Petrol attendants in South Africa needn’t have to worry about their jobs being taken away for a very long time.
The global push for electric vehicles (EVs) is rapidly changing the car landscape as we know it today, including the ways we ensure our transport continues to run each day.
While internal combustion engine (ICE) cars need regular trips to a petrol station to keep going, these sites have little relevance to EVs, which are usually charged at home.
Naturally, this has raised questions as to whether fuel stops still have a place in our increasingly modern world, which could impact the thousands of individuals employed across South Africa’s forecourts.
The future is complicated
EV adoption in South Africa has been very slow up till now, which makes it easier to dismiss the idea that these vehicles could ever fully replace the need for petrol stations.
However, in today’s global economy, nothing happens in isolation, and South Africa can still expect changes over the coming decade thanks to policies in other parts of the world.
Most notably, Europe is planning to ban the sale of ICE cars by 2035 which will affect the types of models that popular brands like VW, Renault, and BMW are able to produce.
Furthermore, the vast majority of the vehicles manufactured in South Africa are intended for export to markets like the European Union (EU), which means the local industry will have to adapt even if our country is far behind the EU in terms of EV adoption.
In fact, Ford and BMW are already getting ready for these impending restrictions with the imminent launch of the plug-in hybrid (PHEV) Ranger and X3.
All of this sounds like bad news, as the Trade & Industrial Policy Strategies (TIPS) recently published a bulletin highlighting the risks that EVs pose to legacy stakeholders, such as the 140,000 people estimated to be employed at various points in the petrol station supply chain, including roughly 50,000 pump attendants.
After all, most EV recharges are done at home, and public outlets at places like malls or office parks are self-service.
Despite this, there are still a number of factors to consider that paint a far more positive picture.
For one thing, ICE cars are likely to hang on for much longer here than in Europe for various reasons, from affordability to concerns over maximum driving ranges.
The average age of a vehicle in South Africa is estimated to be 11.8 years old, so it may be decades before we reach a point where everyone is driving a battery-electric vehicle (BEV), if that happens at all.
More realistic is that the local industry will lean towards hybrid powertrains, which may have electrical assistance but are still propelled by fossil fuels like petrol and diesel.
The thing is, even if South Africa hypothetically transitioned to BEVs tomorrow, service stations are still unlikely to disappear; rather, they’d evolve.
Morgan Knowles, the transaction manager of Occupier Services, Cushman & Wakefield | BROLL, believes that forecourts will simply diversify their range of services – something they have already been doing for years.
Most fuel stops also have convenience stores in partnership with big supermarket chains like Pick ‘n Pay or Woolworths, and others have kiosks or entire fast food restaurants on their premises.
The “to-go” consumer culture of today means these services are incredibly valuable, to the point that they now make up around half of a typical forecourt’s revenue.
In preparation for the future, service centres could also start installing charging outlets for EVs, as well as alternate fuels like hydrogen or liquefied petroleum gas should the latter catch on.
Since it takes longer to charge an EV than to refuel an ICE car, the types of services offered can also be expanded to include things like pharmacies, co-working spaces, laundries, gyms, and pick-up zones for e-commerce businesses like Takelot and Amazon.
These “mobility stations,” as Knowles calls them, will help to create new jobs that can replace many of the ones that will inevitably be lost in the transition to an electric future.
It’s also worth pointing out that station attendants are unlikely to disappear entirely since EVs still require checkups for things like windscreen cleaning, tyre-pressure corrections, and tyre repairs and replacements.
Something else that may foster job creation is security concerns, as EV infrastructure is full of valuable materials such as copper.
This has led to cases in several countries where scrap metal syndicates have targeted public chargers for their copper, a type of theft running rampant in South Africa.
That being said, GridCars director DeVilliers Botha confirmed to MyBroadband that none of their sites have been vandalized or stolen from yet, which is attributed to the fact that most chargers are located in high-traffic zones like malls, or inaccessible areas like business parks.
As the country’s EV infrastructure continues to develop, the concern is that chargers placed along remote routes will become an easy target for criminals.
This presents another opportunity for employment, as full-time attendants and security personnel could be stationed at charging sites to act as a deterrent to criminals.
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