I carry a small hand syphon pump and tube in my trunk. The way it's designed, it should have almost infinite (figuratively) lift, as long as I keep my thumb over the hole. Being able to pull gas out of a another (or underground) fuel tank may come in handy one day.Maybe emergency vehicles should have pumps to suction gas out of the underground tanks at stations during emergencies.
Don't know about the US but here in Australia service stations don't make much money from pumping fuel. Their profits comes from selling food, drink and other paraphernalia mostly. Many are owned by the large supermarket chains.Some gas stations definitely have back up generator systems.
Their motivation to have said systems probably depends on how often they experience power outages, duration, and how much it costs them in spoilage/lost revenue.
I worked at Shell when I was a teenager. The owner said that he made something like 2¢ per gallon on fuel sales. The fuel was just a way to get people in the store to buy drinks, snacks, weed, and questionable stimulants.Don't know about the US but here in Australia service stations don't make much money from pumping fuel. Their profits comes from selling food, drink and other paraphernalia mostly. Many are owned by the large supermarket chains.
I recall as a boy one town we visited on a holiday trip was experiencing a long grid outage (days). We needed petrol. The local fuel station guy had parked his car near the bowser, took a rear wheel off his car and replaced it with a wheel with no tyre, then ran a makeshift belt from the car wheel to the bowser pump drive. He was able to pump fuel for customers that way. Old school analogue bowser flow meter so that worked fine for calculating how much was being pumped.
With modern electronically controlled pumps and digital metering I doubt you could MacGyver it this way any more.
In time if they are unable to transition to be nice places to stop while your EV recharges, they will go the way of the video rental store.After seeing the amount of effort he put into that gas station, and the very small amount of profit he made on it, I can confidently say I will never consider going into the gas station business.
I like the idea of a little lounge area like they have in some truck-stops. Grab a cup of coffee, watch some TV for 20 or so mins, maybe even take a shower ?. I would even offer a monthly charging and snack plan. Offer a number of charges and a free coffee or snack when you come in for a monthly fee.In time if they are unable to transition to be nice places to stop while your EV recharges, they will go the way of the video rental store.
That's my biggest hang-up on buying an electric vehicle. I don't have faith that the grid will work for an indefinite period of time, and I don't have the sun needed to charge a large EV at home. I'll always keep at least one gas vehicle, but I would definitely consider getting a much smaller (think Chinese style) EV. I could charge a 5-10kw pack on a mini 2 seater with my limited sun, but jucing up a Tesla or other large frame EV pack isn't possible for me.That said, grid outages for EV charging stations would suck.
There is some law here in Florida about generators and gas stations, due to the hurricanes, I think.
However, I have no faith in the generators @ these places working for very long, or being maintained, due to the costs.
So plan “B” for us is to keep some Diesel fuel on site for the generator and Diesel powered vehicles.
Diesel lasts just about forever if periodic chemical treatments are applied.
However, the new solar we installed this year puts the genset into “rarely used”, category which is a good thing!View attachment 73564
A selectable Hybrid (electric to gas/diesel) makes more sense for my life right now. As far as I know this doesn’t exist yet.