At a certain point of EV adoption, selling gas won’t be a very profitable business, because fewer and fewer cars will need it. But there will still be some cars that need gas, that final, say, 30% of ICE cars that are still on the road. But if all or most gas stations shut down at roughly the same time, because they operate under the same business conditions, then those last few ICE drivers will be pretty out of luck, no?
To be clear, this is not an argument that we shouldn’t electrify and decarbonize as fast as possible. I’m more interested in the logistics of managing that transition. And I’m sure that gas stations are not the only case of this phenomenon.
Some can be converted to EV chargers. It’s considered contaminated ground, so the options are limited without expensive remediation. Depending on the economic situation they may just be abandoned.
They won’t all shut down at once. The ICE cars won’t all turn off at once; they’ll fade.
Here they pay a hefty bond to put in the tanks, it’s cheaper to remediate the site and get the bond back
Good idea.
There are still a few stations without that, but it has been the norm for new or remodled stations for decades in the us.