A couple of comments on the article point out that if gas stations start closing due to reduced demand, it will accelerate the effect by making it more cumbersome to own a gas car. Recently, some of the industrial area near my apartment in NYC was rezoned for housing, and nearly all of the local gas stations were torn down (not because of low demand but because a 15 story building would be more profitable). The result is that even though I own a gas car, I now know of more–and more convenient–places in the area where I could charge an electric car than I do gas stations. Interesting shift!
Owning a gas car will become inconvenient and expensive very soon. The number of gas stations has gone down from 202K to 115K, ~50% down[1]. Gas stations make very little money on gas, most of their income is from people buying cigarette, lotteries, lotto, beer, beverages, and some trinkets in the store. All profits are at the margins. When foot traffic drops, even by 10 - 20%, gas stations are not viable. They can increase gas prices, but that will further reduce foot traffic, because most everyone uses gasbuddy or similar apps to find the cheapest gas. And Costco, Walmart, etc can be extremely competitive on gas and even make these loss leaders to drive foot traffic as well as EV charging spots. Gas stations have no move left to gain foot traffic.
10% EV adoption is not far off, thats when we start seeing collapse of gas station. EVs charge at home or work, except when going on long rides. Gas stations lose this foot traffic forever. Adding EV spots at gas station won't help, there is nothing for people to do to for 15 - 20 mins at a gas station, they'd rather go to Target, Walmart, Costco and do some grocery shopping.
Most people don't understand how quickly things change. We went from flip phones to smart phones in less than decade. Neil DeGrasse Tyson explains How The Horse Industry Vanished in less than 20 years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lvzw7NPmppY
Folks buying new ICE cars will soon (< 10 years) have a rapidly depreciating vehicle, nearly worthless because it will be costly to own and operate. It will be like owning a horse after everyone bought a car.
[1]The first gas station in the United States opened in St. Louis in 1905, and by 1994 there were 202,800 across the country. Fast forward to 2013, and station numbers had decreased by 25% or almost 50,000, and by 2020 that number had shrunk to 115,200. A 2019 report by BCG predicts that 80% of conventional gas stations could be driven (pun intended) out of business by 2035: https://enpowered.com/the-death-of-gas-stations-will-be-far-...
You're citing a decline in gas stations that happened during a period where EVs' share of new vehicle sales went from being nonexistent to, at the very tail end, low single digits. So, obviously other factors were driving that trend, and unless you want to claim that gas sales were trending toward zero even in the absence of any alternative, I think we have to assume that the gas sales industry was continuing to meet consumer demand in spite of said decline. If anything, that tells me it will be more robust to EV encroachment, rather than being at some kind of tipping point where it's poised to collapse overnight despite the fact that the vast majority of vehicles on the road today run on gasoline.
The analogy with smartphones is also not a very convincing one, because a smartphone is a fundamentally different (vastly more capable) product than a flip phone. A current-gen electric car is just a car, with some advantages and some disadvantages that will each matter more or less to you depending on your circumstances.
I don't really have any reason to doubt mainstream EV market share predictions, which IIUC have them at about 50% new vehicle sales share nationwide in 2030, and I expect that will make it harder to buy gas, probably much harder in certain locations with above-mean adoption. But projections like that need to be (and I presume are) based on more than what you're offering here.
If that's the case, then why are they making it more convenient to pay?
Where I am (in Europe) all the major petrol stations have mobile apps you can pay with. One even launched a system where you can register your license plate, and whatever you fill up is automatically charged to your account.
If foot traffic is all that makes money, it seems they should want you to go into the store, not pay from your phone.
The stations won't "collapse", but merely the number of them will start declining proportionally to the gas vehicles losing popularity (assuming it actually happens). This way, each of the remaining gas stations will have a greater share of the (decreased) foot trafic, thus still maintaining profitability.
>Gas stations make very little money on gas, most of their income is from people buying cigarette, lotteries, lotto, beer, beverages, and some trinkets in the store.
