The price of real estate, the decreased income that service stations receive from mechanical repairs and fueling at big box stores, have contributed to the steady decline of fueling stations in the last two decades.
In the future, autonomous vehicles will make all the decisions about where and when to stop for refueling, so no one knows for sure what a gas station will look like when the computer is running the cars.
“In other words, the new model took the money out of petrol. Big box stores weren’t selling fuel cheap because they wanted to profit on it — they were selling it cheap because they were going to make a profit on all the other stuff consumers purchased after they bought their petrol.”
Read the article at BBC.