Good luck advertising a charging network that takes 3 hours to charge a 100D.
I should point out that real-time utility load management doesn't always mean enduring slower charging to save money.
Running an electric grid is a constant balancing act to ensure that supply and demand are exactly matched at all times. This is getting more challenging because of increasing renewable generation along with "must take" rules that require the grid operator to use electricity from renewable sources whenever available and technically feasible.
Unlike fossil generation, renewable sources are usually non-dispatchable, meaning that something must make up for any fluctuations in renewable power generation plus the usual fluctuations in total demand. Ideally those fluctuations are absorbed by hydroelectric generation, the one renewable electricity source that can (now) be rapidly dispatched. But hydro is limited, so in many cases much of the variation must be tracked by fast-acting natural-gas-fired turbines. (And in the future, by batteries.)
Some of the load-minus-demand difference can be forecasted, some of it is just random noise. For example, in California we have something called the "duckbill curve", the daily requirement for fossil generation that climbs very rapidly in the late afternoon as solar generation is shutting down and evening loads are picking up. It's now typical to see fossil (nearly all gas) generation ramp up at 3 gigawatts per hour or even faster.
Problem is, even many gas turbines can't change their power levels on a dime so the CAISO (the grid operator for most of the state) has to dispatch gas turbines in advance to be ready when the forecasts show increased load. While they're ramping up, there can just as easily be a surplus of electricity as a deficit even though it may be nominally during the late afternoon "peak" period. (Right now, some wind and solar energy actually has to be curtailed -- wasted -- because of this problem.) This creates an excellent opportunity for a grid operator to solve the problem by ordering large EV chargers (and other loads that can be easily dispatched in real time) to absorb the excess generation at a very low price until the forecasted load actually materializes.
None of this is an argument against either renewable energy or electric vehicles; I'm a huge fan of both, and these engineering problems simply
must be solved. But it also means the electricity industry that we see as customers will be different from what we're used to. Sure, you can say we Tesla drivers are so rich that we (or Tesla) should just buy our way out of the economic realities that the hoi polloi must face. I don't know about you, but one of the main reasons I drive a Tesla is because I see it as something much more than a rich person's toy. I see it as a prototype for what nearly everyone will be driving in another generation or so.
