Building on your "lack of charging infrastructure," I think it's worth noting that there has been a huge shift from owning to renting in the last decade or so. It's easy to add an electric charger to a house you own, but if you rent the house or apartment, it's not going to happen.
If you live in a newer apartment building, you might get lucky and they'll have chargers in the parking garage. But when I lived in such a building in Chicago, the chargers were ALWAYS full. It was a large building, and there were probably 40 or 50 of them across a five-story garage.
That doesn't seem like a very good deal, though. You have to pay a sizable chunk of cash to improve somebody else's property and insure it for a million dollars. That is a much worse proposition than installing a charger in your house. I'm not sure how useful it is to your average renter who is just looking to buy a car.
Installing a home charging station costs around $2000 these days. If you're buying a $30-60k car and move infrequently it won't be that huge of a portion of the total cost of ownership of the car.
Since I had room in the panel for an additional breaker installing a level 2 EVSE (charger) on the driveway side of the house was only $350. I paid $550 for the charger itself. Total cost $900.
Offsetting that:
- $500 rebate/credit from GM for buying a Chevy Spark EV and a charger.
- $500 cash from PG&E
- $150 or so federal tax credit
- Increased value of my house with EV charger.
Overall, I think I made about $500 on this install.
Best part, I haven't been to a gas station more than a dozen times in the last four years. I love not going to gas stations.
If you live in a newer apartment building, you might get lucky and they'll have chargers in the parking garage. But when I lived in such a building in Chicago, the chargers were ALWAYS full. It was a large building, and there were probably 40 or 50 of them across a five-story garage.