At a certain point of EV adoption, selling gas won’t be a very profitable business, because fewer and fewer cars will need it. But there will still be some cars that need gas, that final, say, 30% of ICE cars that are still on the road. But if all or most gas stations shut down at roughly the same time, because they operate under the same business conditions, then those last few ICE drivers will be pretty out of luck, no?
To be clear, this is not an argument that we shouldn’t electrify and decarbonize as fast as possible. I’m more interested in the logistics of managing that transition. And I’m sure that gas stations are not the only case of this phenomenon.
Most likely fuel stations will retreat to outside of city borders, and obviously a lot being shut down and even more people being laid off along the way. It'll happen slowly but there'll be three or four local ones suddenly disappearing practically overnight, the last few being the ones clinging on for dear life due to having no better options until the inevitable closure.