The Gravitational Pull of the Familiar
Humans are remarkably poor at imagining genuinely new things. When confronted with transformative technology, we instinctively reach for familiar frames – and then build infrastructure that reinforces those frames, foreclosing the very transformation the technology made possible.
The automobile didn’t immediately create suburbs and drive-throughs. Early cars were called “horseless carriages,” and for years they navigated a world designed for horses: unpaved roads, hitching posts, carriage houses. It took decades for the built environment to reorganize around automotive logic – and when it did, the horse-era framing disappeared so completely that we forgot it ever existed.
Electric vehicles are at a similar inflection point. The technology enables a fundamentally different relationship with energy and mobility. But our instincts – shaped by a century of gasoline – keep pulling us back toward the familiar. We’re building horseless carriage infrastructure for what should be a post-carriage world.
The dominance of Level 3 “fast charging” in the public conversation about EV infrastructure is a case study in this psychological gravity. It’s not that fast charging is useless – it has a role. But its prominence in policy, investment, and public imagination far exceeds its appropriate place in the charging ecosystem. And understanding why requires understanding the psychology that makes speed feel essential even when it isn’t.
The Gas Station Mental Model
For anyone who has driven a gasoline (petrol) vehicle – which is to say, nearly every adult in North America – the “gas station” is deeply encoded as the “refuelling” experience. Its features are so familiar they feel natural, even inevitable:
Discrete refuelling events. You drive until the tank is low, then make a dedicated trip to refuel. Refuelling is an errand, a task, an interruption in your day.
Speed as the primary value. Five minutes at the pump is acceptable; fifteen is frustrating. Gas stations compete on speed – fast pumps, efficient layouts, minimal waiting. The entire experience is optimized for throughput.
Public, commercial infrastructure. Refuelling happens at specialized commercial locations, not at home or work or the hockey rink. You go to the fuel; the fuel doesn’t come to you.
Pay-per-transaction. Each refuelling event is a distinct purchase. You experience the cost viscerally, watching dollars tick up on the pump display.
Commodity interchangeability. One gas station is much like another. Despite their efforts, brand loyalty is minimal. You stop wherever is convenient on your route, or whichever is cheapest on the day.
This model is so deeply internalized that when people imagine EV charging, they instinctively map it onto the same frame. “Where will I charge?” becomes “Where is the EV equivalent of a gas station?” The answer – Level 3 fast chargers, ideally with similar speed to gas station fill-ups – feels obvious precisely because it fits the existing mental model.
But the mental model is wrong. It’s not wrong because fast charging is bad; it’s wrong because it assumes refuelling must work the way gasoline forced it to work. Gasoline is a liquid that requires specialized storage, handling, and dispensing. Of course you go to it! Electricity is already everywhere – in every home, every workplace, every community centre, every arena, every band office, every parking lot with a light standard. The infrastructure exists. We just need to plug into it.
The Anxiety That Speed Promises to Solve
“Range anxiety” is the term that launched a thousand Level 3 charging stations. The fear that you’ll run out of charge, stranded far from help, unable to refuel. It’s real, and it’s powerful – but it’s also largely a projection of gasoline-era psychology onto a different technology.
Range anxiety is about the gas station mental model, not about actual driving patterns.
The average Canadian drives approximately 40 km per day. Even a modest EV with 300 km of range could cover a week of average driving on a single charge. For the vast majority of trips, range is irrelevant – the vehicle has far more capacity than needed.
But because we’re conditioned to think of refuelling as something that happens at specialized locations, we imagine being “between” those locations with an empty tank. The anxiety isn’t about typical days; it’s about the exceptional day, the long trip, the unexpected detour. And because we’ve solved that problem for gasoline by building gas stations every few kilometres, we assume EVs require the same solution.
Speed promises to make the unfamiliar feel safe.
Level 3 charging’s appeal is primarily psychological, not practical. If charging takes five minutes instead of several hours, then the exceptional situation – the long trip, the unexpected detour – feels manageable. You can treat the EV like a gasoline car. You don’t have to change your mental model.
This is the deep appeal of fast charging: it promises that you don’t have to think differently. The technology changes, but the behaviour stays the same. The anxiety dissolves because the familiar pattern is preserved.
