At a certain point of EV adoption, selling gas won’t be a very profitable business, because fewer and fewer cars will need it. But there will still be some cars that need gas, that final, say, 30% of ICE cars that are still on the road. But if all or most gas stations shut down at roughly the same time, because they operate under the same business conditions, then those last few ICE drivers will be pretty out of luck, no?
To be clear, this is not an argument that we shouldn’t electrify and decarbonize as fast as possible. I’m more interested in the logistics of managing that transition. And I’m sure that gas stations are not the only case of this phenomenon.
Selling gas is already not profitable. They typically sell it at slightly above cost. The real money maker is the convenience store attached.
Costco sells gas at a loss.
And even then the average person with a Costco credit card is waiting in line to save $3 per 10 gallons of gas. So a typical gas station might be netting less than $5 per tank.
Way less than $5 per tank, more like 5¢/gallon at an average gas station. They make 70¢ off me filling my tank.
But the credit card is an extra 5% on gas. Most other cars might do 3% on gas so that might only be netting 2% or an extra 10 cents off per gallon.
And this has been the case since the early 70’s
That’s true but the business model is built around the quick fill up. Incentives will change when people have to spend an hour at their stop. Also a majority of people will not be driving far enough from their house to need it. I think convenience stores will stick around except the ones that operate off highways. Those ones will have to change into what high way rest stops are. It would also be possible just to install chargers at existing rest stops.
Yeah, downtown there are tons of gas-station brands that are just convenience stores. Surely many gas stations will offer electric charging but since most people will be charging at home the total number of gas stations will surely drop. Some will turn into convenience stores and some will just shut down.