This omits a significant factor, which is that it used to be many gas stations also had several repair bays, employing a mechanic or two.
Anecdata: between mid-1980s and 2000, four such gas station/repair businesses within a mile of my house closed, leaving three gas/convenience store businesses remaining within that same radius, some of which used to have repair service as well.
This used to be a solid small business opportunity for a solo or partnership owner/worker. I suspect that as cars became more computerized the repair business became too specialized, and also some of the stations which were leased from large oil companies were sold out from under the operator.
Yea, exactly, I have been telling friends to think hard about buying a new ICE vehicle for this reason. Gas isn’t a utility like electric or water. Stations are all privately owned, as soon as it’s no longer profitable to operate, it’ll shut down. If you’re in a small town and it’s the only one, sorry, you now have to drive extra distance to get to the next one. The whole thing will collapse like a house of cards relatively soon and the bag holders will be people with ICE cars that they can only sell for scrap metal.
I guess if you have to, then leasing is the only reasonable way to go?
I question how much foot traffic Costco's gas station generate.
Regular gas stations have matched the time it takes to fill up gas with the time it takes to get in and out of the convenience store. A 20-30 minute typical shopping round in a Costco doesn't match up with a 4-5 minute gas fill.
It does incidentally match up with an EV charge up.
Just pointing out that people spending 15-20 mins at stations is not unrealistic. At least near motorways, gas stations already position themselves as a place where you can do your regular rest during a long drive, with diners, cafes, children's playgrounds, etc., some drivers even catch a quick nap in the parking lot -- this is how it looks in Europe at least.
if you have to drive 15 minutes there and 15 minutes back, that's not faster than a fast-charge top-up at the fast charge point down the street, though. There's a critical density below which if you have a charge point nearby the nuisance of "going out for gas" and not being able to do anything else during that time isn't worth it compared to plugging in your car, and then just walking away for an hour. Especially if it's just down the road and you can just walk home, then walk back an hour later to pick up your car.
Because that's what's really in competition: you have to be with your car the entire drive to and from the gas station, plus the few minutes it takes to fill up and pay, whereas you don't have to be with your car when you're plugging it in to charge: that time is now yours.
Where do you see convenient charging stations? Tesla shows 4 superchargers in all of Manhattan and 3 in Brooklyn, not including 3rd party stations that can take 2 hours to charge the car. What is the population of Manhattan and Brooklyn?
There are curbside charging locations popping up around my neighborhood and most parking garages seem to have some charging capacity now. There certainly isn’t enough infrastructure for the whole population of car owners to go electric tomorrow, but it’s interesting to see big changes happening in real time.
Perhaps not applicable to NYC, but isnt it kind of troubling that people who cant afford a luxury vehicle (55-100k) could be put in a position where they have to spend more money (gas) to go fill up out of their way, taxed for being poor, or shut up and take public transit (if it even exists where they live)?
Surely no one driving an EV ever got to their position to buy one driving an ICE.
Edit: happy this comment inspired lots of spirited discussion. Would like to stress the "Perhaps not in NYC" part and if this trend spreads to say Oklahoma.
Not in New York... But our Bolt, while not the cheapest car ever, certainly doesn't match your description here. One doesn't have to buy a Tesla to get an EV.
EVs don’t have to cost 55k. Most of the people I know who drive them paid under $30k, almost half of the average gas-powered vehicle, and they’re so much cheaper than ICE vehicles to maintain and operate that they’re saving considerably more over the life of the vehicle.
Transit is cheaper still but has the problem that it’s nowhere near as subsidized as private vehicle travel but expected to have high fare box recovery, and the transit experience is directly worsened by private vehicle use. Simply subsidizing car ownership less would help there by not masking the true costs and reducing congestion.
I think it’s more troubling to view owning a car as a base right that everyone should have. It’s better as a luxury. We want fewer cars and for people to live in walkable areas where cars are not needed.
It is simply unnecessary to own a car in New York city and my impression is that poor folks in the city already largely don't own a car. The only way to maintain more gas stations than the market naturally demands is to subsidize them or otherwise distort the market. In NYC it would involve taxing everyone including the poor to subsidize the well off.