The problem is that preserving the familiar pattern means forgoing the transformation. If you charge up your EV the way you filled your gas tank – dedicated trips to commercial locations, paying premium prices for speed – you’re giving up most of electrification’s benefits: the low cost, the convenience, the integration with daily life, the connection to local energy systems.
The Alternative: Everywhere Charging
The gas station model assumes scarcity: fuel is only available at specialized locations, so you must go to those locations to refuel. But electricity isn’t scarce – it’s ubiquitous. Every building has it. Every parking lot could have it. The question isn’t “Where can I find electricity?” but “Why isn’t there a plug where my car is already parked?”
Everywhere charging inverts the gas station model.
Instead of driving to fuel, fuel comes to you – or rather, it’s already there, wherever “there” happens to be. Home, yes. But also: the workplace parking lot; the grocery store; the community centre; the hockey arena; the health clinic; the band office; the school; the church; the temple; the restaurant; the friend’s house you’re visiting for dinner.
In an everywhere-charging world, you don’t “go charging.” You park, you plug in, you do whatever you came to do. Charging happens in the background, during time you were spending anyway. When you leave, you have more charge than when you arrived.
The vehicle is always topping up, never filling up.
This is the conceptual shift that everywhere charging enables. You stop thinking about your battery level the way you thought about your gas gauge – watching it deplete, planning a fill-up, making a dedicated trip. Instead, the battery stays perpetually topped up because every destination offers an opportunity to add charge.
Drove to work? Plugged in for eight hours, added 100 km of range. Drove to the arena for your kid’s practice? Plugged in for two hours, added 25 km. Drove home? Plugged in overnight. The next morning, full battery – without ever having “gone charging.”
This pattern requires Level 2 infrastructure distributed throughout the community, not Level 3 infrastructure concentrated at highway interchanges. It requires chargers at every destination where vehicles dwell, not just at purpose-built charging stations. It requires thinking about charging infrastructure the way we think about electrical outlets: ubiquitous, unremarkable, just part of the built environment.
The Speed Trap
There’s a deeper psychological dynamic at work: humans are systematically bad at valuing time correctly, especially when speed is framed as an option.
We overvalue speed in the moment of decision.
Given a choice between a 30-minute charge and a 5-minute charge, almost everyone prefers the faster option – even if the 30-minute charge happens while they’re grocery shopping and costs a fraction as much. Speed feels valuable in the abstract. We imagine ourselves impatient, in a hurry, needing to get moving.
But this imagined urgency rarely reflects reality. You weren’t going to leave the grocery store in five minutes anyway. You’re at your kid’s hockey game for two hours regardless. You’re at work for an eight-hour shift. The “cost” of slower charging during these activities is zero – time you weren’t going to use for driving anyway.
The 30-minute charge that happens while you shop is, in practical terms, instantaneous – you don’t experience it as waiting because you are not waiting. You’re shopping. The charging is invisible.
Speed as a proxy for control.
Fast charging also appeals to a desire for control. If I can charge quickly, I’m not dependent on planning. I don’t have to think ahead. I can treat the EV the same way I treated my gas car – drive until it’s low, then stop and refuel.
This sense of control is largely illusory. Level 3 dependence actually creates new dependencies: on charging network availability, on station functionality, on pricing you don’t control, on whether someone else is occupying the charger when you arrive. You’ve traded the inconvenience of planning for the inconvenience of waiting – and you’re paying a premium for the privilege.
Everywhere charging, by contrast, offers genuine flexibility through redundancy. Miss the plug at the grocery store? There’s one at the arena. Forget to plug in at home? The workplace charger covers you. The system is resilient precisely because it’s distributed. Control comes from abundance, not from speed.
Loss aversion and the status quo.
Behavioural economics has thoroughly documented humans’ asymmetric relationship with gains and losses: we feel losses more acutely than equivalent gains. Shifting from the gas station model to the everywhere-charging model is framed, unconsciously, as a loss – giving up the familiar pattern, the speed, the sense of control – even if the new model is objectively superior.
Level 3 charging minimizes this perceived loss by preserving the familiar. Never mind that you’re paying four times as much per kilometre. Never mind that you’re spending time at charging stations instead of at home or work or the rink. The pattern is preserved. The loss is avoided.
