[WorldMaker]

If we can put an electric parking meter on every viable parking spot on a street, we more than have the technology to put a Level 1 or Level 2 charger on all those same spots.

People keep thinking of chargers as complex things that are hard to install and expensive/inconvenient like installing gas pumps. Level 1 "chargers" are regular electric outlets like America has used since the early-ish 1900s. Level 2 "chargers" are "dryer" plugs that America has used almost nearly as long. Sure, we probably want to add electric meters to figure out how much to charge people for the service and the safety culture of automotive engineering has gifted us with some fancier plastic "adapters" for the plugs (because they might be plugged in outside for hours at a time and indoor home plugs weren't entirely built to be safe doing that), but at the end of the day the problem is "we want more plugs on the streets" and the answer is "we have the technology already, this isn't rocket science nor is it permitting and installing the chemically hazardous tanks of gas pumps".

[seanp2k2]

I’m not at all optimistic about the US making the significant infrastructure investments required to make this happen. Some places still have coin-op parking meters. Like many other things, it’ll benefit the wealthiest class first, then maybe trickle down to those without private garages over the next few decades. It could also go the way of the laundromat, where those without private garages just have to go sit and wait an hour or whatever to charge their car up once or twice per week.

[WorldMaker]

I'm somewhat more optimistic we'll see plenty of charging infrastructure from competing private "networks" than we'd ever see in the US the obvious real infrastructure needed investments put (back) into proper public transportation which would truly benefit the lowest classes (and clean up cities and traffic).

Because we can privatize that charging infrastructure and charge for it and companies can profit from it. Between utility companies, existing parking meter companies (in this city the meters are backed by a public-private partnership and are already "for profit", and this isn't the only city like that), and the many charging network startups there are plenty of for-profit players interested in making a buck or three off charging fees for parking spaces. That's exactly the sort of infrastructure problem that capitalism is more than happy to "solve": a new source for "rent" from people who have few or no other choices. "People are already parking in these spots for hours every day, imagine if we could charge them five, ten, hundred times the raw electric utility costs to also charge their car here." That's going to happen.