I think about it the other way. Use land regulation to no longer permit zoning, permitting, or construction of gas new stations. If existing gas stations think they can compete as a place EVs will come charge, let them install vehicle charging hardware. More likely, gas stations lose out to places people will be at anyway to charge (grocery stores, work places, parking lots/structures, etc). I already Supercharge my Model S at the local grocery store if I've been driving more often than my 120V garage wall outlet can recover in range over a day or two (currently renting; when I buy, I'll pull 100amp service to the garage and never need to Supercharge locally again). Where do cars dwell for hours each day already (average vehicle isn't moving 90% of the time)? That's where you get chargers installed. The electricity and parking spots are usually already there, it's just a matter of getting the conduit, conductors, power conversion gear on site, installed, and painting and signing the parking spaces as EV only.

In an EV future, gas stations are (mostly) a relic (IMHO). Think of the real estate cost savings, the reduction in truck traffic to deliver fuel, etc!

> More likely, gas stations lose out to places people will be at anyway to charge (grocery stores, work places, parking lots/structures, etc).

This isn’t economically practical unless you have subsidized charging. It’s significantly cheaper to charge my car at home than it is to use some random public charger.

A motivating example for this is someone who drives the 80 miles from Austin TX to San Antonio to spend the day with friends.

With only a 150mi range EV, a 15-20 min fast charge would be enough to comfortably do the return trip that same day without range anxiety.

Existing gas stations (or parking lots) could serve that use case, which is fairly common in the US, where mid distance trips are almost completely car based.

Today, they could charge the same or lower price/mile-of-range as gasoline and make a large margin, since electricity is less than half the price of gasoline per mile (at retail prices, there's an even bigger difference with wholesale prices).

Why would you buy an EV with 150 miles today, in 2019, when EVs much better than that exist? The "standard" range Tesla Model 3 has 250 miles of range. The Long Range Tesla Model 3 cars is 310 miles whereas the long range Model S does 325 miles of range on a single charge.

You could comfortably do that entire trip on a single charge with existing EVs. Volkswagen is about to release their ID.3, which which has 3 variants ranging from 205-340 miles of range. In a year or two, the range anxiety "problem" with EVs will simply be a noop as EVs will have longer range than most ICE vehicles.

Disclaimer: I own a Model 3 AWD LR and am a big fan, but also own a 2011 Ford Fiesta

> Why would you buy an EV with 150 miles today

Because they are cheaper. And many will by high mileage EVs on the used market. A 200mi EV will have a lower usable range later in it's life, but otherwise work great. For example, I can imagine buying a used Chevy bolt for my kids to use around town 8 years from now.

GM doesn't even make the Volt anymore and it was only ever a car for compliance with federal emissions laws. It might be harder to get parts for it in 8 years as a result. In 8 years I suspect there will be a dearth of really good used EVs on the market, Teslas, Volkswagens, Fords, and Toyotas included.

But on the price you make a good point. That will come down over time as more and more companies make good EVs.

> It might be harder to get parts for it in 8 years as a result

A Volt is a PHEV, which is an ICE+EV, with the associated complexity and wear.

Pure EVs, however have far fewer parts to replace, and put very little wear on those parts. Most of the wearing parts are pretty generic, like tires and brake pads (the latter being replace rarely). AC induction motors also have a very long lifetime.

The most specialized part on an EV that wears the fastest, the battery, is reusable/replaceable.

Already today, there are people taking battery packs from totaled Teslas and installing them in classic cars like the VW bus. There is a shop in southern CA replacing drivetrains in classic cars w/ EV drivetrains [1]. So I can totally see replacement batteries being produced by aftermarket manufacturers for existing EVs in a number of years. Of course the vehicle manufacturers themselves probably won't supply those replacements, but cars aren't mobile phones, and I bet that right-to-repair will resonate with people a lot more with EVs.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neYuohLzVdg

OP said the Bolt, not the Volt.

The standard Tesla Model 3 costs at minimum $10k more than the entry level Nissan Leaf (which happens to get 150mi range). That's a substantial amount of money for most of the world.

Standard Model 3 is the average price of a new vehicle in the US. 17 million new cars a year in the US, and I assume China is a big market as well with Gigafactory 3 coming online.

Right.. I'm very bullish on Tesla and on EVs in general but I was responding to "Why would anyone buy a similar, lower-range car that's 25% cheaper" which doesn't seem like a complicated question.

