This sounds like it's a bill meant to allow gas stations to pivot into becoming paid EV charging stations.
Which kind of makes sense, since the switch to EVs will probably cause acute financial distress, such as destroying the financial situation of any family that owns/runs a gas station. A pitiless free marketer probably wouldn't care about that destruction (and they may even celebrate it), but I'm at least sympathetic to measures that would lessen the blow or make the transition less painful.
It might make more sense to just buy those people out, but that would take budget, and a proposal like this doesn't.
>Which kind of makes sense, since the switch to EVs will probably cause acute financial distress, such as destroying the financial situation of any family that owns/runs a gas station
There are tons and tons of people who live in apartments with no chargers or electrical sockets near parking spots, and who would like to purchase an EV. Gas stations can install non-free EV charging stations right now, and it will actually increase their non-gas business since EV charging takes longer, so the customer is incentivised to shop the convenience store to stretch their legs. Gas stations can install things like game kiosks etc. to help them pass time while making money. I am sure they can get more creative.For example, a small best selling books/magazines stall that people can read for free while waiting, and then buy if they want to continue reading. Paid massage chairs, VR playing stations, VR viewing chairs etc. etc.
We need to provide social welfare and basic income so that we don't have to pump poison into air, cause global warming, and basically pay for dependence, cause instability and war in the Middle East and now in Eastern Europe.
Gas stations typically had zero or near zero margins on gasoline itself and made money in the convenience stores, notably tobacco products.
EVs should be a great for their business. Level 3 / DC Fast should be too difficult for a lot of places to want to construct and maintain, should be more easy to site and permit than a gas station, should have less remediation problems, and have longer stops and high opportunities to upsell customers on food or other high margin retail goods or services.
Exactly, this would actually be history repeating itself. The original "gas stations" were pharmacies that added a gas pump to bring in customers, sold at a price that didn't bring in much profit but got customers in the door.
That’s not at all the same. The example you provide was augmentation or expansion of their market/products. This is not that at all. At best it is a supplanting of the market with a clearly imposed and forced product and system.
Those are cleverly not free choices, they aren’t even just biased through subsidies; they are actively sabotaging and commanding major shifts in society and the economy, which has never gone well when it has ever been tried under any other communist, utopian, command economy, self-righteous system of a minority of conceited rulers imposing things on people unnaturally, based on pontifications emanating from ivory towers.
Dedicated, paid EV stations can also differentiate themselves by providing fast DC charging. This requires more expensive equipment and quite possibly an upgrade to the property's connection to the grid - something that probably isn't worth it to businesses just providing a few free level 1/2 chargers as a courtesy to customers.
Of course, the lower income people living in apartments who can afford the min. ~$60,000 EV will of course then spend even more at charging stations. Poor people should try not being poor, right?
I sometimes wonder if this whole EV thing will be known as the “let them eat cake” type of moment, capturing a sentiment of ruling strata detached from reality on the ground until their heads end up rolling around on it.
“Just buy a $60,000 EV”, tells the HN technocrat to someone who delivers them food to their $1M+ home, working for a delivery service that digs them deeper into a financial hole as millions more low wage foreign laborers stream into the country and inflation eats away at any progress that the HN technocrat has only benefited from.
- A Nissan LEAF costs $19,990 when taking the federal tax credit for purchasing a new electric vehicle
- VW ID.4 with the tax credit is $33.5K
- Kia Niro EV with the tax credit is $32.5K
- Hyundai Kona Electric with the tax credit is $26.5K
- Hyundai Ioniq 5 with the tax credit is $32.5K
- Chevy Bolt with no incentives is $26K
- Chevy Bolt EUV with no incentives is $27K
If you don't have any tax liability to take the federal tax credit, you can lease and the leasing company takes the credit and rolls the discount into the payments.
If demand drops a bit as the economy cools down, you will be able to buy used electric cars for cheap again as well.
Entry level EVs exist that are under $30k USD new. Used EVs and Plug-in Hybrids exist that are under $20k USD.
I spend less on electricity for my Chevy Volt than I would for any combustion vehicle.
Sure, your example "low income people" won't be driving around in a brand new Tesla, but anyone who's buying power includes a $15k-30k vehicle can just as easily buy a plug-in hybrid or entry level EV.
It would be cheaper, easier, and much more desirable for the rental units to provide charging in their parking areas than for the gas stations to do it, though.
It's just a competition thing. Gas stations will never compete with a 240V outlet. There will never be an EV equivalent of an urban gas station (superchargers for distance travel are a real requirement though).
