Gas stations6/14/2023 ![]() ![]() It’s one of six Kum & Go stations in the state that have embraced electric vehicle charging. Alongside the grind of I-25, next to a McDonald’s, stands the Kum & Go with its sign advertising the latest price for unleaded. Wellington is the final settlement of metro Denver before the plains spread north toward Wyoming. This collision between electricity and gasoline is in sharp relief at Kum & Go, a chain of almost 400 filling stations and convenience marts in 11 states that has invited the electric vehicle to disrupt its business model. The spigot of federal dollars only increased with the passage in August of the big federal climate-energy bill, stuffed with incentives to restructure the auto industry around EVs. One electric utility, Southern California Edison, forced the resignation of a key lobbyist in order to kneecap the gas station industry as Congress considered President Joe Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill, which included $7.5 billion for electric-vehicle charging stations. The outcome will impact where Americans charge their EVs and how much they pay.Īs both gas stations and power companies hang their future on the electric vehicle, the fight has gotten ugly. Who controls those stations and the fuel coursing through them is the flash point of a fight between the electric utility and the convenience store. Ford and General Motors, America’s two biggest automakers, and the Biden administration have coalesced around a goal of electrifying half of new cars by 2030.Ĭrucial to that future is a nationwide network of charging stations. A burst of investment in both vehicles and chargers from automakers and the feds suggest that’s just the beginning. In just the last nine months, automakers have sold over 576,000 EVs, a 70-percent jump over the same period last year, according to auto-research firm Kelley Blue Book. Two titans of the energy sector - electric companies and gas stations - have peacefully coexisted for a century but now find themselves vying for the right to serve electric vehicle owners. These pumps and plugs facing each other across the asphalt are also totems of an unseen battle.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |