Exactly. If I swapped to an electric vehicle, I estimate I'd need to "fill up" at a gas station maybe 5% as much as I do now.
Gas stations are dinosaurs that haven't heard the shockwave of the meteor yet.
In that case, cars going electric would very positive effect. IIRC, Circle K (a large gas station chain) derives around half of it's profits from concession sales, with the other half from gas.
Additionally, given the higher cost of electric cars, their owners are likely to be wealthier than their ICE driving counterparts. This is an assumption on my part, but I suspect that wealthier people are much less likely to shop at gas stations since items sold their often target poorer demographics. A shift to electric cars would mean that demographics which were already unlikely to enter the store are more likely to make a purchase, while not impacting the lower end clientele.
He was a franchise, so his gas margin was even lower, closer to 1-2%. And yes, most of the profit came from inside sales where the margins were 50%+ or higher.
Everywhere I've been from LA to halfway to Vegas usually has a fairly-crowded gas station. WAY more than 50% of people arriving go inside.
And even if so driverless cars won't give them any other business, as well as drastically alter the desired locations of the stations.
Ideally cars should charge during times when energy is cheaper. This could be at times of lower consumer demand, like at night or at times when prices are cheaper because variable and barely off at all controllable renewables are dumping power into the grid, like when it’s especially sunny or windy.
Power's cheaper at night because demand's lower. The sun being out during daytime does make more solar power available, but there's also higher demand because everyone's awake. Unless there's evidence to the contrary, I'm inclined to believe that night power is cheaper because of pure market forces, rather than being dictated by the power company.
They make it so because there's excess capacity at night, when most everyone is asleep. This is not an arbitrary decision.
>Ideally cars should charge when the sun is up, in day time
That's not even remotely true. Someday MAYBE, if massive solar deployment shifts our excess capacity from night to daytime, but that's certainly not the case right now.
Which suggests favoring the time based on whatever the "grid-time-bias" has cheaper.