Everywhere charging asks for a modest shift: remember to plug in when you arrive somewhere. This shift is trivial in practice – arguably easier than remembering to stop for gas, more akin to remember to take your phone when you get out of the car – but it represents a change, and change triggers resistance.
How the Narrative Got Captured
The psychology of familiarity doesn’t operate in a vacuum. It gets reinforced by institutional actors with interests in particular outcomes.
Automakers selling to anxious consumers.
For automakers, range anxiety is an obstacle to EV sales. The fastest way to neutralize that anxiety is to promise that EVs work just like gasoline cars: long range, fast charging, no behaviour change required. This message is simpler and more reassuring than explaining that distributed Level 2 charging transforms the refuelling experience entirely.
So automakers advertise charging speeds. They partner with fast-charging networks. They frame Level 3 access as a premium feature. The message, implicit and explicit, is that fast charging is how serious EV owners charge – and that message shapes consumer expectations.
Charging networks building premium infrastructure.
Companies building Level 3 charging networks have obvious incentives to promote their product. They’ve raised capital, deployed expensive hardware, and need throughput to justify valuations. Their marketing naturally emphasizes the use cases where Level 3 excels: road trips, fleet vehicles that operate over multiple shifts, urban drivers without home charging.
These are real use cases. But the marketing obscures the reality that most EV charging, for most users, should happen elsewhere – at the dozens of destinations where vehicles park during daily life. The Level 3 network’s business model depends on usage; acknowledging that everywhere charging is superior for daily use undermines that model.
Media seeking dramatic narratives.
“Family Drives Cross-Country in Electric Vehicle” is a story. “Car Gains Charge While Owner Watches Hockey” is not. Media coverage of EV infrastructure inevitably gravitates toward the dramatic: the road trip, the charging station wait, the range anxiety narrowly averted. These narratives reinforce the gas station mental model because they focus on the exceptional case – the case where fast charging matters.
The mundane reality of everywhere charging – plug in at the arena, go watch the game, come back to a topped-up battery – doesn’t generate clicks. So it doesn’t get covered. And its absence from the narrative reinforces the impression that public fast charging is how EVs work.
Government programs following conventional logic.
When governments allocate EV infrastructure funding, they face pressure to show visible results. A Level 3 charging station is a ribbon-cutting opportunity: a very large box, a commanding physical object, a plaque, a photo op. Twenty Level 2 chargers distributed across community facilities are individually small, nondescript, collectively transformative, but lacking in visual or political appeal.
Funding programs have historically favoured public Level 3 deployment because it’s legible to the political process in a way that distributed community charging is not. This creates a self-reinforcing cycle: public money flows to fast charging, which makes fast charging more visible, which reinforces the perception that fast charging is the solution, which directs more public money to fast charging.
The Community Cost of Speed Obsession
When we build charging infrastructure to satisfy the psychological need for speed, we make choices with real consequences – and those consequences fall unevenly.
Investment flows to high-traffic corridors.
Level 3 infrastructure needs throughput to be economically viable. That means highways, urban centres, commercial districts. It doesn’t mean rural communities, First Nations reserves, or low-income neighbourhoods. The speed-centric model directs investment toward places that already have infrastructure and away from places that need it most.
This is the gas station model’s equity failure, replicated in the electric era. Just as gas stations cluster where traffic already exists, Level 3 chargers follow the same logic. The communities passed over by the gasoline economy get passed over again.
Distributed community charging gets deprioritized.
Every dollar spent on Level 3 infrastructure is a dollar not spent on distributed Level 2 deployment. Given the finite resources available for EV infrastructure – government grants, utility investments, private capital – the emphasis on fast charging crowds out investment in the charging mode that would benefit most people most of the time.
Everywhere-charging support – chargers at workplaces, community centres, arenas, health facilities, band offices, parking lots – is less glamorous but more impactful per dollar spent. It enables daily electrification at low cost. But it competes for attention and resources with the speed-centric narrative.
Behaviour doesn’t shift.
Perhaps most importantly, the emphasis on fast charging prevents the behavioural transition that unlocks electrification’s full benefits. If people believe they need fast charging access for daily driving, they either wait to buy EVs (because fast charging isn’t available in their area) or buy EVs and use fast charging more than necessary (paying premium prices and missing the cost savings).
