Really? A normal gas station can handle around 100 cars per hour using a handful of pumps and is refueled by daily deliveries from a big truck. Simple. An electric charge point capable of that will require a massive amount of electricity, electricity delivered over wires. Look into how much it costs to run such a service to a random location in a city. Look at the costs of putting up even a handful of towers capable of delivering a thousand amps peak load. Then look the additional real estate costs need to facilitate 100 cars/hour worth of charging points. Electric 'stations' are very much not drop-in replacements. We need a very different physical infrastructure (ie smaller charge points at every parking spot rather than central stations).
Reusing the land of all gas stations for other things will be a good benefit of all this. Except for San Francisco, where they all will be preserved as historical landmarks.
...and the infrastructure to distribute the electricity.
Back of the napkin math with the mall of America: 5.6 million sq ft at ~14kWh/sq ft per year (rough average estimate of all retail buildings) [1] equates to about 78.4 million kWh/year or 784,000 100kWh Model S's charged to full or 7.84 million charged 10% assuming 100% efficiency. The Mall of America has about 40 million annual visitors so about a fifth would be able to charge their batteries 10% if the Mall doubled its (hypothetical) capacity, which would likely require at least some infrastructure upgrades since we're talking about ~10 MW of extra power - and that's averaged out 24/7/365, in actuality it'll be a much higher peak load since the mall isn't 24/7.
I'm not an expert but I doubt the property developer and power companies overbuilt by that much.
[1] https://dsoelectric.com/sites/dsoelectric/files/My%20Busines...
Today's driver generally goes to the gas station only when the tank is empty.
That leads to a 'big bang' event in that the tank will be close to empty at the start of the visit and full by the end of the visit.
By comparison the driver of the electric car will be using a 'top up' approach, charging the car at home over night, at work when parked, at the shopping center, etc. etc.
Those 'big bang' events, where a full recharge is required will be fewer and far between.
Trickle charging here and there and maybe some at home overnight from a normal wall socket is enough.
I feel like people don't get the difference between ideal and reality here that often.
A L2 charger will not even make a dent in your range when you are out running errands (20-25 miles of range per hour of charging). They are generally only useful when they are at your workplace and can charge for hours at a time.
If the parking lot at work has solar-shaded carparks that feed the chargers, the building might not even need a service upgrade. I don't know why this isn't more common.
So a battery buffer needs to be built into the charging station in order to operate them cheaply, with a smoother load profile that the power company and grid operator will service without exorbitant costs.
Thankfully, at least one EV company has already realized this :-) Let's see if more than one of them eventually starts producing enough batteries to support the strategy.
When people start charging overnight at home the overnight loads will increase. This will intern allow power companies to increase capacity.
Another approach: A top-end Tesla supercharger delivers around 250kW. So eight of those would be 2000kW or 2 Megawatt, or around 20,000 amps, to give the equivalent number of fills/charges per hour as ONE gas pump.
I filled my tank at a medium-sized station this morning that had 8 pumps (4 islands, double-sided). So the drop-in electric replacement would be 8x the numbers above.
Of course some homes don't have private charging easily available, but that's a different argument.
Which is to say, quickly fueling up at a convenience store probably won't be the only way people charge their vehicles going forward.
It will replace the majority of them.
The concept non-EV owners struggle with is that with an EV you don't normally go out of your way to charge it the way you do with an ICE. If you can charge at home, at work, at the grocery store, and at restaurants then why do you need a filling station? If you start your day at 100% because you charge at home then you don't need any of the other infrastructure unless you go on a road-trip.
The amount of charging infrastructure need is also based on both demand and use case. A grocery store or restaurant might opt for DC fast chargers because they know customers won't be around for more than 30 minutes, but an office park can use 3-6kw chargers because users are there for 8 hours a day. The EVSEs are smart too so you can balance output based on demand. Have two EVs plugged in, they both get 3kw. Just one can pull 6kw.
Also useful at any sit down restaurant (even fast food). (which although self driving makes driving while eating safer, was a horrible practice to begin with)
Addon; Tracked long trips we took in the SE last year against the Tesla charger map; There was always a super charger within 1 mile of where we stopped for food, were stopped for about an hour, etc. And some in our group also needed bio breaks every hour and a half; aka < 150 miles.
Also if you have lots of stalls of cars charing to 100%, you can steal some of their charge and route to someone who needs to get to 80% ASAP.
Also, fast charge is very slowed down in cold climates and/or when you are reaching 80%.
Some EVs with temperature management systems can precondition the battery for charging. This negates reduced charging speeds at extreme temperatures.
Definitely it's the way forward tho!
For a charging station you need: electricity. And not even huge amounts of it unless you're planning on building a huge charging field with dozens of high-power chargers (300kW+). Even then you can load balance the power with 90's technology to keep up. For peak loads you can have a battery on-site, charged on off-peak hours.
And none of this requires hazardous materials permits or safeties for flammable liquids.
