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Comment by jeppesen-io | Hacker News Reader

and when 90+ precent of the cars on the road are EV - where are you going to get gasoline? or think how much an oil change will cost when motor oil becomes a specialty item

> You making a lot of assumptions that arent born out by current experience

current experience assume easy access to gasoline and motor oil that has been true for 100 years - that will pass in time

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I've been wondering if the cutoff is actually much earlier. Say 50% of cars on the road are EV, how many gas stations can continue to run profitably with 50% less customers? Even getting and refining the gas requires massive global supply chains to transport and refine, what happens when there's a 50% drop in customers? Do they lose their efficiencies of scale? Do prices rise substantially as this happens?

I suspect once we reach a certain thresholds it will create other push factors toward EV's and accelerate their adoption.

It is my understanding that refineries cannot change the percentage of gasoline that comes from a barrel of oil. If electric cars become as popular as ICE, either gasoline will be used in other things, or other oil distillates will become very expensive. Likely no more cheap air travel, propane, etc.

I expect we will hit a wall that will inhibit adoption.

I'm not a petrochemist, but I think reforming/cracking is an old technology which allows you to produce syngas and smaller alkanes (methane, propane etc).

Gas stations are an interesting case, because most of them make most of their money selling snacks and beer. The gas money largely goes to the oil company.

I believe this is right, but gas is still the main reason people stop there. If people aren't stopping to buy gas then they will not be making their impulse/convenience purchases and the gas station still loses their profits.

It's somewhat more complicated because many also function as convenience stores, but most convenience stores near me have already died so I doubt that would save them.

On the other hand if you're stopping there for a charge, you'll be spending longer and have more time to consider just popping in for a snack.

That will work for some, most notably the big ones on the side of highways, but I assumed most people would be charging at home, at least for city driving. The earliest adopters will also be the most wealthy that are more likely to have rooftop solar to leverage.

Then they are gonna be safe. s/gas/EV charging

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