It's Sunday, and I'm at my local Kroger grocery store in downtown Columbus seeking to get a few odds and ends before I start my work week. I'm a young single person who can't figure out how to grocery shop efficiently, so I visit this Kroger several times a week. It's a newer store with amenities designed to attract the new money young professionals that live downtown; we've got artisan cheeses and wine tasting, but also a four-stall EVGo DC fast charging station. 

Yet on this particular Sunday, Every stall was full there. There was a Chevy Bolt with temporary tags splitting the 350 kW unit with an F-150 Lightning with out-of-state plates, while a Mustang Mach-E with a temp tag and a Carvana plate frame and a Honda Prologue driver puzzled over how the two remaining 100 kW units worked. All parties looked confused if not impatient; awkwardly pacing while their cars charged. Another EV waited off to the side, waiting for one of the stalls to free up.

Clearly, these were all new EV owners still figuring things out. I have no plans on shaming anyone for their charging habits, including the new Bolt owner connected to a charging lead that its 55 kW max speed could never hope to utilize. But, what I saw was just another sign that we had absolutely no clue how to effectively optimize our charging infrastructure.

Because there's no chance that all four of those cars needed to DC fast charge at a grocery store that isn't all that close to a freeway. Yet that's exactly the kind of charger that's getting the vast majority of funding to grow our electric infrastructure. It's going toward a world where DC fast chargers, despite all their high costs and compatibility problems, are being set up to be replacement gas stations—which is counter to how EVs should work.

After piling 1,070 miles on a 2024 Hyundai Kona solely on AC power, I would wager that they didn't need DC fast charging at all. Heck, I'm not sure anyone really needs DC fast charging outside of a road trip—or at least, not nearly on the level that our public policies are driving toward.

Charging Infrastructure is More than DC Fast Charging

Whenever I have conversations with EV shoppers, EV skeptics, or even other journalists, the topic of charging infrastructure is a point of contention. "Yeah, that's cool and all, but I think the charging infrastructure isn't good enough for me to buy an EV yet" is a common statement for all three parties—and one I don't necessarily disagree with. Yet, when I try to talk about "charging infrastructure," it becomes crystal clear that we are having two separate conversations.