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Comment by curun1r | Hacker News Reader

When new car sales move to electric from gasoline, you'll start to see gas stations go out of business...slowly at first but accelerating as the percentage of gas powered vehicles declines. You'll still have your car and be allowed to drive it, but the days of just finding a gas station wherever you need them will be over. Much like early days of electric cars, people will need a concrete refueling plan for every trip, which is going to make those cars a lot less attractive to own and a lot less valuable on the resale market.

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Or we'll see "gas" stations incrementally change to "gas-n-charge" stations. As society moves from liquid hydrocarbons to electrons for personal transportation I can see no reason why these locations won't adapt.

After all, people will still ingest their liquid fuel and expel their waste. ;-)

We won't need nearly as many charging stations as we need gas stations because electric cars can be charged at home.

Maybe that is true in rural and suburban environments, but I doubt it in dense urban environments. Adding a charger to every spot in residential parking garages and on every residential street is a bigger infrastructure project than converting over gas stations to chargers. You also have to consider the time it takes to recharge an electric car is much higher than the time to refuel an ICE car.

> You also have to consider the time it takes to recharge an electric car is much higher than the time to refuel an ICE car.

True, but for most drivers on most days they will be able to charge up at home overnight. Charge time won't matter as much then. Drivers in dense urban environments will likely move towards a car sharing model since, as you noted, the costs and practicality of infrastructure retrofitting will be exorbitant.

Disagree. Just need an outlet, like the engine block heaters on light poles in Minnesota. Infrastructures costs are low of people use their own chargers.

Meh, how much does a regular old 15-20A 120V outlet cost to install? $200 per plug, maybe? Just need a relay inside that talks over Bluetooth to a cloud-connected app on the user's phone (or just city wifi), and you've got a smart outlet that can handle payment. Another $20 (based on costs I've seen online for similar products), total $220. People can use their own chargers as all electric cars come with level 1 chargers. Cost is low, so could use residential electricity rates (slightly more expensive than commercial) and still make profit.

We already have lighted parking, don't see why adding outlets is that hard. We're talking slow overnight charging here for the most part.

I live in a Bay Area apartment with no garage and commute every day with an EV. I've never plugged my car in at home once.

Interesetingly in the Nordics this is already done. Practically all the parking spots (excluding street side) have 230VAC outlets for engine block warming.

Considerable amount of parking here in the UK is on-street. None of the homes built in the post WW2 rebuilding have dedicated room for cars, or any of the 10s of 1000s of homes built before that.

By "post WW2 rebuilding" do you mean a specific limited time period?

Because otherwise, "None" is a bit strong - there's hundreds of new homes and apartments within 5 miles of me that have dedicated parking spaces.

Even my block (seems to be 1960s) has dedicated off-street parking for 8 cars (admittedly there are 12 flats but I suspect 8 cars for 12 flats in the 60s was an outlandish estimate.)

Sorry, yes I meant the public housing built in the 40s & 50s.

Hmm, in trying to find an example, it doesn't look as bad as I know it is.

This is the kind of estate I was thinking of

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Ambleside+Primary+School...

but many of the fronts have been turned into parking

These are pre war

https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/6+Newfield+Rd,+Nottingha...

I know these places and night-time parking is more of a squeeze than these images show

Gas stations don't make much money on actually selling gas - consumers are irrationally price sensitive when it comes to the price of gasoline, so the stations are generally selling it at or near cost.

As long as people still pop into the convenience store to get a soda and a candy bar, it doesn't matter if they're filling your tank with gasoline or charging your battery.

How can the price of gas can be at or near cost, when the difference between two stations across the road from each other can be easily 20%?

Can you provide a concrete example? I can't recall ever seeing such a disparity in the US having lived in the midwest, northwest, and east coast. Perhaps you're in a different location?

Burlingame CA, California Dr @ Broadway. A & A Gas has regular at $2.72, while Chevron is at $3.20.

Wow. I wonder what economic factors are at play here.

The Burlingame A&A is notorious for being the one of the cheapest -- if not the cheapest -- places to fill up between SF and SV. In this case, it's likely that the Chevron literally across the street just decided it's not worth playing that game, hoping instead to appeal to the crowd who wonders if the cheap competitor is actually up to par.

The fact that the Chevron gets any business at all seems to validate this strategy at first blush.

Also the Chevron at grant and el Camino is $3 when the shell a block away on grant is $3.60 or so. The Chevron is one of the highest trafficked gas stations in SV and operates on volume. The shell can't play that game so charges a pronoun to grocery shoppers.

Costco is 20% cheaper than all other stations in Toronto. So either Costco is selling at a loss (unlikely) or there's plenty of profit in gas for gas stations.

Or they buy a lot in bulk when the price is low.

Given that you have to pay an annual membership fee to get access to that gas, it's likely subsidized by the fee and used as a loss-leader to bring people to shop at Costco.

Costco does not subsidize its gas sales. It makes money from them:

https://www.fastcompany.com/60019/tiger-costcos-tank

It's an older link, but they still do much the same. There have been court cases brought against them by consortiums of other gas stations here and there, but AFAIK Costco has emerged victorious so far.

I've seen it frequently, especially when road configuration makes one station more convenient to, e.g., a freeway on/off-ramp.

The freeway offramp nearest my house has two gas stations with a ten-cent difference.

And wouldn't you know, I use the more expensive one, because it's the one that I can get to without making a bunch of turns.

There are likely other factors at play. For example, if the more expensive fuel station has brand associations it triggers (e.g. Shell [1]), the higher pricing likely benefits them more so than it hurts, as their target market discerning customer is likely to interpret the price as a proxy for quality.

[1] http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/full/10.1108/0258054051061...

I'm thinking gas stations will stop selling garbage and start selling actual food, since charging takes longer and people will be hanging around for a little while.

They make a lot of their money in the convenience store.

I think a lot of them will stay in business and just have a smaller tank/less pumps.

So long Bucees!

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