I might suggest that it would not need to be dealerships/ICE manufacturers that would be the only or even logical choice; perhaps an association between an ICE manufacturer and a major oil company who already has tens of thousands of refuelling locations. If the "oil companies" started to see themselves as "energy companies", and the "gas station" became a "refuelling station" (as long as you think of electrons as fuel), I see no contradiction. If I can go and buy regular, mid-grade, premium, and diesel at the same location (all different fuels requiring similar but separated infrastructure), why not add a couple of electric chargers as well? Sure, one or two here and there isn't going to make much difference but if even 1/3 (heck, probably 1/10 or 1/20) of the Shell/ Chevron/Petro-Canada/whatever-oil-company locations installed a couple of reasonably high-powered chargers, you'd have a pretty big installed base that met the criteria noted above. Even just consider truck stops; ample parking/driving area, located near major transportation routes (if not always points of interest); open 24/7 with amenities like restaurants, showers, etc.. I'm not an expert, but I believe service stations generally make more profit off the groceries/junk food/lottery tickets/etc. they sell than off the actual fuel, I would think those companies would want to retain as many consumers as possible and won't like to see the reduction in customers as EV adoption becomes more commonplace.
Plus, who says it has to be free? Consumers are already used to paying for fuel and I wouldn't think the Model 3 or any other "affordable" EV would include fuelling in the price of the vehicle. In my part of the world, fuel is taxed more highly than electricity, and at $0.08/kWh (electricity only, not including fixed distribution costs etc.) it would be pretty easy to make a nice markup without taking a lot of money out of the consumer's pocketbook. Grab an extra 10 kWh for $0.80, or pay $1.20 instead? Even if your electricity rate is $0.30/kWh, you'd be talking $4.50 instead of $3.00. Most people wouldn't balk at that I think, considering that charging away from home will likely be the exception rather than the rule for most EV users (my opinion).Maybe an annual or even lifetime subscription, pre-paid or pay-as-you-go, would be more likely and would help keep the cost of the vehicles down. New owner here, and new to the forum so forgive me if this is answered elsewhere, but does anyone have an estimate of how much of the cost of the Model S/X is paying for the Supercharger network build-out? Would it be as high as 5% of the cost of the vehicle?
I would think at some point someone will figure this out and try it, but it seems to be a chicken and egg scenario where no one (other than Tesla) will take the risk to build out the network until sufficient numbers of vehicles are using it to at least break even, and many consumers who might consider an electric vehicle with an essentially infinite number of charging locations (gas stations are ubiquitous enough to consider to be essentially infinite, even on remote stretches of highway) would be held back by the lack of said infrastructure, so everyone is waiting for the other guy to go first.
No reason to me that EVs and ICEs can't co-exist at fuelling stations, with the number of fuel pumps diminishing over time and being replaced by EV stalls.
To me, the biggest challenges are standardization of charging formats, and upgrading the power infrastructure. If all manufacturers could just agree on a charging standard, or at least have easily interchangeable adapters, that would remove one big uncertainty. Not sure how many gas stations would have a couple hundred amps to spare, so the upgrade needs transformers, cabling, substations etc. which is not cheap or quick, but also not impossible. Makes a good argument for co-generation and on-site storage to me, but again, not an expert.
