Comment by marcus_holmes

18 days ago

Every time an EV driver charges their car at home, a gas station loses a customer.

Eventually this compounds and gas stations start closing.

That accelerates the switch to EVs because gas becomes hard to find. Which accelerates gas station closures, and so on.

The point at which it becomes impractical to drive a gas-fuelled car is approaching. It will hit different countries at different times, but it's there. 10 years, 30 years, whatever, but it's coming.

Long before that point, a hybrid is just an EV that has to carry around a chunk of useless engine that is hard to fuel.

How has this played out in Norway? (If you know) They're at 90% EV market share, right?

  • Norway cars on the road, December 2025:

      Elbil: 31,78 prosent
      Diesel: 31,76 prosent
      Bensin: 23,90 prosent
      Hybrid (not plug-in): 5,38 prosent
      Plug-in hybrid: 7,18 prosent

    •     Electric: 31.78 percent
          Diesel: 31.76 percent
          Petrol: 23.90 percent
          Hybrid (not plug-in): 5.38 percent 
          Plug-in hybrid: 7.18 percent

  • We don't know the business model in Norway.

    In US, gas stations barely make any profit on gas, its all from the convenience store, beer, water, lottery tickets, trinkets, souvenirs, etc. Costco, HEB, Walmart, etc also have gas and can run it as a loss leader for customers to compete with Amazon. As the number of gas consumers go down, gas stations everywhere will start shutting down, except the Costco/HEB/Walmart, because gas stations can't compete with those prices.

    The U.S. saw over 210,000 stations in the early 1990s, dropping to around 145,000 by 2022, and potentially as low as 115,000 by 2020, according to various data points. Some estimates suggest a potential 50% reduction in traditional stations by 2050 in some regions: https://boosterusa.com/from-the-experts/the-inevitable-death...

    • Last time I read the financial reports for a gas station it was about 1/3 each, gas, tobacco, and food. Tobacco has gone way down since then, but the other two are still important. Gas is low margin, but high volume and so they make a lot of profit on it.