This is an interesting second order factor for public charging. The critical part may not be cost of electricity but the extended parking space required. If a ICE refuel space is used for <10m and a EV recharge space is used for 30m then the station's total capacity was just cut in third.
Gas stations have a lot of space taken up by the pumps, bollards to prevent collisions with them, and traffic flow since most stops are only a few minutes. I expect a fully realized commercial charging station would look more like a Starbucks, parking lot and all. So probably a lot more dense.
This brings up the question - forget gas stations, what other businesses can leverage their omnipresence to become defacto "the charging spot" and increase their foot traffic commensurately?
The vast majority of Electrify America charging stations are in Walmart and Target parking lots. They are positioning themselves for that role already. When I take a road trip in my electric car, it can feel like a tour of Wal-Marts across America.
I figured broader decentralization-- every supermarket has 10 or 20 charging spots, every strip mall 2-5. There's a huge synergy there in that you've now got customers who may feel "I've got 30 minutes to kill, I'll buy another coffee/cycle around the store and pick up another impulse buy item."
There may easily be a point where subsidizing the charge to attract EV customers is a net positive for business.
That's partly because it's hard for apartment/condo users to charge EVs, so they buy them less compared to home owners or renters, and thus underrepresented in your stats in spite of demand for EVs among them. It's a classic chicken and egg problem.
Not every apartment is pet friendly. Not every apartment can have an electric charger.
I agree that it’s going to get a lot more common at apartments but won’t apply to everyone. My last apartment had a massive garage with electric charging. It was $400/mo. My current apartment doesn’t have anything beyond street parking which definitely has no electric charging spots.
Careful with taking that number at face value. For the longest time the EV market was an upper-class market, so first adopters most likely were people who are wealthy enough to have their own home and thus the option to install their own chargers, particularly as the charging networks weren't really in place yet 10 years ago.
But over time that % is bound to shift heavily as EVs become more affordable, the charging networks become more dense, and more people, who don't own their own property, get into the market.
This will very likely increase demand for "not at home" charging, particularly considering how in many urban places people already struggle with finding a place to park, let alone one with a charger.
But most people charging at a gas station will be mostly apartment dwellers that don't have EV charging in their nightly parking spots yet. Home owners or renters can charge at home most of the time. The gas station charging eliminates range anxiety for them and helps EVs with smaller batteries and shorter ranges like the Leaf. Even for the apartment dwellers, there will be more and more EV chargers at parking spots near grocery stores, malls, movie theaters, amusement parks, offices etc.
> Gas stations can install non-free EV charging stations right now, and it will actually increase their non-gas business since EV charging takes longer, so the customer is incentivised to shop the convenience store to stretch their legs
But those apartment dwellers probably won't do that if there's a nearby restaurant with free EV charging stations, which appear to be exactly what this bill is outlawing.
To me, this bill seems to designed to make the plan you outlined more likely to actually work for gas station owners.
FWIW, free EV charging stations are often incredibly slow, on the order of 7 kW. At that rate, it would take over 10 hours to completely recharge a Model 3.
People with BEVs don't use free charging stations for their daily driving unless the charger is at work. They're typically not going to leave their car plugged in at the grocery store for 4+ hours.
> They also won't do it if there's public transit, but that's already been defunded.
What does that have to do with gas station owners and their families, and helping them transition as technology changes?
Also, public transit is not really a very desirable total substitute for a private car except in the densest of cities, so I don't think a merely "funding" it would take many private cars out of people homes.
It's because you don't really know public transit. I'd rather take my three hour ride in a train (with free wifi and electricity) than drive for 5 hours on a mind-numbing highway. it cost me less too. I still subsidize cars and highways, don't get me wrong, but the energy efficiency of one of the most inefficient modern electric train is so much better than a car that it cost me less despite a third of my local taxes going into road and parking infrastructure.
Ok, i get that. I'd rather rent or borrow a car when i need one (some weekends, for a road trip...). My point was that city density isn't really needed to go full public transit. I lived 5 years in a city with a density of 304 hab./km2 (twice that in summer), without a car. I used the bus when i did not felt like riding my bike, and the train for large distances. Now i'm in a city with 2.2k hab./km2, and yes, it is easier, but you don't need that much density to go full public transport.
While it is important to highlight subsidies to oil and gas industry, those numbers in particular is one I usually avoid because it uses things like traffic accidents cause by using cars and traffic congestion, and then uses that to calculate a value that can be compared to GDP.
