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.
Yeah, yeah...the DC fast chargers though? I saw where somebody said they were charged like $10 for enough electricity to drive less than 20 miles. I don't know if that is really representative, but what feels right to you or anybody in terms of price is even less meaningful than one random data point.
Gas stations can sell gas for minimal cost usually due to having a convenience store with high margins attached. You can charge at home due to having a connection to the grid, a house, and wiring, all of which cost substantial money beyond the per-kwh charge. So regardless of what charging "really" costs, your reasons for why it should be essentially free seem obviously flawed to me.
The "parking meter" business model is also a valid strategy. My complaint with that business model, if its not apparent enough yet, is not that they are charging more for that business model, but that they aren't being transparent about it and double and triple dipping. If you want to charge $5-$15/hour parking, that's fine, that's a parking fee. Don't call it "electricity fees", because that's not what that is. Also, don't charge me $5-15/hour parking at both the Gate and the Meter (Charger), because that's $10-$30/hour parking and your signs are wrong.
But the further point is that those aren't the only business models. You don't need fast chargers everywhere, because cars spend most of their lives parked and the electric grid is everywhere, if we could just drive enough business models that encourage "slow" chargers everywhere we "win" when it comes to competition. Utilities make great amenities to bundle with other products, services, employment relationships.
Right now too, there's a lot of "worst of both worlds" business models, at least in the US. I've seen grocery stores with both free parking lots and low margin gas pumps, and yet very high electric parking fees. Some of that is simply because the same grocery stores that just spent millions in becoming their own gas stations are outsourcing their chargers to third parties because they don't have to compete on margins yet, and they aren't paying attention to what the chargers are costing, and how it affects the public perception of their overall amenities just yet. I suppose we'll know when electric is finally on their radars when you can use "gas points" for electric rates.
Well, nobody is comparing a charger to a gas station. More like a gas pump. And I don't understand your tone of "oh, electricity is everywhere, you can basically get it for free". It costs what it costs. When almost nobody has an electric car, public chargers can be installed and subsidized as a gimmick. At some point, if people actually use them, "free" will vanish in a puff of logic.
Also, you know, I have seen public chargers in parking lots that cost money, and you know what was missing that gas stations always have? A sign with the price! I guess there are no specific regulations or something, but as far as I'm concerned if you can't see the price up front (and probably have to agree to a click-wrap list of terms) I think nobody is serious.