In 6 months driving a Renault Zoe, I have been in gas stations twice. Once for killing time during a rare not at-work charge, and once for getting a snack for my son.
Gas stations are dinosaurs that haven't heard the shockwave of the meteor yet.
But at what rate do gasoline customers enter the store now? I suspect that rate is far lower than 5%.
In that case, cars going electric would very positive effect. IIRC, Circle K (a large gas station chain) derives around half of it's profits from concession sales, with the other half from gas.
Additionally, given the higher cost of electric cars, their owners are likely to be wealthier than their ICE driving counterparts. This is an assumption on my part, but I suspect that wealthier people are much less likely to shop at gas stations since items sold their often target poorer demographics. A shift to electric cars would mean that demographics which were already unlikely to enter the store are more likely to make a purchase, while not impacting the lower end clientele.
The rate of customers who make additional purchases is closer to 50%. Source: I know a guy who runs a gas station. Profits from additional sales are bigger than from selling gas: they have 3-4% margin selling gas and 30-70% margin selling additional products. Coffee, wiping cloths, chocolate bars, etc.
I used to work in a gas station during high school and did the paper work for the owner each morning.
He was a franchise, so his gas margin was even lower, closer to 1-2%. And yes, most of the profit came from inside sales where the margins were 50%+ or higher.
This has to vary greatly based on location. I almost always go inside gas stations along a freeway trip. I don't know that I've been inside a "local" station in 15 years unless the real purpose of the trip was to grab a Powerball ticket and the gas fill-up was incidental. So maybe five times total.
Those factors can change. Currently charging at night at home is cheaper today, only because power company makes it so. Ideally cars should charge when the sun is up, in day time. If they were self driving, it could charge while we work. Don’t assume everyone work place will become a gas station
>charging at night at home is cheaper today, only because power company makes it so.
They make it so because there's excess capacity at night, when most everyone is asleep. This is not an arbitrary decision.
>Ideally cars should charge when the sun is up, in day time
That's not even remotely true. Someday MAYBE, if massive solar deployment shifts our excess capacity from night to daytime, but that's certainly not the case right now.
> Ideally cars should charge when the sun is up, in day time. If they were self driving, it could charge while we work.
Ideally cars should charge during times when energy is cheaper. This could be at times of lower consumer demand, like at night or at times when prices are cheaper because variable and barely off at all controllable renewables are dumping power into the grid, like when it’s especially sunny or windy.
Wind apparently produces more at night. I guess it makes sense given thermal cycling. Sun goes down and locally cools producing a temperature differential which makes wind more night-biased and a good solar complement.
Which suggests favoring the time based on whatever the "grid-time-bias" has cheaper.
>Currently charging at night at home is cheaper today, only because power company makes it so. Ideally cars should charge when the sun is up, in day time.
Power's cheaper at night because demand's lower. The sun being out during daytime does make more solar power available, but there's also higher demand because everyone's awake. Unless there's evidence to the contrary, I'm inclined to believe that night power is cheaper because of pure market forces, rather than being dictated by the power company.
Gas stations are dinosaurs that haven't heard the shockwave of the meteor yet.