> Perhaps not applicable to NYC, but isnt it kind of troubling that people who cant afford a luxury vehicle (55-100k) could be put in a position where they have to spend more money (gas) to go fill up out of their way, taxed for being poor, or shut up and take public transit?
Base electric vehicles like the Fiat 500e can be had for ~35k [1], if all you're interested in is commuting without getting wet choose a Twizy for ~10k [2], and if you're fine with whatever and just need something cheap, get a motorcycle for ~5k.
This is a lazy line of thinking that argues we should always maintain the status quo, no matter how lousy, if the transition costs money: won't somebody think of the poor!
"If we outlaw child labor, isn't it kind of troubling that families who particularly rely on their 8-year old's wages will be the ones losing the most..."
The fact of the matter is that EVs have gotten cheaper, they are getting cheaper, and there are government subsidies to help people buy them. Maybe those subsidies could be even larger, or better targeted, or means-tested? Or, yes, in fact we could improve public transit!
Anyway, I'd give this argument more credence if the same partisans for sticking with fossil fuels had demonstrated any kind of consistent care for the world's poor in any other context, but I haven't seen that.
"""The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money. Take boots, for example. ... A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while a poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.""" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory
China has EVs that aren't luxury and I'm pretty sure Europe does as well if I am reading your comment correct you are trying to insinuate that EVs are luxury. If not your comment needs some clarity.
It may be worth considering that while Norway's 'motor fuel sales' went down supposedly their 'oil consumption' use per EIA has remained flat (and supposedly gone up recently) - see this chart by Nate Hagens in https://twitter.com/NJHagens/status/1669072120939159553 which is figure 2 in https://fictitiouscapital.substack.com/p/a-sticky-situation-... which says "But look at the interesting case study of Norway, where oil consumption has remained flat (it has one of the highest per capita oil consumption levels globally — 3x China & 10x India) despite EVs being 90%+ of new car sales and 98% electricity coming from hydropower."
The table they pull that data from is annual and only has info through 2022[1]. It's not useful for saying anything about the year-over-year monthly number being discussed. The chart showing monthly sales of road petroleum show a consistent 5% annual drawdown, which is proportional to how quickly the fleet is transitioning[2].
Well, in the larger metropolitan regions (Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim), where probably 2/3 of Norwegians live, you see a majority of electrics or at least hybrids.
When you get further North, that diminishes. From Lofoten to Tromsø, you see more and more petrol or diesel. And heavier vehicles.
The automotive culture there starkly reminded me of Iceland.
It's not so much the automotive culture, but backbreaking taxes on ICE vehicles, and basically no alternatives if you live in rural areas and have to drive long distances.
Maybe someone from norway can calculate/check how much a mid-range petrol/diesel car (eg. VW golf, renault megane,...) costs there after all the taxes, and compare to an electric one, but it's a LOT more than in eg. germany.
A VW Golf starts at 35800€, and a VW ID.3 starts at 32800€, taxes included. Overall, electric cars are a bit cheaper than their counterparts, but not a lot. However, today, petrol is 2.15€/l and electricity is 0.013€/kWh. That's 11.20€/100km versus 0.185€/100km for the ID.3, literally two orders of magnitude cheaper. Everyone charges at home, and there's also a 40% discount in toll roads, which saves me about 8€ per day I'm commuting.
With the 3k€ lower price, a range of 430km, and fast charging stations every 30km along the major highways, there's just no reason to pick the Golf.
We still have a PHEV in addition to our electric car, but there's no reason to. If we're going on a 500km road trip, we'll take the electric BMW i4, no question.
Assuming the taxes are just on first-hand sales, the subsidies on new EVs probably flooded the rural regions with cheaper-than-expected 2nd-hand ICE vehicles.
Obvs the market for newer 2nd-hand ICE vehicles is going to wash away.
Fishy click bait title. The reason electric is so popular is that ICE vehicles get taxed 100% and electrics are not. Remove the incentives and I suspect the market would be different.
