Comment Re:Chicken vs. Egg (Score 1) 275
If I drive 25 miles every day for 200 days out of the year and take 10 road trips each at 500 miles round trip (with only my home charger at the beginning and end of the round trip) then I will have to find a public charger for ~250 miles of the trip.
It's not possible to distill this down to a simple calculation like you suggest for gas cars, because there isn't one single charging speed to consider. We can take some guesses that the roadtripper will only use fast charging (150kW+) and the car will charge at the full rate on average for this time.* If the car gets 3.3mi per kWh (per EPA this is the average) then it's about 75kWh of charging needed per roadtrip, or 750kWh per year. This is about 5 hours of charging at public stations, way above your 85 minute estimate for gas.
*this is a broad simplification but consider that nearly all Tesla's can charge at 250kW when near empty, and can charge at over 150kW when 1/3 full, it makes sense. Other more modern EVs can charge at even higher rates, but finding a charger that supports it is very limited.