Hacker News Reader

Comment by Mediterraneo10 | Hacker News Reader

The electric-car charging stations that I have seen at petrol stations elsewhere in Europe are not actually maintained by the petrol station. Rather, it appears that the petrol stations just allow charging-station brands to rent a portion of their plots of land to erect their infrastructure on. Consequently, requiring car charging at all petrol stations, instead of being a financial burden, may actually allow them to increase their income.

Also, since margins on petrol are so low, many petrol stations make their profit from their shops, not from the fuel itself. Since it takes some time for a car to charge, customers are likely to spend more time and therefore more money in the petrol station’s shop.

View on HN

If it were the case that allowing charging was an economic benefit to the owners of gas stations, I guess they'd already be doing it.

Since so few of them are, I assume that it's not beneficial.

If the government wants this, it should pay station owners to do it.

> Since so few of them are, I assume that it's not beneficial. > If the government wants this, it should pay station owners to do it.

Cause and effect. It would be profitable if there were enough BEVs, and there would be enough BEVs if people weren’t afraid they might not be able to find somewhere to recharge.

At least, that’s the logic.

People are very slow to adapt to change. Even when there is an economic advantage to them.

A failing of modern economic theory, assuming that every entity acts logically and in their best interest.

There is no way that providing electric charging at gas stations is a boost to all gas station's revenue. Consider extremely rural gas stations for example. (Yes, I am aware Germany is more dense than the US)

I mean, sure.

Is it bad that I don't really care?

I mean we've seen what happens when companies are left to their own accord. Sometimes an external pressure is required.

I hope to see one day that gas stations have become obsolete.

My guess is the real limitation is infrastructure. Even if you already have a good power line relatively close, the cost to build something that can deliver multiple megawatts is probably not trivial. Maybe the gov't should subsidize that part.

>If it were the case that allowing charging was an economic benefit to the owners of gas stations, I guess they'd already be doing it.

Chargers require capital outlay. Unless you can prove that your revenue is going to offset the capital outlay fairly quickly (<1 year), I'm not going to do it given the margins on most gas stations.

That's exactly my point. The station owners mostly aren't stupid.

If it were a great deal (measuring by NPV), you'd see companies formed to raised capital and install charging stations at gas stations in some sort of revenue sharing / land leasing arrangement. In fact, there are such companies, and they are slowly marching down the path.

Again, if the government wants to make this happen, there's an easy solution: provide the capital.

The owners of the gas stations would see greater economic benefit if EVs did not become popular.

So you could argue it's would be in the best interest of the owners to not allowing charging stations, as that would help to slow the uptake of EVs.

As I mentioned, already petrol stations in many countries do not actually profit from the sale of petrol since margins are so low. Rather, their profits stem largely from the attached convenience store.

The majority of petrol station traffic would be from the 'every day commuter', travelling to and from work.

And the majority of these 'every day commuters' would currently own conventional cars.

Those who drive electric cars would be charging their cars at home and as such hardly every need to stop in these stores.

By replacing conventional cars with EVs will only see that tight profit margin getting tighter.

I wouldn't be surprised if I have made about as many convenience stops as I have made fuel stops (with fuel+convenience counting only as fuel).

And that's with me making few convenience stops. There's lots of people that get a coffee every day, they aren't buying gas each time.

Most of the people can't charge at home, it's not the US.

Why would anyone buy an electric car if they couldn't charge that car overnight in their own garage?

Because you can charge it in a few minutes at a gas station! Germans don't have garages, generally speaking - there's this concept that's a mystery to Americans called on-street parking.

Meaningless question because you won't have a garage in your life.

Right, but the infrastructure isn't free. How long would it take a remote gas station to make their money back on the equipment alone?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com