How the bridge infrastructure we needed is becoming the infrastructure we’re abandoning
Over the winter, the DC fast chargers at the gas station development near my highway exit were pulled out. Four charging stalls. Premium pricing. App required. Gone.
The operator couldn’t make the economics work. Utilization was too low to justify the maintenance costs, the demand charges, the ongoing operational expense.
Meanwhile, 200 meters away, the free Level 2 Plunk chargers at the family bakery with the petting zoo are in constant use.
This isn’t an anomaly. It’s a preview.
The Bridge We Needed
In 2018, a Nissan Leaf had 240 kilometres of range. A Chevy Bolt managed 383. Early Tesla Model 3s claimed 350. At 240 kilometres, you needed charging every 150-180 kilometres of highway driving, accounting for buffer and degradation. That’s every 90 minutes. Without DC infrastructure, road trips weren’t viable.
So the industry built DC networks: highway corridors, urban hubs, speed-optimized infrastructure for a vehicle technology with limited range. This was bridge infrastructure, a necessary step during the transition from low-range early EVs to the longer-range vehicles battery technology would eventually enable.
The mistake was treating the bridge as permanent.
Range Killed the Need
In 2026, the Hyundai Ioniq 6 delivers 581 kilometres of range. The BMW i4 eDrive40 gets 590. Tesla’s Model 3 Long Range claims 629. The Chevy Silverado EV pushes 724. The Mercedes EQS 450+ exceeds 725. Within two years, 800-kilometre range will be standard. Solid-state batteries promise 1,000+.
At 600 kilometres of range, you need charging every 450-500 kilometres of highway driving. That’s every four to five hours, and most people stop for meals, rest breaks, or overnight stays within that window anyway.
The behavioral threshold is specific: driver habits shift when range exceeds typical daily driving by 7-10x. Average daily driving in North America is 50-80 kilometres. At 240 kilometres of range you have a 3-4x buffer, which feels tight, so you think about charging regularly. At 600 kilometres you have an 8-12x buffer, which feels infinite for daily use. Charging moves from foreground to background. From task to habit. From interruption to routine.
Once it’s routine, the infrastructure that serves it best is infrastructure that fits routine: home outlets, workplace parking, hotel parking, destination parking. Not dedicated charging plazas. Yet billions continue flowing into DC corridor buildout while the bridge becomes unnecessary for most use cases.
The Cost Gap
Home charging in most Canadian markets costs $0.10-$0.15 per kWh during off-peak hours. Ontario’s ultra-low overnight rate is $0.039 per kWh. That’s $3-$7 to add 400+ kilometres of range overnight. DC fast charging costs $0.40-$0.60 per kWh, often higher with dynamic pricing: $25-$35 for the same 400 kilometres. The cost ratio is 4:1 to 8:1.
For drivers with 240 kilometres of range, that penalty was unavoidable. For drivers with 600+ kilometres, DC charging is almost always optional. You organize driving around overnight home charging and destination Level 2, both dramatically cheaper, and reserve DC fast charging for genuine emergencies. When DC charging stops being necessary, people avoid it because it’s expensive.
What Actually Works Now
The strongest competitor to DC fast charging isn’t another DC network. It’s the NEMA 14-50 outlet in your garage. Residential Level 2 at 7-11 kW delivers 350-500+ kilometres during an 8-hour overnight period. For a 600-kilometre vehicle, that means waking up every morning with effectively full capacity. The 2023 J.D. Power EV Experience Ownership Study found 80% of EV charging happens at home, and as range increases that percentage is rising.
Workplace charging follows the same logic: an 8-hour workday adds 350-500 kilometres, which means many commuters never need public infrastructure at all. Destination charging completes the picture, adding 50-75 kilometres per hour. A two-hour restaurant meal adds 100-150 kilometres; a four-hour recreation activity, 200-300; an overnight hotel stay, a full charge. These aren’t theoretical dwell times. They’re normal human behavior.
The business model works because Level 2 is inexpensive: $3,000-$10,000 installed, on normal commercial electrical service with no utility upgrades. Compare that to DC fast charging at $150,000-$300,000 per installation, plus utility demand charges and ongoing maintenance. Destination Level 2 works as a free amenity because it costs almost nothing to provide. DC fast charging requires aggressive monetization because it costs everything to deploy.
