For commuters, the workplace is the second most important place to be able to charge electric vehicles after their own residence. In order to satisfy the charging demand near to the workplaces of commuters, a location and capacity model for charging stations is set up with the aim of minimizing the overall cost, composed of the charging station construction cost and the generalized cost of users. The charging demand of commuting electric vehicles is divided into rigid demand and elastic demand, which depends on whether the electric vehicle has enough power to complete the rest of its daily travel requirements. By introducing a user convenience coefficient to quantify the user's charging expectation, the number of electric vehicles to be served and the demand for charging at the stations are obtained. Further, the optimal sites for charging stations and the quantities of different levels of charging facility equipped are determined by the location and capacity model. An example shows that, as the threshold of the convenience coefficient decreases, the demand for electric energy increases gradually, and the construction becomes less economical. Meanwhile, the location of the charging station is insensitive to the change of electric energy demand. The threshold value for the convenience coefficient is put forward for different planning purposes, providing a reference for planning site selection and quantity of chargers under elastic demand. © 2020 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.