I think most of the US has 240 to the home. Look at your power feed, if there are two insulated conductors on an uninsulated line, those are two 120V lines of opposite phase/polarity. I have a friend who temporarily ran a 240 volt welder by plugging into a custom outlet box, wired with two plugs that went to two outlets on different legs of the breaker box. Electric ovens, ACs, hot tubs, dryers, etc. are all commonly 240 and work with the right house breaker and wiring setup.

I fully understand the 240 vs 120 in US houses.

The difference is other countries have 240 running everywhere. So apartment garages can have cars charging (slower than the max possible speed but faster than if they were on 120v), without tens of thousands of dollars in retrofits.

I just got an estimate of 3k for running basically 6ft of conduit for a new 240v line in my own garage (my breaker is right next to my door, super short run!)

Now thinking about my last condo I lived in, retrofitting even a small condo parking garage for EV chargers for, say, 20 spaces. Let's estimate 30 feet on average line run per space. Assuming a discount on price, maybe 12k per parking space to install a 240 plug, with lines split to cover multiple spaces.

The price is just absurd. That's 1/3rd the cost of a reasonably priced car.

Its not that 220v is missing, its that its special.

An unmodified garage in australia will have plenty of unused 240v plugs

and if they did want to modify, they can pay to have 3-phase 415v