Jeannie Phan / The Globe and Mail
Gas stations as we know them are rarely designed for more than a five-minute pit stop.
But if you are among the growing number of Canadians who drive an electric vehicle, fueling your car takes closer to 45 – a timeframe long enough to motivate some drivers to charge their EV at home instead of a traditional service station.
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To maintain the business of those who have abandoned gas-powered cars, fuel retailers in Canada and the world are not only adding charging stations to their existing locations, but are also transforming their stores into more pleasant hubs with nicer seating areas, stronger Wi-Fi connection, healthier food options and more.
“In the past 30 years, gas stations have already been shifting towards convenience with carwashes and convenience stores, it’s just the looming changes are going to be a bit bigger,” said Colleen Kaiser, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Ottawa’s Smart Prosperity Institute who researches low-carbon transportation.
“I think a pressing question that gas stations face is ‘how can I be attractive to EV clients while their vehicle is charging?’”
Many of Canada’s largest fuel companies are already in the process of revamping some of their locations. Petro Canada has installed charging stations at 57 of their locations in the country, including hubs at 250km checkpoints along the entire Trans-Canada Highway. Patrick Ritchie, the Vice President of Sales & Marketing at Suncor, which owns Petro Canada, said some of their made-over locations are being used as testing sites to learn more about what EV drivers like to do as they charge their cars. In May 2020, Petro Canada opened a location in Cookstown – a convenient stop for Torontonians driving to Ontario’s cottage country – that comprises a dog park, a spacious lounge with a fire place and TV, and locally made baked goods and fresh maple syrup.
“ I think a pressing question that gas stations face is ‘how can I be attractive to EV clients while their vehicle is charging?’
Colleen Kaiser
Mr. Ritchie said that some future Petro Canada locations near hubs where EVs are popular, like Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, could eventually become tailored to the particular needs of nearby communities, as is their station in Cookstown. He said it could make their future gas stations unique, and potentially quite different from each other.
“I think we’ll see more of hyper-localization,” said Mr. Ritchie. “So that site that needs a dog park to drive traffic, that’s what we’ll have. Or if it needs an eat out area in front to drive traffic, that’s what we’ll add to those sites.”
Other Canadian fuel retailers are taking similar steps. Parkland, which sells gasoline in Western Canada under banners like Esso and Chevron, is launching a network of 25 “high-quality” sites between Vancouver Island and Calgary with charging stations, exclusive food offerings, more shopping options and better Wi-Fi.
Alimentation Couche Tard, the giant Quebec-born fueling company that operates worldwide under the name Circle K, has added table seating, enhanced food offerings, better Wi-Fi connections and even playgrounds at some of their destinations in Norway, where roughly 50 per cent of vehicles are battery powered. CEO Brian Hannasch said in a public presentation to investors in September that the company’s research in Norway will inform how they will deploy charging points across North America in the coming year, starting in Quebec and California.
Similar developments are happening around the world. In October, British Sustainable Energy Company Gridserve announced that it plans to open more than 100 service stations, or “Electric Forecourts”, in U.K. in the next five years, which will include charging stations, shops, cafes and showrooms where people can learn about electric cars. China, meanwhile, is in the middle of installing EV ports to gas stations in the city of Nanjing and, in doing so, adding to the country’s 800,000 publicly available chargers.
Despite the growing uptake of battery powered vehicles and supporting infrastructure around the world, Canada is still far away from a complete EV revolution. Not even two per cent of vehicles registered in the country since 2017 run solely on battery power, so experts are not predicting petrol-only gas stations to go the way of the Blockbuster store any time soon. But federal and provincial subsidy programs for EV drivers, an increased availability and selection of battery electric vehicles, as well as a growing collective awareness of climate change around the world are helping to boost EV sales.
Canadians went from purchasing barely 9,000 electric vehicles in 2017 to almost four times that number in 2019. Since then, the gross sale of gasoline in the country in 2020 was down 13.9 per cent from the year prior, and the first two quarters of 2021 were the best for EV sales in Canadian history.
Early adopters of electric vehicles are already choosing which fueling station to frequent based on nearby attractions. Paul Cobb, who co-owns a Kia Niro EV with his partner since March 2021, charges it at home because the only chargers near his house in Temiskaming shores, a small Northern Ontario city of 10,000 people, are isolated in a hotel parking lot.
“There’s nothing to do there, and it’s not like you can do much in the way of errands for those 40 minutes you’re waiting, so that’s kind of annoying,” he said.
Canadians went from purchasing barely 9,000 electric vehicles in 2017 to almost four times that number in 2019.
But when planning road trips with his three children, Mr. Cobb seeks out fueling locations with nearby attractions like beaches or splashpads, or even built-in fun features like restaurants where he and his family can play tourist for an hour.
“I want to stop at a place where I can go swimming, or stop and have a nice meal. Especially with a family road trip, it changes the dynamic.”
There are more than 6,000 publicly accessible charging stations in Canada, and counting. An increasingly intense competition for clients like Mr. Cobb could potentially lead gas stations to invest in progressively impressive upgrades and makeovers, said Dr. Kaiser.
“Aside from having healthier food and Wi-Fi offerings, it’s also possible they start thinking outside the box… if I could get my nails done in the 30 minutes I wait, why not?”
But not all gas companies can easily afford to transform their stations into multi-purpose fueling and leisure hubs. Large chains have the means to invest quickly into new offerings, fail fast, and then course-correct. But for smaller, independently owned gas stations, just buying a single charging port valued at approximately $100,000, let alone installing a playground, can be risky. Especially, said Dr. Kaiser, when considering that the exponential rate of advancement of EV technology could potentially render a perfectly good charger obsolete five years from now.
The price of upgrading stations feels expensive to Helene Drolet, senior manager of sales and operations at MacEwen Petroleum Inc., a family run oil company with 108 locations in Quebec and Ontario - a number that pales in comparison to Alimentation Couche Tard’s 14,000 service stations worldwide, or Chevron’s 20,000, or Shell’s 44,000. Yet, Ms. Drolet said her company is currently investing in charging stations, new lounges and stronger Wi-Fi signals for some of its locations.
“You have to be there regardless of the investment, that’s where the world is going” she said, before adding the Quebec Provincial Government is subsidizing chargers for certain gas stations. “If you have to choose between a Couche Tard store and a MacEwen store across the street, why will you choose one over the other?”
Still, Ms. Drolet said her company is being strategic about which of their locations will undergo makeovers. Some of their neighbourhood stations might not yet be worth modifying because many suburban drivers charge at home, while some of their inner-city locations that are designed for quick traffic might not be large enough to host several vehicles for the time length of a charge. For now, she said, the priority is on upgrading their highway stations.
Dr. Kaiser agrees that the location of individual gas stations will impact whether or not they change much in the next decade. Some gas stations in the cities might eschew EV-friendly makeovers if nearby shopping centres and green fueling companies like ChargePoint and FLO sprout around them.
For now, she said, those gas stations that decide to stick to petrol and basic convenience are not yet doomed.
“In 20 years, gas stations might look quite different, but I think in five years we won’t see much change,” she said. “I think gas stations becoming completely obsolete is going to be a long way away.”