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people vastly underestimate how much you get from regenerative braking under real world conditions

From what I've heard and read, that's why the original Opel Ampera/Chevy Volt was so beloved.

and pretty much every major manufacturer switched to plug-in hybrids

Nowadays we have new Honda (and Nissan but who cares tbh) hybrids where the engine doesn't drive the wheels 99% of the time. So we're intersecting with that timeline a lil bit lol

I think you are stuck on theory and don't have a good grasp of the pragmatic realities here.

But very quickly they made the argument that people need giant batteries and massive range. And that still permeates today. And the reality is that, no, people don’t. The vast majority of driving is commuting which tends to be more stop and go than not

I consider a 300 mile battery to be the smallest I'd buy for a number of reasons.

and just making charging stations in parking lots more ubiquitous would go a REALLY long way. No, not the super chargers. Just simple slow as hell level 1 and 2 chargers.

In most of the western world all of those parking lots you're talking about are private property. Getting L1/L2 chargers installed in dozens or hundreds of spots. That is not only a significant expense, but you'd have to talk to, and convince millions of business owners to make massive investments for something that would take decades to even come to break even. Also, the costs don't end at installation. Regular maintenance is required for EV chargers to continue to be operational. That costs money too.

Further, there are a frightening number of Charging Networks. Each with their own app, account requirement, and billing terms. Just because an L2 charger exists at your location doesn't mean its a fair price for charging. Some business owners charge MASSIVELY for L2 charging (which is their right, its their charger).

And that would cover basically everyone 6.9 days a week outside of the folk with REALLY long commutes.

You're talking about literally millions of L1/L2 chargers that would have to exist with even more than 1:1 availability for each EV sold.

Where long range and super fast charging DOES help is for people doing long road trips and… folk think they are gonna be in their 30s and 40s driving 12 hours straight with only a stop to dump their piss bottle at a gas station. The reality is that by the time you are even considering a “new” car, you are probably also going to be more likely to stop for lunch or have kids to deal with where 30-40 minutes for a full recharge makes a lot more sense.

I don't know of any EV with a single charge range that could drive for 12 hours at highway speeds. The largest are 400-450miles which would be a very generous 6 hours tops.

But instead we got into the mindset that you need a massive battery so you only charge up once a week and when you do it is a 10 minute recharge because even that is too long to wait.

No, you need a larger battery for a whole bunch of other reasons:

• you may be in the 34% of Americans live in a rental and don't have an L1/L2 EV charging option.
• you can't guarantee your regular public charger will be operational as lack of maintenance (because they are privately owned) or vandalism
• its the deep winter and you only have 70% of your battery capacity available to you
• its still deep winter and you're expending more charge on keeping the car warmer than you do in summer
• there's ICE vehicles sitting in your public charging spot blocking your ability to charge that day
• you came home exhausted and forgot to plug in the L2 charger at home, and if you had a small battery your day is now ruined/costly
• there was a power outage at home for a night but with a larger battery its no problem and you can charge it in a day or so
• your spouse was going to pick up the kids, but she had a thing come up at work, and so you've got to go pick them up and take them to Karate and ballet practice which was more than your standard commute charge
• There's construction on your commute and the detour takes you way out of your normal way for a few months until the work is complete.
• You want to visit a city more than a commute distance away and even then public fast chargers are few and far between, assuming they're functional/available when you get to one.

All of these things are solved only by a larger-than-commute-size battery.

If we lived in a planned authoritarian society like China, your idea of ubiquitous L1/L2 would be more viable. Business owners would be required to install the state sponsored L1/L2 EV charger. Alternatively, these would be installed and maintained by a public government service. In the West though, its a pipe dream to get everyone to agree and be able to afford to roll out that level of infrastructure all across a country.