that you can't make it to the nearest charging station.

It takes a LOT more time to charge than it does to fill a gas (petrol) tank. Thus the requirement to charge overnight.

More time, yes. A lot more time?

Filling a gas tank takes what, 10 minutes? Charging at a supercharger takes 30 minutes. That's more, but not ridiculously so.

For comparison, getting the same charge at home from the recommended outlet takes 4 hours. Getting the same charge off of a home outlet is something like 36 hours.

So yes, it can take a long time. But it doesn't have to.

I'd be very surprised if it takes me more than 5 minutes with pay at the pump.

It's a difference in magnitude that's the problem. For 5 minutes, of which half is spent actively interacting with the hose and payment, I can comfortably stand around. Anything more than that and I have to find something else to do while my car is occupied.

And that's the beauty of electric charging -- you actually CAN go do something else for that half hour, whereas with gas you have to stay in attendance of the pump (safety reasons).

Which means that you can top off your charge while at the grocery store, or work, or whatever.

There arent that many things you can do within half an hour at a charging station.

As someone who has used one, I disagree.

Tesla has tried to establish charging stations near shopping areas. There is generally lots to do. For example the last one I visited had multiple fast food places, an outlet mall and a casino. (This was in Primm, Nevada.)

Using that interesting measure of charge speed Tesla used in their new V3 super charger announcement a few days ago, MPH (miles per hour of charging), the new super charger does 1000 MPH.

US gas pumps are limited by EPA rules to 10 gallons per minute. A gas pump that is going top speed, filling a 25 MPG car, "charges" at 15000 MPH.

A lot of pumps seem to go at half that or even only a third of that, which in practice can cut that down to 5000 MPH, which is still much much faster than the V3 super charger.

On the other hand, I think I'd be much more likely with an EV to overlap charging with getting a snack from the convenience store (assuming EV charging stations have them like gas stations usually do...), whereas I prefer to stay with my car while gas is pumping, and so can't overlap that with the snack acquisition.

So maybe it evens out somewhat.

Roughly an order of magnitude more time in the best case scenario, so yes, quite a bit.

The only way filling up my tank would take 10 minutes was if I had to queue for the pump for over 5. Also, you get much less added range from those 30 minutes with an EV, so I really doubt it's a reasonable suggestion (even if superchargers were as ubiquitous as petrol stations).

Supercharging V3 was just announced with one beta station, 1000 MPH of charging. Pretty incredible.

You have to think of fueling up in a different way with an EV -- you're parked at home for many hours overnight, and at work for many hours too, plug in there if you can instead of making dedicated "fuel stops" like we do in gas cars.

(I drive a plug-in hybrid)

Frequency is also a factor. An extra 5-10 minutes added to a commute each week in order to fill up is no big deal. 30 minutes every day in order to charge is unworkable

Most gasoline cars have a range of around 400 miles.

Teslas have a range of around 300 miles.

That really isn't a big frequency difference.

In practice charging a Tesla takes me less than a minute. "Remember to back my car into my driveway and plug it up."

The original scenario you're responding to is the problem of people who don't have a driveway or garage. They'll need to take their car somewhere that they can get a full charge while they do something else. Not an insurmountable problem, but it's definitely an impediment to universal adoption.

If you only need to get gas every week (assume a small SUV like the model Y, a Ford something or another) you're going to get 24mpg, and have a 16 gallon takn or so.

16*24 = 384 miles of range. A Tesla should be able to do what, 300 miles on a charge? You shouldn't have to charge every day.

In the medium term, there seems to be opportunity for increases in charging speed as well. Tesla just announced v3 supercharging, which hits 1000 miles/hour and 75 miles of range in 5 minutes, and at the very least larger batteries will stretch that number. It's not clear how far they and others can push high-speed charging, but batteries are only going to get better.

You are comparing the rare best case scenario for EVs against the normal every day scenario for ICE fill-up. Hardly realistic

I can’t remember which city or country but somewhere in Northern Europe too many people got EV too quickly for the existing charger infrastructure and they has to counter this by taking away or reducing planned city/state subsidy for new EV and artificially slow down growth

Can’t find the article atm

Extension cords duct taped down to the sidewalk so they don't pose a trip hazard?

I've seen EV charging stations at offices and supermarkets in some pretty "old" places. I could imagine seeing them in more places where you park for a while.

Norway has electric sockets next to parking spots. It predates EVs, something about 12V batteries and extreme cold around there.

public plugs