While I’m all for a future full of electric cars, I wonder what kind of financial burden this will put on petrol stations or even if charging stations fit the same paradigm as gas pumps since they take much longer to charge
The electric-car charging stations that I have seen at petrol stations elsewhere in Europe are not actually maintained by the petrol station. Rather, it appears that the petrol stations just allow charging-station brands to rent a portion of their plots of land to erect their infrastructure on. Consequently, requiring car charging at all petrol stations, instead of being a financial burden, may actually allow them to increase their income.
Also, since margins on petrol are so low, many petrol stations make their profit from their shops, not from the fuel itself. Since it takes some time for a car to charge, customers are likely to spend more time and therefore more money in the petrol station’s shop.
> Since so few of them are, I assume that it's not beneficial.
> If the government wants this, it should pay station owners to do it.
Cause and effect. It would be profitable if there were enough BEVs, and there would be enough BEVs if people weren’t afraid they might not be able to find somewhere to recharge.
As I mentioned, already petrol stations in many countries do not actually profit from the sale of petrol since margins are so low. Rather, their profits stem largely from the attached convenience store.
Because you can charge it in a few minutes at a gas station! Germans don't have garages, generally speaking - there's this concept that's a mystery to Americans called on-street parking.
>If it were the case that allowing charging was an economic benefit to the owners of gas stations, I guess they'd already be doing it.
Chargers require capital outlay. Unless you can prove that your revenue is going to offset the capital outlay fairly quickly (<1 year), I'm not going to do it given the margins on most gas stations.
That's exactly my point. The station owners mostly aren't stupid.
If it were a great deal (measuring by NPV), you'd see companies formed to raised capital and install charging stations at gas stations in some sort of revenue sharing / land leasing arrangement. In fact, there are such companies, and they are slowly marching down the path.
Again, if the government wants to make this happen, there's an easy solution: provide the capital.
My guess is the real limitation is infrastructure. Even if you already have a good power line relatively close, the cost to build something that can deliver multiple megawatts is probably not trivial. Maybe the gov't should subsidize that part.
There is no way that providing electric charging at gas stations is a boost to all gas station's revenue. Consider extremely rural gas stations for example. (Yes, I am aware Germany is more dense than the US)
Devil is in the details. If all stations must have “a” charger of no specified performance, that’s not going to be much of a burden given current ownership levels.
That said, this is designed to increase BEV ownership levels, which might lead to large queues if the stations all only have one charger… but that would lead to natural economic incentives for fast chargers and more of them even without government incentives or extra laws.
And charging points could — in principle at least, I’m no civil engineer — go in any parking place too, so there’s room for more entrepreneurs make up for the need for more places to park and wait to recharge.
Yes, exactly. When gasoline powered vehicles were rolled out, we didn't start with a coast-to-coast network of gas stations, but we did have sufficient farmers willing to sell gas to make it mostly work. This could prove the same benefit for electrics - "some plug somewhere" is enough to eliminate most range problems for long trips, and once it's there...
Petrol stations in Germany make almost no money on petrol. I think it was something along the lines of 2-3 cents/liter. I am quite sure that they will be happy to have customers stay in their shop for longer.
That's still quite some decent margin. It takes about 5 minutes for me to fill my 40L tank, which would be about 1€. Everything is automated, there is absolutely no human involved, and it works 24/24.
There are extreme construction costs for petrol stations. It's highly regulated due to the fire risk and other issues. You can't even lead surface water into the gutter without prior filtering.
It's spending about 4 to 5 EUR for about 350 to 400ml, not tasting any good in any variation i've tried (because captive audience at the moment) and afterwards angrily wondered why i did it AGAIN?
It's an additional revenue stream from parking spots and will likely stimulate more sales from the store during the wait.
I fully expect the future to have charging stations pretty much everywhere there's parking, power, and demand. If gas stations are clogged up by EV charging, it won't be long before charging spots are popping up everywhere to capitalize on it.
Most petrol stations are on their way out imho. Charging at petrol stations is just a stop-gap measure until curbside charging is widely available. Cars spend 23 hours a day parked. Making a 2kW charger available at most parking spots would eliminate the need for fast charging except for long distance travel.
It's a way for them to stay somehow relevant. I think the ones in cities will be gone once EV adoption takes off - people will charge while out shopping, when parked, etc.
The chargers in rest stops/stations road side will be where business is.
I do wonder how the logistics of this will work in small gas stations. They will now need a dedicated spot for each port. Also now need amenities to support riders who are waiting for their car to charge.
There is no small gas stations in Western Europe, only networks, franchises and supermarkets.
With such a big range, we don’t need a lot of gas stations anymore (it’s more like the square term in the coverage of an area makes the number of gas stations extremely sensitive to the average range, but long story short, we need less and less of them)
Sadly, gas stations remain heavily regulated in many parts of the world when in reality they should not be treated much differently from say a bakery or restaurant.
What Germany has done here is bit comparable to say forcing a burger joint to offer vegan options or a juice joint to serve alcohol for no reason other than pandering to the niche users.
Gas stations might not even be ideal providers of charging stations, other business such as restaurants, malls, salons, etc. where people spend a lot of time are more better suited to provide charging stations and in fact they already do.
This sort of government coercion is another reason why I think electric car ownership or general move to cleaner fuels will be seen with skepticism by many people like me.
Furstly, gas stations are a massive safety risk and they were always strictly regulated at least for thay.
Secondly, we can't deliberate for another 15 years for every scepting to come round and for the market to sort itself out. Every year of setback in climate change mitigation will incur massive financial damange in the future.
