Utility Infrastructure Costs

You need to pay for all the supporting infrastructure (roads, power, fire services, etc. etc). Not that simple :)

Try building a new house outside of a city. Look at how much it costs to run wires/pipes even a few hundred meters. Poles will cost to 10k each and you will be on the hook to maintain them. That it IF the local service has capacity for you. You might be asked to upgrade an entire service line. Today, for the same money, you can get a massive off-grid solar rig and never have to pay an electric bill.

The inefficiencies come from infrastructure. Transferring electricity is so goddamn cheap, that city planners and developers hardly consider it a footnote. Water, sewage and drainage on the other hand are much, much more expensive. They require much more space, and oft times need to be pressurized. Imagine that with steam pipes where the steam on top of all that, needs to be heated too. Sure, hooking up to an existing steam main probably doesn't cost too much, but building new mains can

If you want electricity, you may be required to pay them to extend the infrastructure to your house in the middle of nowhere (at your cost) and then they are required to provide you power and maintain the infrastructure (and assume the liability). If other people begin using the infrastructure within a set period of time, you will receive partial refund for the upfront expense.

Not necessarily - you have to pay for that infrastructure between the plant and your home.

Turns out probably not, because the grid infrastructure is quite expensive.

People used to working with software usually fail to appreciate how slow and expensive building real infrastructure is. It's just a lot of hard work of the "Dirty Jobs" variety. Obtain building permits. Upgrade local grids to handle the load. Dig trenches. Run cables. Install chargers. And then deal with ongoing maintenance from environmental exposure and vandalism. All of that will take years and years regardless of the potential benefits.

The outlet isn't a big deal. The infrastructure to support it is. You need to pay the supplier for additional supply lines, an electrician for the panel and other customer side infrastructure. That's the expensive part.

My guess is the real limitation is infrastructure. Even if you already have a good power line relatively close, the cost to build something that can deliver multiple megawatts is probably not trivial. Maybe the gov't should subsidize that part.

The problem isn't a lack of technology, but cost. You have to get your electric utility to make substantial improvements to their delivery infrastructure. This generally involves digging up the street and laying cables, not just flicking a switch. It gets more expensive depending on how far your proposed charging station is from the nearest high voltage distribution point.