The Fleet Question
The industry consensus is that commercial fleets need DC fast charging. Most don’t. Delivery vans run known routes from a central depot, drive 150-250 kilometres a day, and park overnight for 12+ hours; a bank of Level 2 chargers handles it. Taxi and rideshare vehicles rarely exceed 400 kilometres a day and have natural downtime between shifts. Service vehicles, municipal fleets, and school buses all have predictable routes and base locations with overnight electrical service.
The fleets that genuinely need DC fast charging are narrow: long-haul freight, intercity buses on tight schedules, and specific applications where vehicles run 18+ hours a day. These are real, but they’re not passenger vehicles and they’re not most commercial fleets. Building DC infrastructure for hypothetical fleet needs that don’t materialize is a misallocation of capital.
The Evidence Is Already In
Norway, with the world’s highest EV adoption at over 90% of new sales, shows DC networks underutilized except on specific tourist corridors. Home charging dominates, workplace charging is standard, destination charging is ubiquitous. Tesla’s own data shows the same pattern: as Model 3 and Model Y range increased, Supercharger utilization per vehicle declined, home charging percentages rose, and the company’s investment strategy shifted accordingly.
The removals confirm it. The chargers pulled out near my exit aren’t unique. Operators across North America are quietly reassessing as utilization fails to support demand charges, maintenance, and operational costs, and as nearby hotels, restaurants, and workplaces install free Level 2. When utilization drops below the threshold that justifies ongoing costs, the equipment comes out rather than being subsidized indefinitely. That’s the canary in the coal mine.
The Internet Café Problem
In the 1990s, businesses charged $5-10 per hour for computer access and internet connectivity, bridge infrastructure during the transition to personal computing. Then laptops became cheap and ubiquitous, and coffee shops started offering free WiFi. The model collapsed, not because the service was bad, but because the need disappeared and the infrastructure became a free amenity elsewhere.
DC fast charging is on the same trajectory. As range increases, the need for frequent, speed-optimized charging diminishes. As destination Level 2 proliferates, charging becomes a free amenity at places people already spend time. The dedicated charging stop becomes obsolete.
Why the Buildout Continues Anyway
If utilization per vehicle is declining, why is the industry still building DC at scale? Path dependence: the early model was DC-focused because early EVs needed it, and the model became orthodoxy. Sunk costs: networks that invested heavily have strong incentive to defend the thesis rather than admit it was time-limited. And revenue models: DC generates transaction revenue, while Level 2 destination charging often doesn’t, so for investor-funded networks DC is the monetizable option.
None of these are good reasons. They’re institutional reasons, and they’re powerful. The result is continued capital flow toward infrastructure that serves a diminishing use case while infrastructure that serves the growing use case stays underfunded. It will correct, but more slowly than it should, because the industry is operating on assumptions that were accurate in 2018 and increasingly obsolete in 2025.
Where Policy Still Points
Government funding in Canada and the US still heavily prioritizes DC corridors. Natural Resources Canada’s Zero Emission Vehicle Infrastructure Program provides up to 50% funding for DC fast chargers; the Infrastructure Bank focuses on high-power networks. This made sense in 2019. It makes less sense now.
The gap isn’t corridor coverage anymore. It’s destination density: workplaces, hotels, restaurants, recreation sites, and multi-unit residential buildings have insufficient Level 2. But Level 2 doesn’t qualify for the same programs because it’s characterized as amenity, not essential infrastructure. That’s backwards. For a driver with 600 kilometres of range, destination Level 2 is the essential infrastructure and DC corridor charging is the backup. Policy should follow behavior, and behavior is clear.
Building for the Other Side
The business near my exit isn’t in the charging business. It’s in the butter tart business. The chargers bring customers who spend money while their cars charge, the infrastructure costs almost nothing, and people stay on-site longer. That’s the model that scales: incidental charging at places people already want to be, provided as amenity, funded by the business it supports. Hotels adding Level 2. Office buildings adding workplace charging. Recreation sites deploying chargers at trailheads. None of it makes headlines, but it’s what makes EVs viable for people without home charging and road trips possible without dedicated stops.
DC still has a role: long-haul commercial corridors, specific high-traffic urban locations, emergency backup for the edge cases that will always exist. But it’s a narrower role than the current buildout assumes. Treating DC as primary infrastructure made sense when range was 240 kilometres. At 600+ and rising, it’s building bridges we no longer need to cross.
The range revolution is here. The chargers near my exit that were pulled out over the winter prove it. The chargers at the bakery that stay busy prove it. The only question is how long it takes for infrastructure investment to follow the evidence.
