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.


I’m going to assume we are discussing the US and Canada, as these are the most auto-dependent places in the world. I’ll also divide my response into ideal and realistic scenarios.
The ideal scenario is not that ICE engines are replaced by EVs, but that ICE engines are replaced by walking, cycling, transit, and electric micromobility. This would require:
In this case, most gas stations would continue to function more or less as they currently do. Fewer people would make the switch to EVs, and would instead simply drive their cars less as they become less dependent on them. But due to lower demand for gas, some gas stations would slowly become financially non-viable, and would go out of business. This wouldn’t mean all of them would go out of business at once - instead it would mean that at an intersection with a gas station at each corner, 3 would go out of business and the best one would remain. In denser urban areas, many would likely divide the parcel they are on and continue functioning as a convenience store, while the pump and parking areas turned into some other, better use. Near highways, the larger truck stop style gas stations would likely remain largely the same.
The more realistic scenario is that EV tech evolves and everyone replaces their ICE cars with EV cars. In this case, gas stations will try to predict how the market will move and will try to pivot in whatever direction they expect it will take.
One anticipated direction is that gas stations will turn into charging stations. Since charging, even in the best case, takes a while, these charging stations will provide a more pleasant customer experience, integrating restaurants, shopping, and entertainment to keep customers busy while their cars charge. You can already see the stations anticipating these trends with the rise of “luxury” gas stations like Buccees, Wawa, and Maverik.
Another direction it could go is that instead of a charging station, EVs will develop swappable batteries. This process might require human attendants, and provide jobs for a number of years until the process could be automated.
But in either case, demand for charging stations would be severly reduced in urban areas, as it will be cheaper and more convenient for people to charge at home and at work for their daily commutes. Again, we would see 3 gas stations at an intersection go under while the 4 takes all the remaining business. But under these conditions, the 3 that go under would likely sit as vacant husks, blighting the urban landscape, rather than being redeveloped into something that actually serves people.