They mention Norway in the article and it’s NOT hard to find a fuel pump. Granted many petrol stations has shut down, but often at least one pump remain. And many stations has rebranded as “energy stations”.
What bugs me with the EV market is how you need a fucking app for every fucking vendor when charging on the road (and how Tesla cornered many of the prime spots and tried shut everyone else out)
Filling up with diesel/petrol I just tap my card at the pump and validate with pin. With EV it’s apparently “not possible”. And many of these vendors dont spend much on their crap software. Its pure lock-in.
while not wrong things will not be significant that fast. The average car is 12 years old and so there will be many years of enough still on the road to support existing cars.
Stations will greatly slow down building new gas pumps soon, but existing pumps are a sunk cost - you won’t tear them out without good reason as the money they make is still a nice addition to the bottom line for most stations…
Spare parts often are available long after any new car uses that part - there is a lot of money in autoparts and so someone will make then for 15-20 years to get the market, OEMs keep their molds around just to makes spare parts for years. Modern cars the drawings are electronic so they can make new ones (at a cost) even without the molds. A machinist doesn’t care if the part is for a car, custom drum kit, or a widget factory - just will you pay them.
Eventually gas cars will be colletcors items with fuel spercial ordered. however that will be many years yet,
While I agree in general, the decline of gas stations started long before now. The first reports i can find about the rapidly declining number of gas stations are from the later part of the -00s. Back then it was because cars had better mileage, but it also highlights that petrol stations don’t go bust because 100% of customers disappear. They go bust because 100% of the profits disappear and if the profit margin is only a few percent, that doesn’t necessarily take much at all.
There are other factors as well. When a commodity goes from a high volume, low margin commodity to a high value necessity, prices will start to come up.
I also wonder what happens further up the production chain. It isn’t just cars that are affected, transportation is too. The big push right now is for electrified heavy road transport. And if dents are made in that sector, the real high volume fuel, effects will be seen in everything from transportation to agriculture.
As for car parts, SAAB went bust in 2008 and there are still plenty of those around. However, that was before the digital revolution, so they are easier (not easy) DIY cars. Finding dealer specific experts with required skills and software is harder for newer cars.
But you cannot own any EV because they are internet connected proprietary trash. Fully open source hardware is essential to democracy. Proprietary, internet connected vehicles are dystopian fascism. Democracy is fundamentally incompatible with trust in anyone else. Trust is a fascist political structure. Citizens in a democracy have a requirement to be informed and skeptical of all sources. Skepticism is the antithesis of trust. Trust is for halfwit fools victimized by cons.
Dude are you ok?
