Yeah, at this point inside US cities the majority of pumps have been moving to the model of grocery stores with pumps attached, and that model still works with chargers augmenting and then replacing pumps, because grocery stores generally are useful places to charge while you shop. (Just as malls seem to be good places to add chargers, if you expect and/or want people to linger/browse while they charge.)
Convenience stores and restaurants will still be useful on the highways with or without gas pumps around. (People will always need to use a restroom or grab some grub on long road trips.)
I figure some smart "medium fast" food restaurant that benefits from a lingering dining experience, but doesn't take too much advantage of it (ie, doesn't actively slow the diner down), will integrate chargers into their franchise plans and become the new king of the highways in the way that MacDonald's (and regionally, Waffle House) became synonymous with pit stops along the open road in the 50s and 60s.
It won't work quite as well just because it takes so much longer to charge an EV than it does to gas up a regular car. So the limited lots of existing stations will have a much lower turnover rate than they do now. Also most places around me are very much just the traditional convenience store you can only get a very limited selection of stuff (like a smattering for fruit and milk at best with maybe some cereals or something) those places aren't going to be long stops to shop around in so charging at them isn't going to be a draw.
> Convenience stores and restaurants will still be useful on the highways with or without gas pumps around. (People will always need to use a restroom or grab some grub on long road trips.)
Yeah like I said in my original post I don't think they'll go 100% out of business along highways but it will largely be the larger stops that have some restaurant integrated or just restaurants along the highway that survive not the small snack food and gas places that are a majority today. Charging (today and for the foreseeable future unless there's another breakthrough in batter tech that pans out at large scales) just takes too long for anything without some kind of food or other attraction to make sense as the charging stations on longer trips.
It's eventually going to be something that happens when the car is parked, rather than a specific stop for charging/gassing up. I've already seen parking garages and street side meters equipped with EV chargers (although rarely an EV parked there). Ideally all batteries would be standardized, so you'd just pull up to a place and swap like you would a propane tank, but open standards aren't as inticing to investors as trying to dominate market share with proprietary tech and licensing it to everyone. Probably going to take a law standardizing swappable EV batteries to nip that bad behavior in the bud.
The valet game should get interesting. Pay extra to guarantee charging would be a quick and easy way to gouge a few more pennies.
As far as gas stations goes, I don't see a route where most of them aren't folding. Franchises don't have the resources to retool like a big corporation that can light money on fire every month and still increase in value.
Swappable batteries likely won't be cost effective for cars for safety reasons, if nothing else. Most EVs have the batteries "buried" in impact-protected spots, with firewalls between them, and in such ways that the battery is reliant upon and sometimes in turn contributes to the structural integrity of the car. Even if the packs were standardized by regulation, getting safe access to the packs in most EVs is expensive and unsafe access is potentially hazardous to long-term fire and/or structural safety of the vehicle.
Anyway, yes, the focus on charging inside of cities should be places that cars are already parked. For travel between cities, it will be businesses that can best take advantage of 30-45 minutes of downtime (assuming fast charging), and I do think it's going to be a restaurant chain and/or mini-mall concept that's going to be the best fit for highway travel. It's going to take a smart franchise or two to experiment there, and it may even be an existing franchise like Pilot or MacDonald's perhaps, but it will be a shift away from smaller convenience stores to probably something larger with more to do.
The one spot I see swappable batteries probably happening is on large trucks where space isn't at so much of a premium and the charge time actually costs the operators money. In cars yeah the batteries probably won't be in an accessible area for easy swapping.
Convenience stores and restaurants will still be useful on the highways with or without gas pumps around. (People will always need to use a restroom or grab some grub on long road trips.)
I figure some smart "medium fast" food restaurant that benefits from a lingering dining experience, but doesn't take too much advantage of it (ie, doesn't actively slow the diner down), will integrate chargers into their franchise plans and become the new king of the highways in the way that MacDonald's (and regionally, Waffle House) became synonymous with pit stops along the open road in the 50s and 60s.