Featured First USA Gas Station Going Fully EV Charging.

I have said before that smart station chains should start adding charging stations. People stopping there stop for a while and so tend to go into the shops nearby and those sales are the real moneymakers. Start at the edges, don't replace pumps yet. Maybe 2. Then as usage increases, add more.

Someone in marketing should do a study to see how overall profitable the charging station users are compared to the pump users.

 

The article quotes the number of electric vehicles in the State.....I think.
And the number seems WAY high to me, unless maybe you include plug-in hybrids.

But a number with much more significance to him would be the number of electric vehicles within 50 miles or so of his business.

Traffic patterns for vehicles farther away than that would be hard to determine.

Unless there are many other businesses close by, I fear that his experiment is doomed to failure.
It also looks like the pumps haven't been removed, just temporarily taken out of service.
THAT might be a smart move.

 

In this case, the station owner was unhappy with contracts the fuel suppliers were offering. So they chose to say no.
Another issue that might spur a complete switch is the costs of maintaining, inspecting, and replacing the underground tanks.

 

I think he was getting ready to close down the business anyway, and when the state offered a $786k grant for converting he decided to give it a whirl.

Gas station owners never earned much from the energy they sold. It’s all about getting the drivers to come in and buy some highly profitable coffee or snacks. That was a quick service/high volume thing. Now he’s going to need something that occupies more time- maybe a row of office pods he can rent out to people who are there to charge? Slot machines? Spa treatments?

He can still close it down and sell off the land for redevelopment, but at least he got somebody else to pay for inerting/removing the tankage. It might even be worth more now, without the liability.

 

If he was selling 2000 gallons a day, that’s about $40.00 in daily profits he’ll need to replace. Probably not too difficult.

The convenience store is the other 90-95% of his profit. Hopefully he can hang on to that traffic level.

 

Next time I'm in the DC area I think I'll try to stop in and plugin just because.
checking to see if this link to his location on google maps works.
Google Maps R S Automotive Inc.
and his business web page
RS Automotive Inc - Maryland's Finest Auto Experts

When I had my 14 PIP, I called a local university just within EV range, to ask the same question. They give me a similar answer and I learned my lesson well. Not everyone nor all businesses are interested in automotive electrification like I am and many others here at PC and Tesla forums. (if I can assume many of you are?). I'll bet they didn't even want to know about the state program electrify NY, either.

 

keeping up that walk-in traffic will be the hard part.

 

he should add a hydrogen station as well

 

The gas pump can refuel 2 or 3 times as many cars as a charger in the same time. But it does it fast enough that many people don't stop and leave the car to go inside.

But a car at a charger contains a driver who is going to be there for a while. Sell newspapers, magazines, phone charging...

 

Needs to be something to keep the charge customer occupied and out of everyone else’s way, so he isn’t hassling all the coffee/croissant/gtfo types.

“Hi! Did you know I have an electric car?? Well now you do. HA! You don’t have one do you? Oh I noticed you just stabbed me, is it because I have an electric car? It’s the silver one out there. No the other silver one..."

 

A competing claim here, which I notice was published the very same day:

Norwegian Gas Station Becomes First in World to Replace All Pumps With Electric Chargers

If the Norway story is accurate, being the first in the world to open earlier this week, then the U.S. station in Maryland was very hot on its heels in opening Thursday.

The included chart claims that Norway had the highest share of plug-in car sales of any nation last year. I was in Norway earlier this year, and found an extremely high adoption rate of both Teslas and bicycles in Oslo, though less so in the other areas we visited. Apparently Olso's high rate of alternative transportation (including rail) is driven by high congestion fees. At least hydropower is abundant.

Second on the chart is Iceland, where we saw numerous remote charging stations during our visit last year.

 

That's the brilliance of ditching the gas pumps. Charge customers will only be hassling other charge customers.

 

May also cut down on the chance of ICEing the charging stations.


Unsupervised!