Several hours? Those people are parked and charging their car while they are doing something else. It takes about 15 minutes to get 200 miles of range at a Tesla charging station. People sitting in their cars, waiting will be there for far shorter periods of time.

A vast majority of charging also takes place at the drivers destination (such as the drivers home), saving on the time it takes to go to a gas station to refuel (not to mention the time saved from not needing oil changes, smog checks, etc).

As for what to do while waiting, I’ll either use the time to grab snack, go to the bathroom, or watch something on on of the streaming services available from the console.

I have a theory that some people just buy Teslas and sit at these charging stations as a way of what they think is showing off.

I feel like everyone’s missing the point. Even 20 minutes a week is almost a day a year of your life sitting at a charger. I fill up my gas tank once a week and it takes maybe 5 minutes which is 4 hours a year that I spend feeding my car, staring at the stupid advertisements for a bacon-egg-and-cheese cinnamon roll covered in maple syrup or whatever other impulse items lie within the gas station. 5 minutes isn’t enough to do anything whereas if I plan for 20 minutes, I’m going to go get a tea or something.

On the other hand, something we can all agree is a waste of time is, “how many hours of your life have been/will be spent sitting at a traffic light?”

My car gets about 250 miles on a charge, so I’m only ever at a public charger if I’m taking a trip longer than that. At that point my day is pretty much fucked by traveling, and it’s actually really nice get off the road for an hour. Usually I find a nearby coffee shop and work on the same stuff I would at home, and when I get back on the road I can feel that I’m alert and focused.

I have a Nissan leaf and installed a level 2 outlet at my house to avoid this.

It charges overnight so I wake up and drive to work with a full battery.

Since I usually use it to commute it’s perfect. I have had to use chadmo stations (level 3 and slower than Tesla stations) when on longer trips. That takes about 45 minutes to fully charge? Usually I just top up so I can get home if my range is a bit short.

Some of the newer EVs can use super fast charging stations and fully charge in under 20 mins but those stations are rare. I think to get widespread adoption we would need cars that can hyper charge (or whatever it’s called) and those chargers to be all over.