We're not comparing home charging to fast charging though. We're comparing fast charging locations to other fast charging locations. Home charging is absolutely going to be cheaper due to no demand charges, but for where people elect to fast charge, you colocate where they will already be. At work places, you would want to provide charging current rates as high as possible without incurring demand charges. This is not to hand wave away street parking charging! This is definitely an issue, but there have been great strides in developing charging stations for street use (integrated into light poles, for example). Does you locale have Dig Once policies (call to action: get involved locally if they do not!)? Throw some fiber in there while you're upgrading street power!

At home, I charge using power from Exelon's nuclear fleet at 1-6 cents/kwh (Time of Use plan). I want to stress: most people will plug in every time they arrive at home and charge at home. You will leave your house every day with a full charge by doing so. Supercharging costs me ~30 cents/kwh, so $10-15 for an 80% charge. Regardless, the costs are so low I don't care either way, I come out ahead versus gasoline (previously $40-60 per fill up) no matter how I charge. I literally don't even think about it when Tesla dings my credit card for Supercharging. It is annoying to use a J1772 public charger (install adapter, swipe Chargepoint card, troubleshoot why the station isn't providing current), so I avoid using those whenever possible.

In the US, you are never more than 150 miles from a Tesla Supercharger, and of course the network will continue to grow over time: https://supercharge.info/map

Just as government put regulation in to require different standard octane ratings, phase out of leaded etc, I would hope government regulates that some percentage - say 50% of pump space must be devoted to vehicle charging. Requiring enough to cause irritation to ICE vehicle drivers seems an important nudge.

I'm conveniently ignoring any practicality of adequate electricity supply to the petrol station in my sweeping generalisation. :)

How much money does a gas station actually make on fuel, anyway? I would guess most gas stations make more money on junk food than they do on gas itself.

Correct. Very thin margins on fuel (a few cents per gallon).

And now compare that to the $0.40/kwh they could charge for a rapid charge session versus the $0.15/kwh retail rate.

Eventually of course that margin will decline as the stations become more common, but stations could also reduce their costs and peak dependence on the grid by using solar plus storage.

If you want to make the attempt as a convenience store, go for it. Drives down the cost of power conversion hardware, and someone else can buy it at auction if you don't make it work.

I enjoy never going to a gas station as an EV owner. It's unlikely I would ever charge at one. I would rather go somewhere I can grab real food while my vehicle charges, or a good cup of coffee, anything but a glorified vending machine that is most gas stations. I could be wrong, and if you can make a business out of it, more power to you.

I agree, they should also be coffee-shops/delis/bodegas.

A model are the gas station restaurants of the deep south USA:

https://www.southernliving.com/travel/gas-station-restaurant...

Outside of the deep South and freeway rest areas in the US, nobody thinks of a gas station as a place you'd want to get food, because people think (perhaps correctly) that gasoline is toxic. Electricity isn't perceived the same way.

Mid to high end hotels and resorts have already installed chargers due to their clientele increasingly driving Teslas. This idea is to work from the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum.

I hear this a lot, but I see prices within one city varying by up to $0.80.

Petroleum in general is a volatile market.

But if one station is charging 3.69 and another is charging 3.39, should I assume that the one charging more actually paid 30 cents more a gallon, or have that much more for expenses? Or are they making an extra quarter gallon? right now I can go buy regular for anywhere between 3.20 and 3.80, for no apparent reason.

If the profit margin is really only a few cents a gallon, it seems like there should be a big incentive to simply charge an extra $0.05 a gallon.

I've also noticed some stations charge way more for regular, but the same for premium... They just don't have as large a spread, which would in courage people to buy premium.

This is an Oregon, too, where there is a unusual situation for gasoline since people aren't allowed to pump their own and it has resulted, for some reason, in significantly fewer filling stations.

> But if one station is charging 3.69 and another is charging 3.39, should I assume that the one charging more actually paid 30 cents more a gallon, or have that much more for expenses?

Probably a bit of both. Gas is often more expensive in more well off areas, which also usually have fewer gas stations in general, and the rents those stations pay are probably a bit higher too. It's also more near airports, because demand is high for rental car returns.

But part of the higher price is a function of your willingness to drive to a poorer or less convenient part of town to fill cheaper gas in your car. As a younger person on a limited budget I would do that frequently.

But depending on how far away the cheaper gas is (meaning gas used to get there), and the value of your time spent getting there, you might be better off paying a bit more to fill up closer to where you live. That's what I do now, even though it's a $.20 more per gallon.

The prices can somewhat be explained by rent, leaving the margin low. But if they're charging more in well-off areas, and with this spread, it seems quite likely stations can manage to slip another 10-20 cents in there as a profit margin.

Hot off the press, looks like someone just did this:

https://www.npr.org/2019/10/26/773446805/gas-station-convert...