It's a case study on what could happen if EV's become cheaper than gasoline vehicles. It doesn't really matter if the shift happens due to subsidies or market forces.
Basically this study has figured out that if you subsidize Ferraris, people are going to ride in Ferraris. But the moment you will stop subsidizing them people will return back to normal cars.
Absolute majority of countries does not have a capital of Norway to subsidize on such a large scale.
In 2025 bans of diesel will begin for some large populations Athens, Madrid, Mexico City, Paris, etc. Electric buses for Cape Town, Milan, Quito, etc. [0]
If these occur with no difficulties, it will be easier for governments to uphold their 2030 and 2035 agreements.
Motor fuel sales cannot be the sole main indicator for a "death spiral that can end oil".
Oil/Petroleum products are massively employed in the manufacture of daily life items (pretty much maybe everything, not just plastics) and cutting the usage of petroleum products in that area will be the real death spiral that can end oil.
I think we only really care about the oil being burned, not merely used as chemical feedstock. In this regard we do also have to care about oil fuel heating, oil fuelled power stations, and the transport that uses oil derivatives but not normal petrol stations (flying, shipping, non-electrified rail, probably some others too), so I would still say this is a good start rather than the actual end of oil, but for different reasons to you.
Peak oil is still a thing, and we will still need to shift the feedstocks to something renewable, but the schedule doesn't need to be the same.
Readit News
10% EV adoption is not far off, thats when we start seeing collapse of gas station. EVs charge at home or work, except when going on long rides. Gas stations lose this foot traffic forever. Adding EV spots at gas station won't help, there is nothing for people to do to for 15 - 20 mins at a gas station, they'd rather go to Target, Walmart, Costco and do some grocery shopping.
Most people don't understand how quickly things change. We went from flip phones to smart phones in less than decade. Neil DeGrasse Tyson explains How The Horse Industry Vanished in less than 20 years: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lvzw7NPmppY
Folks buying new ICE cars will soon (< 10 years) have a rapidly depreciating vehicle, nearly worthless because it will be costly to own and operate. It will be like owning a horse after everyone bought a car.
[1]The first gas station in the United States opened in St. Louis in 1905, and by 1994 there were 202,800 across the country. Fast forward to 2013, and station numbers had decreased by 25% or almost 50,000, and by 2020 that number had shrunk to 115,200. A 2019 report by BCG predicts that 80% of conventional gas stations could be driven (pun intended) out of business by 2035: https://enpowered.com/the-death-of-gas-stations-will-be-far-...
The analogy with smartphones is also not a very convincing one, because a smartphone is a fundamentally different (vastly more capable) product than a flip phone. A current-gen electric car is just a car, with some advantages and some disadvantages that will each matter more or less to you depending on your circumstances.
I don't really have any reason to doubt mainstream EV market share predictions, which IIUC have them at about 50% new vehicle sales share nationwide in 2030, and I expect that will make it harder to buy gas, probably much harder in certain locations with above-mean adoption. But projections like that need to be (and I presume are) based on more than what you're offering here.
Where I am (in Europe) all the major petrol stations have mobile apps you can pay with. One even launched a system where you can register your license plate, and whatever you fill up is automatically charged to your account.
If foot traffic is all that makes money, it seems they should want you to go into the store, not pay from your phone.
This omits a significant factor, which is that it used to be many gas stations also had several repair bays, employing a mechanic or two.
Anecdata: between mid-1980s and 2000, four such gas station/repair businesses within a mile of my house closed, leaving three gas/convenience store businesses remaining within that same radius, some of which used to have repair service as well.
This used to be a solid small business opportunity for a solo or partnership owner/worker. I suspect that as cars became more computerized the repair business became too specialized, and also some of the stations which were leased from large oil companies were sold out from under the operator.
I guess if you have to, then leasing is the only reasonable way to go?
Deleted Comment
Regular gas stations have matched the time it takes to fill up gas with the time it takes to get in and out of the convenience store. A 20-30 minute typical shopping round in a Costco doesn't match up with a 4-5 minute gas fill.
