Comment by bluGill | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bluGill | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Hybrids only are viable so long as they exist in large numbers thus ensuring that there is enough money to be made in having infrastructure. Since getting a PHEV I've massively cut down my gas purchases. Car buyers who care about money are catching on to just how much cheaper it is to fuel and EV, and the PHEV looks like the best of both worlds (lets not get into that debate). I'm predicting that in about 5 years EVs will be common enough that gas stations stop going up as fast - not that they will go out of business, but they companies building them will be more careful about there they put them in because demand just isn't there in many locations. Starting in 10 years there will be an increase in the number of going out of business because the demand just isn't there to support several of them on less busy corners. (both of these will be hard to see at first - there are other business cycles in play that make the trends hard to be sure of so it will be another decade before you can be sure) In 20 years gas will be hard to find - not impossible (collectors will still buy it, and long distance travel will be the last place is goes away so freeways will keep it much longer)

Gas stations in the US are already built today to be low margin "loss leaders" (or nearly so) for convenience stores and supermarkets. Low margin can imply a high price sensitivity (as prices rise, they don't stay in business). There are possible snow ball effect scenarios where gas pumps could start to disappear much more rapidly once some tipping point occurs.

Back to the other topic, having owned a PHEV for more than a decade now, it's such an obvious compromise that doesn't make a lot of sense long term. It made great sense when I bought the car more than a decade ago, but today the weight carrying around a gas engine and gas tank would be so much better put to use on extra battery range rather than a gas engine you need a lot less often than you think you do. The only person I'd recommend a PHEV to is whoever I sell my current car to when there's a full BEV I want to buy. But I've also had years where I've gotten the "use it before stale" warnings where my only use of gas that year was because I had no other use for gas and my car suggests keeping the age of gas below a year old, and I recognize there are still a lot of anecdotal use cases of extreme daily/weekly/monthly mileage in the US that I cannot speak to.

US gasoline is cheaper today than it was 20 years ago after correcting for inflation. They seem to be making do with less real profit than in the past.

Gas is low margin high volume and so a third of the profits anyway. The stuff inside is high margin but they don't sell as much so it balances out.

Right, but that's still the point: gas stations have mostly already stopped existing that don't have a nearby high margin draw. At least in my part of the US most gas stations are "clubs" designed to further encourage regular spending on high margin stuff. (Grocery rewards points, car wash memberships, things like that.)

EVs will disrupt that "high volume" part of it. How long will the "clubs" keep the expensive equipment maintained and running as volume shifts? What price point is too low margin? What price point is too high that volume further drops? (How likely is that to spiral?)

It's not entirely just theoretical, the 1970s showed things happen to gas stations quickly when prices change. We've already seen the death of the "non-club" gas station accelerate in the last three decades, even as the "clubs" build more than ever, further out from city cores, further out into the suburbs and the exurbs. The urban gas station is disappearing/has been disappearing for decades. Gas stations are no longer a foundational part of the urban experience, they are moving out to the edges.

As demand changes from EVs, I expect things to get weird and possibly quickly, because the economics model of gas has always been weird but has been put up with because it is high volume enough. When the high volume is disrupted, what do you expect happens?

Why wouldn't gas stations just start putting in EV charging stations?

I mean, I suppose it's possible there's some level of regulatory hurdle I'm not aware of, but it would seem to be a fairly obvious combination. Hell, AIUI most EV chargers still take longer than a gas pump does to "fill up" a car, so that would make it even more likely for the driver (and passengers if present) to hang about in the convenience store for longer and buy some of the stuff that actually makes the place money.

A convenience store might like having the customers hanging around for 10 minutes instead of 5, but not for the 30+ minutes that the Internet tells me it takes even at a Level 3 charging station. That would probably mean spending a bunch of money to put in entertainment or a restaurant or something to keep the customers busy longer-term. That might be profitable, but not necessarily.

Maybe it'll go the other way: restaurants and theaters and the like will put in charging stations that you can hook up to while you're there as a paying customer.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com