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Germany will require all petrol stations to provide electric car charging

reuters.com

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Re: Germany will require all petrol stations to provide electric car charging

#51

Post by 11thEarlOfMar »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #49
11thEarlOfMar wrote: post #43

This begs a larger question of how petroleum mega corps are going to weather the transition to electric vehicles. Looking at BP, margins are really poor. They have $22 Billion in cash vs. $11 Billion operating expenses and $24 Billion in debt. There is time: in March, 2% of new vehicles sold in Europe were BEV. On the other hand, the total spend on electricity per mile driven is 1/3 that of petrol. That means a compl…

> They are toast Oil and gas majors are super cortexes of geological, chemical, industrial, logistical, geopolitical and material science expertise.

True, rebalancing can be part of the plan. But gross margins are 'low' (~7% for BP ~20% for XOM) in spite of the diversification, so there's not a lot of fuel to reinvest. And gasoline sales are about 50% of XOM business, for example [0], which is a lot to make up.

The gas station/fuel part of the business is on a long-term trend down (toast). Finding places to make up for the 50% lost sales will be tricky.

[0] https://corporate.exxonmobil.com/-/media/global/files/annual... SEE PAGE 108

Re: Germany will require all petrol stations to provide electric car charging

#52

Post by cmrdporcupine »

Seems like policy written by petrol car drivers and not well thought out. In the future electric vehicle world 95% of charging will be done at home, or in some facility near your rental building. Most EV drivers have no need to visit charging stations unless they're going on an extended road trip, and then we need a particular _kind_ of DC fast charging station.

I mean... I have an EV and I could count on two hands the number of times I've even used a public charging station. I charge at home, commute to work, charge up some there sometimes, and then return home and plug in. I have a "gas butler" [1] at home. Stopping at a gas station is a thing of the past for me, unless I need to pick up windshield wiper fluid.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nf7Y3OmHsck

Re: Germany will require all petrol stations to provide electric car charging

#53

Post by Something1234 »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #52

Seems like policy written by petrol car drivers and not well thought out. In the future electric vehicle world 95% of charging will be done at home, or in some facility near your rental building. Most EV drivers have no need to visit charging stations unless they're going on an extended road trip, and then we need a particular _kind_ of DC fast charging station. I mean... I have an EV and I could count on two hands t…

Can you disclose if you work for the company in the linked video?

Re: Germany will require all petrol stations to provide electric car charging

#54

Post by zizee »

belltaco wrote: post #44
zizee wrote: post #9

This seems a bit unfair/cruel considering electric cars will probably decimate petrol stations. Most people will charge at home, or when parked at their destination (like work). Edit: Curious to know why this comment is unpopular?

Gas stations make much of their money from the convenience store. The margins on the gas itself are pretty thin. The fact that electric cars take longer to charge means it's more likely that people will venture out of the car to browse the store.

I understand that, but I think electric cars will make total number of trips to petrol station much smaller. It doesn't matter what percentage of your profit comes from the store part of the business if your customers no longer visit.

I don't own an electric car, but I would think that if I were charging at home every night (or at more and more carparks), a trip to the petrol station would almost never happen.

Re: Germany will require all petrol stations to provide electric car charging

#55

Post by zizee »

TaylorAlexander wrote: post #46
zizee wrote: post #9

This seems a bit unfair/cruel considering electric cars will probably decimate petrol stations. Most people will charge at home, or when parked at their destination (like work). Edit: Curious to know why this comment is unpopular?

I don't know why you're getting downvoted, but I wanted to say that petrol stations don't have feelings...

Sure, but their owners do. Perhaps the majority of petrol stations are owned by big business, but I am not so sure. I think many are franchisees/small businesses.

Re: Germany will require all petrol stations to provide electric car charging

#56

Post by grandmczeb »

Something1234 wrote: post #53
cmrdporcupine wrote: post #52

Seems like policy written by petrol car drivers and not well thought out. In the future electric vehicle world 95% of charging will be done at home, or in some facility near your rental building. Most EV drivers have no need to visit charging stations unless they're going on an extended road trip, and then we need a particular _kind_ of DC fast charging station. I mean... I have an EV and I could count on two hands t…

Can you disclose if you work for the company in the linked video?

At least according to their previous comments, they work for Google[1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23322664

Re: Germany will require all petrol stations to provide electric car charging

#57

Post by cobookman »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #52

Seems like policy written by petrol car drivers and not well thought out. In the future electric vehicle world 95% of charging will be done at home, or in some facility near your rental building. Most EV drivers have no need to visit charging stations unless they're going on an extended road trip, and then we need a particular _kind_ of DC fast charging station. I mean... I have an EV and I could count on two hands t…

Given how crowded Tesla Superchargers are, its not that crazy of a concept

Re: Germany will require all petrol stations to provide electric car charging

#58

Post by est31 »

raphaelj wrote: post #28
vazamb wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Petrol stations in Germany make almost no money on petrol. I think it was something along the lines of 2-3 cents/liter. I am quite sure that they will be happy to have customers stay in their shop for longer.

That's still quite some decent margin. It takes about 5 minutes for me to fill my 40L tank, which would be about 1€. Everything is automated, there is absolutely no human involved, and it works 24/24.

There are extreme construction costs for petrol stations. It's highly regulated due to the fire risk and other issues. You can't even lead surface water into the gutter without prior filtering.

https://www.abwasser-analysezentrum.de/branchenuebersicht/mi...

Re: Germany will require all petrol stations to provide electric car charging

#59

Post by ip26 »

freeone3000 wrote: post #16
ben_w wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Devil is in the details. If all stations must have “a” charger of no specified performance, that’s not going to be much of a burden given current ownership levels. That said, this is designed to increase BEV ownership levels, which might lead to large queues if the stations all only have one charger… but that would lead to natural economic incentives for fast chargers and more of them even without government incentiv…

Yes, exactly. When gasoline powered vehicles were rolled out, we didn't start with a coast-to-coast network of gas stations, but we did have sufficient farmers willing to sell gas to make it mostly work. This could prove the same benefit for electrics - "some plug somewhere" is enough to eliminate most range problems for long trips, and once it's there...

"Some plug somewhere"... A 120V plug functions... But you will need to come up with something to do for the next 12-24 hours.

Re: Germany will require all petrol stations to provide electric car charging

#60

Post by bsder »

sib wrote: post #10
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The electric-car charging stations that I have seen at petrol stations elsewhere in Europe are not actually maintained by the petrol station. Rather, it appears that the petrol stations just allow charging-station brands to rent a portion of their plots of land to erect their infrastructure on. Consequently, requiring car charging at all petrol stations, instead of being a financial burden, may actually allow them to…

If it were the case that allowing charging was an economic benefit to the owners of gas stations, I guess they'd already be doing it. Since so few of them are, I assume that it's not beneficial. If the government wants this, it should pay station owners to do it.

>If it were the case that allowing charging was an economic benefit to the owners of gas stations, I guess they'd already be doing it.

Chargers require capital outlay. Unless you can prove that your revenue is going to offset the capital outlay fairly quickly (<1 year), I'm not going to do it given the margins on most gas stations.

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