It does incidentally match up with an EV charge up.
Just pointing out that people spending 15-20 mins at stations is not unrealistic. At least near motorways, gas stations already position themselves as a place where you can do your regular rest during a long drive, with diners, cafes, children's playgrounds, etc., some drivers even catch a quick nap in the parking lot -- this is how it looks in Europe at least.
It makes sense that you'd find more EV charging in residential areas and more gas stations near where people travel and work.
Because that's what's really in competition: you have to be with your car the entire drive to and from the gas station, plus the few minutes it takes to fill up and pay, whereas you don't have to be with your car when you're plugging it in to charge: that time is now yours.
I haven’t used any public charging in the last 3 months.
Surely no one driving an EV ever got to their position to buy one driving an ICE.
Edit: happy this comment inspired lots of spirited discussion. Would like to stress the "Perhaps not in NYC" part and if this trend spreads to say Oklahoma.
Transit is cheaper still but has the problem that it’s nowhere near as subsidized as private vehicle travel but expected to have high fare box recovery, and the transit experience is directly worsened by private vehicle use. Simply subsidizing car ownership less would help there by not masking the true costs and reducing congestion.
Base electric vehicles like the Fiat 500e can be had for ~35k [1], if all you're interested in is commuting without getting wet choose a Twizy for ~10k [2], and if you're fine with whatever and just need something cheap, get a motorcycle for ~5k.
[1] https://ev-database.org/car/1328/Fiat-500e-3plus1-42-kWh
[2] https://evcompare.io/cars/renault/renault_twizy/
"If we outlaw child labor, isn't it kind of troubling that families who particularly rely on their 8-year old's wages will be the ones losing the most..."
The fact of the matter is that EVs have gotten cheaper, they are getting cheaper, and there are government subsidies to help people buy them. Maybe those subsidies could be even larger, or better targeted, or means-tested? Or, yes, in fact we could improve public transit!
Anyway, I'd give this argument more credence if the same partisans for sticking with fossil fuels had demonstrated any kind of consistent care for the world's poor in any other context, but I haven't seen that.
There will be a lot more “cheap” EVs in 5-10 years as the first EVs depreciate and sell for $3,000 type thing.
Here is a graph from the source used in TFA. Now look at the sum of gasoline, diesel and biofuels, and tell me that's "cratering".
https://robbieandrew.github.io/EV/img/NORenergy_road.png
[1] https://www.ssb.no/en/statbank/table/11561 [2] https://robbieandrew.github.io/EV/img/fuelsales.png
EVs, plug-in hybrids and high efficiency non-plugin hybrids all combine with biofuels to dent the market demand.
When you get further North, that diminishes. From Lofoten to Tromsø, you see more and more petrol or diesel. And heavier vehicles.
The automotive culture there starkly reminded me of Iceland.
Maybe someone from norway can calculate/check how much a mid-range petrol/diesel car (eg. VW golf, renault megane,...) costs there after all the taxes, and compare to an electric one, but it's a LOT more than in eg. germany.
With the 3k€ lower price, a range of 430km, and fast charging stations every 30km along the major highways, there's just no reason to pick the Golf.
We still have a PHEV in addition to our electric car, but there's no reason to. If we're going on a 500km road trip, we'll take the electric BMW i4, no question.
Obvs the market for newer 2nd-hand ICE vehicles is going to wash away.
Absolute majority of countries does not have a capital of Norway to subsidize on such a large scale.
If these occur with no difficulties, it will be easier for governments to uphold their 2030 and 2035 agreements.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phase-out_of_fossil_fuel_vehic...
Oil/Petroleum products are massively employed in the manufacture of daily life items (pretty much maybe everything, not just plastics) and cutting the usage of petroleum products in that area will be the real death spiral that can end oil.
Peak oil is still a thing, and we will still need to shift the feedstocks to something renewable, but the schedule doesn't need to be the same.
Deleted Comment