http://www.autoguide.com/auto-news/2015/02/japan-has-more-ev-charging-stations-than-gas-stations.html?utm_content=title6&utm_source=newag20150217&utm_medium=email&utm_term=AutoGuide%20Review%20Subscribers&utm_campaign=autoguide_review
So why are the Japanese car manufacturers focusing so much on hydrogen cars? Doesn't make sense when the charging infrastructure is there. Perhaps it's more for the global market than domestic.
I wouldn't say that all Japanese mfrs are looking to hydrogen/fool cells. Mainly Toyota. Being the cynic that I am, I expect that the main impetus for pushing fuel cell cars has to do with the ZEV credit calculation. A HFCEV gets 9.0 ZEV credits for each car sold, and that goes a long way toward offsetting the fuel consumption from selling a lot of ICE cars. They can sell HFCEV cars at a loss and still make up the difference on the overall fleet sales.
Just for grins, point your browser over to plugshare, make sure "Chademo" is included in your filters, and then scroll the map over to Japan. OMFG. The country is solid orange.
there is a guy on youtube that lives in japan doing videos from everything from cars, homes, food and now charging stations
Don't forget, so does the US. I read this was 'flawed' because it counted 'home' chargers. But if you can plug a Model S in anywhere you have 120v, then ANY outlet ANYWHERE in the US is a charge point... and thus already far out numbers gas stations in the US.
Also remember that one plug/connector can be counted as one charging station, whereas one gas station can refuel many cars at the same time.
It looks like there is some creative spinning going on in this article. They cite the total number of home and public chargers in Japan, but only cite the number of public chargers in the US. Kind of an apples and oranges comparison. According to this article from the Japan Times about a year ago, http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/09/20/world/science-health-world/lack-charging-stations-hurting-ev-growth/#.Veg6ApfEYyx there were only about 5000 public EV stations in Japan and that was hindering growth of the plug in car market there. I'm sure the network has grown in the last year, and it may be larger than the US public charger network at this point, but I doubt the public network has grown quite as much as the article leads one to believe. In in a quick search I couldn't find any more recent information on how many public chargers Japan has. Someone could probably do some data gathering from plugshare.com, but I can't find where anyone has done that. If any 120V outlet in the US could be used to charge as least some EVs, that means the US has more charging stations than people.