Do you have a favourite petrol station? I do. It’s a scruffy little place in East Bergholt in the wilds of north Essex. It has two elderly-looking pumps that I think have padlocks on them when no one is around. I’ve never managed to buy fuel from them, but I’m determined to before it’s too late.
Where it takes about two minutes to fill up a car with petrol or diesel, even the fastest electric car chargers take 30 minutes
Because with the headlong rush to buy electric cars (or EVs as they’re so romantically known) fast coming, the humble British petrol station seems under threat. Whether or not Rishi Sunak does go ahead with the ban on new petrol cars by 2030, the trend is already pretty clear: the number of petrol stations has declined since 2000, down from 13,100 to 8,400 today.
But perhaps we shouldn’t be worrying, because cars, of course, aren’t going anywhere. EVs still need to be refuelled, albeit with electrons rather than petrochemicals. And the people driving them – or being conveyed in them if we’re talking about some auto-autonomous future – still need to be refuelled too, as well as having other needs. (You may recall Alfred Hitchcock’s line about the duration of a feature film not exceeding the capacity of the human bladder.) So between the needs of the car and the needs of the human within, there is still a vital requirement for a stopping-off point.
And there’s more good news for transitioning service stations: where it takes about two minutes to fill up a car with petrol or diesel, even the fastest electric car chargers take 30 minutes. The promise of faster charging also belies the fact that many of us are going to have to queue up for our charging slot because chances are there won’t be enough of them to go around. As it stands, there are around 41,000 charging points of which a little under 8,000 are the fast ones. If you consider that there are 35 million cars on the road, you can see the problem.
We are all going to have to wait – and people won’t want to simply sit in their cars. Nor will they be able to because if they have kids, they’ll be going bananas. Which means lunch. Or dinner. And if you’re going to have to be somewhere for an hour while the car charges, you may as well enjoy it. Better that than submitting to one of life’s great indignities, chewing on a BLT in the fast lane.
And this offers a massive business opportunity for service stations of all stripes. Think of it: if you have 20 charging points, you could have potentially 80 diners. Perhaps this is where the Michelin star can reconnect to its motoring roots – and routes? Who knows? In the not-too-distant future, drivers could eke out their batteries in order to reach the battery-charging restaurant of their choice. Perhaps the ‘Lithium-ion Arms’ or ‘Star and Charger’ will be the future destinations of choice – suitably located for weary travellers off the M4 or A1(M)?
Maybe instead of a death knell, the hiss of the EV heralds a new dawn in the age of the roadside restaurant; the revival of the Little Chef as a massive gastronomic driver –appropriately rebranded Spark Plug or similar – or perhaps some entrepreneur has already trademarked the reborn Happy Eater chain (‘Happy EV-er’, anyone?) with reasonably priced family dining in mind?
Petrol stations could well move into other services that are essential to life: they could house barber shops (specialising in buzz cuts, no less), or even gyms – somewhere to run off the stress of the journey as the car charges up. Maybe the classic advertising tagline, ‘put a Tiger in your tank’, will be reborn for a new Esso Gyms sub-brand?
Or maybe selected petrol stations will turn themselves into soft-play centres for the kids: somewhere for them to burn off the energy while your car takes it on board? We could get the kids running on treadmills to generate the electricity going into the cars in the first place.
Even more adventurously, with the advent of routine drink driving – thanks to self-driving cars – maybe ex-petrol stations could be at the vanguard of the rise of conveniently located roadside cocktail bars, a place where you can get you and the car charged up. The options are numerous. One thing is certain, petrol stations are going to change, as well as charge.
Comments