Future of filling stations

What will become of traditional forecourts as EVS take over?

THE recent acquisition of the Chargemaster EV charging network by BP speaks volumes about the longerterm future of filling stations in the UK.

The oil giant reckons a third of miles driven will be EV powered within 20 years, and as environmental regulation forces the pace of change in urban areas, the decline of fossil fuel use there will be fastest. National Grid modelling suggests up to 11 million EVS could be using our roads by 2030 and 36 million by 2040.

Whichever way you look at it, the familiar filling station with its rows of petrol pumps and greasy tarmac seems destined for the history books. But replace those old pumps with the next generation of EV rapid chargers promising five-minute ‘fill ups’ and the forecourt business is good for the next 100 years, right? Well, maybe.

A decade ago, 400 forecourts were closing every year, under pressure from the rise of cut-price out-of-town supermarket pumps. Nowadays the filling station industry is in more buoyant mood, with the out-of-town supermarket threat having peaked, fuel margins rising and massively increased revenues from convenience shopping and fast foods.

BP spokesman David Nicholas says 50 per cent of customer visits to certain filling stations – referred to as retail sites – do not involve fuel sales, while an executive at one of the UK’S largest filling station groups recently said coffee, not oil, was the business’s “black gold”.

According to Brian Madderson, the Petrol Retailers Association chairman, the typical forecourt business ratio of 30 years ago was 80 per cent fuel, 20 per cent shop. “It’s now 40 per cent fuel, 60 per cent shop,” he says. “Retailers have reinvented their offer to consumers, and there is confidence the business will be strong for 10 to 15 years.”

While consumer shopping habits may encourage the switch from filling station to charging station as the EV revolution takes hold, EV charging habits could spell doom for many less well-trafficked forecourts – along with the convenience stores we’ve come to rely on.

It makes sense for the most powerful EV rapid chargers to be located on high-traffic routes such as motorways and trunk roads where many drivers need lots of energy quickly to continue their journeys, reckons Chargemaster spokesman Tom Callow.

But for the great majority of EV users it will make economic and practical sense to charge slowly and more cheaply – whether that’s at home, at work or in a supermarket car park.

“Nowadays, whether you’re putting £5 in the tank or filling up, you have to use a petrol station,” says Callow. “Yet the average daily commute involves just 25 miles or less of driving, and with EV range already up to 150 miles for most new cars – and increasing – drivers will have many opportunities to keep their batteries topped up without ever

“EV charging habits could spell doom for many less welltrafficked forecourts”

needing to use a rapid charger. There’ll definitely be a need for dedicated rapid charging forecourts, but most charging will be non-forecourt,” he predicts.

There are currently almost 8,500 filling stations in the UK, and an estimated 70,000 individual fuel pumps. Callow estimates that in 20 years there will be between one and two million easily accessible public space fast-charging points in the UK – that’s excluding the millions of chargers that could potentially be installed at owners’ homes – and perhaps only “tens of thousands” of rapid chargers like the ones it will be installing on BP’S busiest forecourts.

How the filling station business responds to such odds remains to be seen, but if forecourt convenience stores lose much of their traffic – the logical conclusion of easy access to millions of charging points elsewhere – then hard times for operators could follow.

Unless forecourts are able to meet the challenge and reinvent themselves again, many drivers will have to think about getting their hit of “black gold” elsewhere.

FROM: Greg Burton WITH regard to your article on Highways England trialling in-car displays (Issue 1,536), I would suggest that a very large number of drivers do not know the essentials within the Highway Code. Until this is addressed, in-car displays will achieve nothing positive.