The psychological attachment to speed becomes a barrier to adoption and a cost multiplier for early adopters. The gas station model perpetuates itself because we keep building gas stations.
What Would a Community-Centric Narrative Sound Like?
Changing infrastructure requires changing the story we tell about it. The speed-centric narrative answers the wrong question: “How do I refuel as fast as possible?” A community-centric narrative answers a better question: “How do I never think about refuelling again?”
Charging as ambient infrastructure.
The goal isn’t fast charging; it’s not having to think about charging at all. Your car charges while you sleep, while you work, while you shop, while you watch the game, while you attend the community meeting. You don’t “go charging” any more than you “go interneting.” The infrastructure is just there, woven into daily life, available at every destination.
This narrative reframes Level 2 not as a slow alternative to fast charging but as the foundation of effortless mobility. Speed becomes irrelevant because time isn’t being spent. You’re not waiting for anything; you’re living your life while charging happens in the background.
Every destination is a charging destination.
The gas station model assumes you go to the fuel. The everywhere-charging model assumes electricity meets you wherever you are – because it already does. The building has power. The parking lot has power. The question is just whether there’s a plug.
“You’ll charge everywhere you already go” is a message that reframes the entire refuelling experience. No detours. No waiting. No payment terminals. No wondering whether the station is open or functional. Just plugs at the places you already visit, adding charge while you do what you came to do.
Imagine any community where every public facility has charging: the band office, the health centre, the school, the arena, the community hall, the elders’ centre, the Legion. Residents top up throughout the day, wherever their activities take them. Some also have chargers at home; others rely entirely on community infrastructure. Either way, charging is woven into the rhythm of daily life, not a separate errand.
Level 3 as the exception, not the rule.
In a community-centric narrative, fast charging is for road trips – the few times a year you drive beyond daily range. It’s the airport rental car counter, not the daily commute. You’re glad it exists when you need it, but you don’t build your life around it.
This reframing reduces range anxiety by contextualizing it. Yes, you need fast charging access for the trip to the city. No, you don’t need it for driving to work or the store or the rink. The anxiety was never about daily driving; it was about the exceptional case. And the exceptional case is handled – by highway networks, by urban stations, by the Level 3 infrastructure that makes sense in those specific contexts.
Community charging as shared infrastructure.
Everywhere charging in community facilities is collective infrastructure: the community provides charging access to all its members, not as a commercial service but as shared amenity like roads or streetlights. The chargers belong to everyone. The benefits accrue locally.
For First Nations communities, this framing resonates with traditions of collective stewardship. The charging network isn’t a commercial product sold to individual consumers; it’s community infrastructure serving community members. Revenue from charging (if applicable) stays in the community. Decisions about placement, pricing, and access are made locally.
This model also addresses the equity gap that home-only charging would create. Not everyone has a suitable home charging setup – rental housing, older homes with inadequate electrical service, multi-family dwellings. Everywhere charging ensures that access doesn’t depend on individual housing circumstances. If you can park at community facilities, you can charge.
Overcoming the Familiarity Bias
Shifting from the speed-centric to the community-centric narrative requires deliberate effort to overcome the gravitational pull of the familiar. Several strategies can help:
Lead with the “never go to a gas station” experience.
The most powerful reframe is the simplest: “You’ll never go to a gas station again.” For most people, this is everywhere charging’s transformative promise. It eliminates an errand, not just a fuel type. The unfamiliarity of distributed Level 2 dissolves when it’s framed as no dedicated charging stops – no time, no effort, no thought.
Stories and testimonials from EV owners who have experienced this shift are powerful. The abstract concept becomes concrete: “I plug in at work, at the rink, sometimes at home. I haven’t been to a gas station – or a charging station – in two years.”
Quantify the cost of speed.
The premium for Level 3 charging is substantial – often 300-500% higher cost per kWh compared to Level 2 charging at home or community facilities. Making this concrete (“$6,000/year vs. $1,200/year for the same driving”) reframes speed as an expensive luxury rather than a necessity.
For First Nations communities where transportation costs are already a burden, this economic argument is particularly powerful. Level 3 dependence perpetuates high costs. Everywhere charging at Level 2 delivers the transformative savings.