What that mean is that some of those subsidies included in that number also apply to EV cars, which makes it a bit nonsensical. It also means that if we apply it to GDP we get a GDP that is greater than 100%, which is also nonsensical.
Gas stations going insolvent because of EVs and the effects is something I have been documenting at https://postpump.org
The problem is that I think outside of highway and freeway infrastructure most stations are doomed. You simply don’t want to stay in a 711 parking lot that long.
There’s a lot of people who seem to think an ev charging area will look basically like a gas station with the pumps switched. That is not going to happen.
A ev charging area will be a coffee shop or lounge, something that will be nice to hang around for 20 minutes. Gambling states should be ecstatic at the prospect.
Gas stations as they look today are not going to exist except to service legacy ice vehicles
The challege will be that nobody wants to spend an extra 20-30 minutes hanging around someplace doing something that they weren't needing or planning to do anyway. For example I'm not going to want to start hanging out at an EV coffee shop when I don't go to coffee shops now.
Pretty much the only time one should need to charge away from home is when driving a long distance, in which case a 20 min nap, a stroll to get the blood flowing, or a coffee every three to four hours of driving is probably a good thing. It’s like the “eating your vegetables thing” some people won’t pay to order them but they’ll eat them if they come as a side.
Won't it be a good thing for 711 and walkable stores in the area? Convenience stores can come up with ideas for people to pass their time beyond shopping and coffee/food. Maybe game kiosks like you see in bars that allow people to stand and stretch their legs instead of sitting in a car? They don't take up that much space. Maybe even a couple of restaurant style tables for people to eat, drink or just hang out.
The problem is that as these gas stations go insolvent the land will be a liability instead of an asset because you have to cleanup the tanks and likely will find damage to soil or ground water.
Except a gas station can currently serve X people per hour with fuel tanks but Y per hour with electric charging. Under the assumption that Y is not only less than X but substantially less than X, they'd need to find a lot of methods to extract money form those customers, which ends up with their own risks and costs.
There are a lot of chains we traditionally think of as "gas stations" which operate stores which don't sell gas. These stores are opening more and more locations which don't sell gas. Especially in cities where gas stations are difficult or impossible to open.
> You simply don’t want to stay in a 711 parking lot that long.
From what I can tell, people are going to be charging at restaurants or stores, if not at home. Charging stations are constantly being put in at grocery stores around where I live.
Plus, you don't need to charge completely at every stop. Apparently the IONIQ 5 can do 10-80% in 17 minutes at a DC fast charger. So most people could probably get a 30-40% charge in the time it takes to go in and pick up a drink or something.
The problem is that Gas stations are usually franchisees of the gasoline producers so they may not be able to install EV charging if say Chevron or Texaco don't give the green light.
I've seen exactly one gas station that had EV chargers... and it wasn't in the US. At least in 2020 (last time I was up there), the Petrol-Canada somewhere along BC Hwy 17 between Swartz Bay and Victoria had (paid) DC rapid chargers. It was pretty neat. Never have seen such a thing stateside.
> This is just political vindictiveness against the EV industry and virtue signaling their support for the fossil fuel industry.
Show me proof of that, then. Otherwise, it's just condemnation based on baseless speculation.
There's probably far more reason to say the backlash here against the bill is just "political vindictiveness against the fossil fuel industry and virtue signaling their support for the EV industry," since there are actual comments with enough emotional tone to infer the commenters feelings.
The problem with gas stations becoming EV charging stations is that EV charging takes substantially longer than filling a gas tank and no one wants to hang out at a gas station.
Gas stations are also just too small. Most in my area can accommodate 4-8 cars at a time.
EV charging is much more suitable for places like Supermarkets, Malls, Restaurants - places where people spend much longer amounts of time and with larger areas to park.
Like 9 minutes versus 5 minutes, for a comparison of our stop at a fast charger on the way to LA from the Bay Area versus gas fillup. Such a long time.
But yes it’s good to have places to go for the longer (30 minutes say) charges.
> It might make more sense to just buy those people out, but that would take budget, and a proposal like this doesn't.
Gas stations (underground tanks especially) have a finite life span. As tanks age out, most simply won't get replaced, so the amount of gas stations will shrink that way over time. Owners will quit taking care of the buildings when they realize the tanks won't make sense to replace in a few years.
It's not like we're going to be closing vibrant, well-kept businesses - there will be a natural attrition as the ownership starts investing in other businesses instead of re-investing in keeping the gas station up to date.
