Privately owned infrastructure has good reason to be cheap, that is, competition from of their privately owned businesses. Food distribution network is much more essential than EV charging, and yet food is now cheaper than ever. What matters is not how essential something is, but rather at what cost the service can be provided. If a charging station can expect many customers use it, which will quickly amortize the capital costs of construction, you’ll see charging prices at those stations go not much higher than the operational costs. Otherwise, if the prices are high, this incentivizes new businesses to enter the market and undercut existing producers.

Lots of essential infrastructure is cheap because of competition, like for example electricity generation. There is no reason to believe EV charging will be different.

Of course, it might also turn out that while electricity costs are low, other costs of running charging business are high. If that’s the case, that doesn’t bode well for EV adoption in among people who don’t live in houses.

> Privately owned infrastructure has good reason to be cheap, that is, competition from of their privately owned businesses

I've been reading HN for years and people from the USA keep writing that this didn't happen there for fiber and other telecommunication service. Is it going to happen for EV chargers?

US actually has pretty good fiber penetration and internet speeds now (it used to be quite a bit worse a few years ago). The biggest difference between fiber and EV chargers however is that fiber only makes economic sense if you have extensive network, while EV charges can be installed locally by smaller entities. Additionally, installing electric equipment is easier than digging up whole towns, because you don’t need as much political buy-in, less permitting is necessary etc.

>>There is no reason to believe EV charging will be different.

This is exactly what I'm saying though - motorway petrol stations are insanely expensive, because they have no competition - a company wins a contract to run the only petrol station on a given stretch of the A1, so they can charge obscene prices for petrol. Same is already happening with electricity - some providers along motorways charge an insane £0.69 per kWh, it would be cheaper to fill up another car with premium unleaded and use it to charge the electric car at that point.

Why would you you expect shopping centers to stop wanting to attract EV drivers? It's practically their dream to have everybody wandering around in the mall for an hour or more with nothing better to do than buy stuff because they're waiting for their car to charge.