Those cars are going to need power stations outside of one's home.
Yes, recharge stations will be required, but possibly not at many as people think. For the typical guy who drives to work and back home every day, stops at the grocery store, and then drives his kids to soccer after supper, he already has plenty of battery capacity for daily use. When he gets home from the kids' soccer, he'll just plug his car in from his house electricity and he'll be ready to roll again the next morning. With this type of use as his primary pattern, his behaviour will change from stopping to buy gas once every 10 days or two weeks to instead plugging his car in overnight at home once every 3 or 4 days. The only time when range might be a problem for him will be on weekend trips out of town, or longer vacation trips. Instead of going to the gas station 25 to 40 times per year (ie, every 10 days or two weeks), he might only use a paid-recharge facility 10 or 12 times per year when he exceeds his car's range.
There is, however, a group that will be dependent on paid-recharges, and that is people who are living in houses and apartments without private parking. The people currently using on-street parking cannot simply park their car in their garage or on their driveway and plug their car in overnight. In some municipalities these people who do not have private parking spot are not numerous, but in other municipalities such as Montreal, there is heavy reliance on on-street parking.
With current technology that requires perhaps 30 minutes for a basic recharge, I don't view existing gas stations as a model that can shift effectively into electric. The better model would be McDonalds, Starbucks, Dunkin, etc partnering with some outfit to electrify their existing parking lot. So, if you imagine yourself taking a trip that exceeds your car's range, you've probably already driven for 4 hours and you need to take a break to drink a coffee, or eat a burger anyway. So you just plug your car in while you take your break. You probably wouldn't at all want to pull into a Shell station, plug your car in and then twiddle your thumbs for the next 30 minutes. But, all of this is a reflection of current battery capacity and current charging times....all of that could be drastically different in five years.
However it evolves, the gas station/convenience stores are in a bit of long-term trouble. They make their money from the traffic of people buying gas, not from the gas itself. The price of gas is ridiculously competitive so the margins aren't great, but they just hope that you'll buy a pack of smokes, a couple of lottery tickets and a gallon of windshield washer fluid while you're stopped for gas (the margins *are* great for those items!). When they lose the traffic from the gas re-fills, are all of those convenience stores viable? I don't think so, but time will tell.
SJ
