Quote:
Originally Posted by bayarea328xit
Gas stations have learned to survive as cars have become more fuel efficient - see link. |
that's a great point, though I'd say needing somewhat less gas and not needing gas at all is a pretty wide canyon ... and like I said, it'll happen slowly until it happens all at once.
It's why so many businesses get caught off guard with anything exponential:
plenty of time until one day their business is shrinking 5% / month which gives them about 12 months (or less) before they're dead ... but for the first few years the loss seems so minimal "let's not panic".
And on the gas supply side, it won't be linear: at a certain point, it won't pay to be oil cracking and a whole refinery will shut down and that'll shock through the system ... and before that gas delivery will have the same problem; at a certain point stations will have to start paying extra delivery charges. Big outposts will survive, but the locals probably can't survive even if they have superchargers - maybe they'll see to Electrify America and similar ...
The thing is, the charger networks will already be up - so unless a gas station starts converting NOW they might be stuck with property not high volume enough for gas or charging.