Sure, I agree with you, and think that is a lot of what I'm hinting at. I think the business model is wrong for Electrify America. They are building "stations" often divorced from any other businesses. I still think Destination chargers are more important than "along the way chargers" and in general reframing even "along the way chargers" as Destination Chargers should have been the business model (could still be the business model for someone savvy enough to invest in it). It shouldn't have been "Electrify America" it should have been "Electrify McDonald's" (or Applebee's or Sonic Drive-In; that one even already has the form factor of a charging lot). Take a national chain that already wants to be at every interstate exit, encourage them to electrify every parking space in a way that their minimum wage staff can keep an eye on without too much effort, in exchange for extra foot traffic and encouraging people to spend on meals and such while they wait on a charge.
(My belief that Destination Charging matters a lot more than "along the way" is also where I see "EVs are already perfect for everyone, they just don't know it yet". I understand there is a ton of momentum in the existing mindset of a gas car and central gas stations and regular visits to those. I think Destination Charging and Home Charging and Everywhere Else Charging are an entirely different mindset, and it's an education problem that we're stuck trying to recreate the status quo rather than build the new awesome.)
It's nothing to do with "gas mindset" - if I'm driving 1000 miles (not uncommon, welcome to Texas!) I'm going to have to stop to charge even the longest-range EVs along the way twice.
One of those might be an overnight at a hotel (where the chargers are typically broken!), but the second is necessarily going to be somewhere en route. I agree it would be better to have them with amenities rather than in the back lot of a big box store, but that is not the current reality - even superchargers often lack amenities.
This makes EVs very much non-ideal compared to a gas car or hybrid for this use case. No amount of noisy people wanting destination charging and home charging to be The Thing is going to fix that - it's just gaslighting to suggest that it's a mindset problem rather than a real one that must be solved if EVs are to dominate.
I'd avoid using a charged term like "gaslighting" in this particular conversation.
From my perspective, Superchargers lacking amenities is still the "mindset bug" and Hotels allowing chargers to be broken is the "mindset bug". I'm not telling you at all to fix Texas and not drive 1000 miles regularly (though that's certainly not ideal), I'm just wishing there were more things to do with your charging time in the middle of that mess and a better usage of your car's time spent parked at both ends of your journey.
I think we fix the experience by encouraging parking lot owners of every kind, hotels especially, that charging is an amenity that makes a difference to the customer experience. We don't need every interstate exit to have a desolate "charging station" with no amenities, we need charging considered an amenity to parking.
It would be nice to be able to regularly and culturally think of a 1000 mile journey as "I need to park somewhere for ~30 minutes to eat/relax/play/stretch/whatever" and charging just happens while you do that. This could be the revenge era of the Roadside Attraction giving you reason to pick one place to stop and charge over another. 30 minutes of time to spend in a silly museum to the world's largest rubber band ball is a fun use of that time. Sure it would get old doing it regularly, but that's why you want more and more things to be Destinations. Restaurants, Roadside Attractions, Scenic Parks, etc, should all have charging as an amenity. Charging shouldn't be bland "stations" needing amenities, charging should be the reliable amenity to any other detour or pitstop you'd want to do on the road. It should be wall plugs that blend into the background anywhere you might want to park, not "Special Pumps" you have to seek out and wait for because electrons need to pretend to be siloed in tanks like a liquid fuel.
The difference is, I'm saying that it is a problem _today_ that these solutions do not exist, and the lack of those solutions means that EVs are not a viable solution for a lot of people _today_. If these problems are solved, EVs will become more viable for more people, and all EV owners will benefit from the improved infrastructure. However, the infrastructure chicken must come before the EV egg.
Today, it is not a true statement that "EVs are the best choice for everyone", which is what I was responding to. Every one of your comments tries to dispute that, while also pointing to the same problems as I am and making them out to be imaginary - the very _definition_ of gaslighting!
> while also pointing to the same problems as I am and making them out to be imaginary - the very _definition_ of gaslighting!
A) That's very not the definition of gaslighting. Gaslighting is lying and faking events with the intent to abuse someone's state of mind (make them feel crazy, make them feel dependent/codependent, remove them from support networks). Like I said, it is a very charged term, and you should be a lot more careful with it.
B) I've never called these problems imaginary. I think our big difference is not that I don't agree those are problems, but that I think these problems get fixed by everyone buying an EV. I feel that this is an ugly dinosaur egg needs to come first before the chicken situation. The Supercharger network is an okay enough bootstrap tool today that people can switch to EV today (even if they don't think that they can). It won't be the greatest experience, and there will be many useful things to complain about, but it will start to give added perspective they may need to better ask for the right things to make the experience better.
(My belief that Destination Charging matters a lot more than "along the way" is also where I see "EVs are already perfect for everyone, they just don't know it yet". I understand there is a ton of momentum in the existing mindset of a gas car and central gas stations and regular visits to those. I think Destination Charging and Home Charging and Everywhere Else Charging are an entirely different mindset, and it's an education problem that we're stuck trying to recreate the status quo rather than build the new awesome.)