It's not like we burned every horse barn to the ground when cars were invented - rather they were re-purposed or not replaced over time.
> This sounds like it's a bill meant to allow gas stations to pivot into becoming paid EV charging stations.
Which won't work, regardless of which stupid laws are deployed to try and force it to happen. I've had an EV for a just under a year now and have not charged it anywhere other than my home even once. There's no reason to besides long trips (which are nowhere near as common as people think)
Gas stations have already turned into convenience stores that happen to also fill your car with gas.
They'll continue to do so as EV charging stations, and with a captive audience for a longer duration will be able to sell even more stuff/services from their store.
It's well understood they make far more money from the overpriced junk inside than stuff at the pump as-is.
The convenience store/gas station business model is unworkable as an EV charging station. A convenience store with two or four pumps can still service many dozens of cars per hour, because a fill-up only takes a few minutes. The same space could only charge a handful of EVs in that time, because it takes 15-30 minutes per car. That's less customers per hour who might also potentially come in and buy something. These places will not be able to afford to exist.
EV charging makes more sense as a value-added service for a restaurant, or supermarket, because most customers will be there for 30 minutes anyway.
I don't disagree re: it making sense as a value-added service at a restaurant.
But for many, folks already treat the gas station as their cheap convenient restaurant, grocer, gambling den, etc. I have the impression that being a gas station has already kind of ceased to be the primary source of profit.
Why isn't there room for all of the above? With how many folks rent/park in the street, demand for convenient charging when the entire fleet is electric is going to be substantial. Especially if there are a lot of cheaper short-range compacts that need frequent top-ups around town... Such vehicles might also get down into the 5-10 minutes charge times too.
At least around here gas stations also tend to have way more parking spaces than pumps. Isn't it rather trivial to electrify all the spots vs. putting gas pumps at all of them? Gasoline presents some unique safety and cost barriers to doing that... EVs still need to be washed as well, which many gas stations already provide and restaurants probably won't.
> gas stations [...] becoming paid EV charging stations [...] kind of makes sense
It actually doesn't, except for the tiny handful of gas stations on major rural arteries that can service long distance EV travel. The overwhelming bulk of EV charging outside of distance road trips happens at home (where it is a vastly nicer experience than pulling into any service station ever could be), whereas the overwhelming bulk of gas stations are in the urban cores catering to customers near where they live and work.
And even then, a "gas station" is an expensive piece of infrastructure with underground tanks and paid employees and elaborate lighting and maintenance. It competes very poorly with a EV fast charger, which is quite literally just a few parking spaces and an electrical junction box.
>> This sounds like it's a bill meant to allow gas stations to pivot into becoming paid EV charging stations. Which kind of makes sense...
No it doesn't. The reason is that charging takes much longer than pumping gas. For a typical daily commute you can charge at home over night at low power. On longer trips you need to charge long enough at high power that a human is going to need something to do to kill time. My bet is on McDonalds as a big player since they are already present along lots of highways, and they do have food and a place to sit. Other restaurants would be better but McDonalds already exist in the right places. Burger King and Wendys too of course but fewer of them (hint hint - ad chargers to be more popular).
"Smithfield's Chicken 'N Bar-B-Q" in NC is a huge supporter of Tesla chargers. I believe there are multiple charging stations at most/all of his stores. I expect other food places to start supporting paid charging in the near future. We even have a couple of local breweries that have charging spots!
But if you are charging at home or in the parking garage or at the restaurant you have no reason to be at the petrol station any more and therefore no opportunity to buy overpriced things!
> around half of 7/11’s are selling gas and locations without pumps seem to do just fine.
This has got to be somewhere densely populated. The closest thing to this out in the 'burbs and sticks is a Dollar General, usually. Gas stations have gas—if they don't, they don't get enough traffic to survive. But I've seen a couple cases of what you're talking about, in the core of our own city. Ex-gas-stations with the pumps removed and surviving as purely convenience stores.
> Long term people in EV’s will still want to get a cold drink and a snack on a long trip and someone is going to be selling that.
There'll be fewer fueling stops overall, is the thing. Especially locally. Longer stops, yes, but way fewer. Why? Well, for local-only driving, between home charging and places like grocery stores often having chargers, I could well go all year without visiting a dedicated gas+charging station. With an ICE car, my wife and I probably fill up at local gas stations 60+ times a year (and that's with only one of us commuting!), just for local driving, not counting long-distance travel. With EV, that drops to maybe once or twice a year, if not zero. Even if we spent 2-3 weeks a year on EV-driving road trips, I bet our total time at fueling stations would be way lower than with an ICE car, despite those charging stops taking way longer than filling a gas tank, so I don't think "come up with more stuff for people to do, and charge for it" will come even close to making up the difference.
