The Inconvenience & Risks of Gas Cars

From gas station lines to gas station scams, I got a bit of an unexpected education on gas car inconveniences and risks this week.

Inconvenient Lines at the Gas Station

We were driving by a Costco the other day, and I couldn’t believe the lines of gas cars at a Costco gas station in the parking lot. There were a handful of lanes for getting gas, and there were cars waiting in line at all of them!

Being able to charge super easily, quickly, and conveniently every night at home, it was a bit of a shocker seeing people have to wait to fuel up with gas.

I also lived with an EV and without home charging for years, and I only remember having to wait for a charger like that to open up maybe once or twice.

Considering how much people without an EV ask about how long it takes to charge, my jaw definitely dropped realizing people had to sit idling in their gas cars and waiting for a pump to open. However, perhaps that is why they do ask so much about how long it takes to charge — they think it’s going to be the same process with an EV.

I did wonder if this was an abnormal situation at the Costco. I know a lot of people go to Costco for cheaper gas, so I wondered if the station was extra busy due to currently high gas prices from the war on Iran. But it was also a weekend, so maybe this is just normal, busy weekend gas station traffic.

Gas Station Screw Scam

This is a much wilder one. I ran across a super weird scam that’s apparently going around right now.

“An American man has warned fellow road users to pay careful attention to the gas pumps when they go and fill up, having noticed what somebody behind him was doing, which was highly unusual. The incident was shared by Marvis (@marvisdss9h) on TikTok while he was out filling up his own car at a gas station,” Yahoo! shares.

“Marvis  had simply been filling his own car up when he spotted something strange going on behind him. Unsurprisingly, he went to check it out, as stories of strange behaviour and scams at gas stations are not uncommon. What he found was a screw attached to one of the gas pumps, which at first might not seem unusual.

“But as he revealed, this is a little trick that some road users use to try to avoid having to pay for their own gasoline. In fact, it is a massive scam that can then cost the person who just filled up with gasoline a huge amount of money.”

So, yeah, that’s concerning.

If you are still driving around in a gas car, be sure to watch out for this screw scam.

Naturally, for EV drivers, there’s no such risk. You can charge at home or at work much of the time. For people without those options, I’m not aware of any scams comparable to this, but let us know if you’ve heard of anything.

Addendum/edit: There are a lot more risks of gas cars than this. The article was not meant to be exhaustive.

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