Make community charging visible.
People fear behaviour change until they see others making the same change successfully. Visible community adoption of distributed charging – chargers at the arena, the band office, the health centre, the school – normalizes the pattern.
This is why community-scale deployment matters. One charger at the band office is a curiosity. Chargers at every community facility is a system. The behaviour shift stops feeling like a sacrifice and starts feeling like an obvious choice.
Address the exceptional case directly.
Range anxiety focuses on the road trip, the emergency, the unexpected. Addressing this directly – “Yes, and here’s how you handle that situation” – deflates the anxiety without conceding that fast charging is the primary solution.
For most communities, the answer is simple: road trips use highway fast-charging networks that exist (or will exist) along major routes. The exceptional case is handled. Now let’s talk about the 98% of your driving that happens within community range.
Reframe infrastructure investment as community development.
Level 3 charging stations are transactional infrastructure serving transient users – including, often, people just passing through who will never return. Level 2 chargers at community facilities are community development: building local capacity, creating local assets, serving local members, keeping energy spending in the community.
This framing resonates particularly for First Nations communities with experience of extractive development. The question isn’t “How do we build fast chargers?” – it’s “How do we build energy infrastructure that serves our community and remains under our control?”
The Everywhere-Charging Community
Picture a First Nations (or any other community) that has embraced everywhere charging:
The band office has four Level 2 chargers in its parking lot – available to staff during work hours, to community members visiting for services. The health centre has two more, plus a dedicated charger for the community health van. The school has chargers for staff and for parents attending events. The arena – the heart of community life in winter – has a row of chargers along the rink-side parking. The community hall has chargers for events. The elders’ centre has chargers for visitors.
Residents with suitable home electrical service have chargers in their driveways or carports, often integrated with home solar and battery systems. Those without home charging rely on the network of community chargers – topping up while they work, while they access services, while they attend events.
A typical day: Drive to work at the band office, plug in, work for eight hours, unplug with a full battery. Drive to the arena for a community event, plug in, spend two hours inside, leave with more charge than you need for the drive home. Maybe plug in at home overnight; maybe not – there’s enough charge for tomorrow, and you’ll top up at the health centre during your morning appointment.
No one “goes charging.” No one waits at a charging station. No one pays premium prices for speed. The vehicles are always topped up because the infrastructure is everywhere. Range anxiety is a non-concept – how can you run out of charge when there”s a plug at every destination?
The community has achieved something that highway fast-charging networks never could: genuine energy sovereignty over transportation. The electricity comes from local solar and storage. The infrastructure is community-owned. The savings stay local. The dependence on outside fuel suppliers – whether gasoline or fast-charging networks – is eliminated.
This is what everywhere charging makes possible. Not a replication of the gas station model with electrons, but a genuine transformation in how communities relate to energy and mobility.
The Deeper Shift
Ultimately, the contest between Level 3 and Level 2 reflects a deeper question: Are we trying to replicate the gasoline era with different fuel, or are we trying to build something genuinely new?
The gasoline era was built on scarcity: a scarce fuel, controlled by distant suppliers, dispensed at commercial locations, purchased in discrete transactions. Speed mattered because the entire experience was friction – an interruption in your day to obtain something you needed and couldn’t get any other way.
The electric era could be different. Electricity is ubiquitous, generated increasingly from local and renewable sources, already present in every building. Charging can be ambient, distributed, invisible. The “refuelling experience” can disappear entirely – not because it’s fast, but because it’s everywhere.
But realizing this possibility requires resisting the psychological pull of the familiar. It requires building infrastructure that enables the new pattern rather than reinforcing the old one. It requires telling a different story about what electrification means.
For First Nations communities – and for underserved communities everywhere – this choice matters enormously. The speed-centric model will bypass them, just as the gas station model did. The everywhere-charging model can serve them, but only if we build it deliberately.
The psychology of familiarity is powerful. But it’s not destiny. We can choose to build infrastructure for the world we want, not the world we’re accustomed to. That choice starts with recognizing that the gas station model – the speed, the transactions, the purpose-built commercial locations – was never inevitable. It was just what gasoline required.
Electricity is already everywhere. It’s time to put a plug on it.