Then consider what might happen to even that remaining slice of the market if highway rest-stops started including chargers (paid ones), along with the free playgrounds and free bathrooms and walking trails and picnic tables and local info they already have. EV charging infrastructure's much simpler than gas. No deliveries. Low maintenance. Very little space required (no huge underground tanks, for one thing). No spills. The only thing stopping those from going in might be desire not to compete with businesses (even if the result would be better services for people, overall).
There's the rural market that'll probably remain ICE for a long time... but really rural folks may already refuel from tanks on their property, buying in bulk (and possibly a mix of taxed and untaxed fuels, depending on what they'll be used for) and the rest (small-town dwellers) may not do enough driving that they really need ICE over EV, as long as the EV can manage a 60-mile round trip to the nearest Wal-Mart.
> lol, why buy them out? They made money for decades. It's alright to hang up a successful business after a good run imo.
Come on, put yourself in their shoes. It's a small business. They made money, but probably not tons. Their personal capital is tied up in an obsolete business, which has had its value drop due to technology changes, so they probably can't sell it for whatever they expected. They'll probably see large personal losses, and it's never easy transitioning to a new line of work.
Thought experiment time: say you're a 40 year old software engineer, and some new AI gizmo comes out an obsoletes your career and all your work experience. You're going to have to start at the entry level in some new industry. On top of that, the gizmo can out-compete all those tech stocks you invested in, so your net worth is down 50%. You've got a family and 25 years left in your career. Should I be like "LOL. You made money for decades. It's alright to hang up a successful career after a good run imo"?
Things change. People pour capital into small businesses all the time only to have them fail. If a company is able to run for a time until facts change and their business is no longer viable then that's a very similar thing. Having your business fail sucks, no question. But generally I don't think we need to compensate every failed business. I don't see why it matters if the business failed after running for 6 months vs 60 years.
I definitely sympathize and maybe there's some other use they can get out of their investment but that's a business problem for them to solve.
I absolutely think there should be a social safety net, more widely available than what we've got now, but people with failed businesses shouldn't get any special treatment beyond what anyone would get.
> Come on, put yourself in their shoes. It's a small business. They made money, but probably not tons. Their personal capital is tied up in an obsolete business, which has had its value drop due to technology changes, so they probably can't sell it for whatever they expected. They'll probably see large personal losses, and it's never easy transitioning to a new line of work.
Yea but think of all the other small businesses not getting this extra help. This bill is meant to stop restaurants from using EV charging as an incentive for people to spend money. It’s well discussed that gas stations make money from the convenience store not from gas. A restaurant that gives away free EV charging is essentially the same idea, except electricity is so cheap they don’t bother selling it to you at cost.
Why should we be thinking of the gas station owner selling a toxic fuel destroying the planet instead of the local restauranteur thoughtfully adding a hook to her sell. Besides, what ever happened to the free market? If we stop subsidizing gas and people go to gas stations less, then I’d be sympathetic to the gas station owners. But I still wouldn’t want it to come at the expense of other businesses!
I would much rather support and pass laws that help restaurant and shop owners than gas station owners.
PS I Think a healthy welfare system that supports the gas station owner and her family would also be a good thing.
> I mean...yeah that's exactly what would happen. Who are we kidding?
I know that's what would happen, because many people are callous jerks. However, I'm (probably foolishly) hoping the people who tend to say things like that may have at least a little change of heart if they imagine themselves in a similar situation.
The only way this makes sense to me is if government action is the cause of their business failing. I'm sure some of these mom and pop gas station owners will pivot into being more general stores, restaurants. Maybe even fast charging stations or some other thing. The ones who can't can try to sell the business or liquidate the assets and move on.
If there's a gov doing otherwise then maybe I'd reconsider but I think this is just how running a business works.
Which kind of makes sense, since the switch to EVs will probably cause acute financial distress, such as destroying the financial situation of any family that owns/runs a gas station. A pitiless free marketer probably wouldn't care about that destruction (and they may even celebrate it), but I'm at least sympathetic to measures that would lessen the blow or make the transition less painful.
It might make more sense to just buy those people out, but that would take budget, and a proposal like this doesn't.