logoalt Hacker News

cogman10yesterday at 10:54 PM1 replyview on HN

Presumably a lot of people will charge at home which significantly cuts down the number of stations needed or the traffic to those stations.

For example, I have 2 gas stations within a mile of my home. They stay pretty busy because people around me constantly need to fill up. I, on the other hand, basically never visit either of those stations since I switched to an EV. I charge at home.

If everyone around me switched to EVs, those stations could not stay in business. There's a grocery store in the same area which makes anything those stations offer obsolete.

Those are the majority of gas stations that die with a mass switch over to EVs. There's a gas station for my hometown without an attached convenience store with 300 people there. There's no way that station stays in service if a significant portion of the community switches to EVs. It already struggles to be profitable as is (I know the owner).


Replies

otikiktoday at 7:35 AM

That might be the case in places where most people live in single-family homes with dedicated garage.

Where I live (Spain) that's not the case at all - our towns are very dense. People in big cities tend to live mostly in flats (Europe's highest elevators-per-capita). Even people in the countryside, where it's more common to have a 1-family homes, often don't have a dedicated garage.