Photo: Mark Spearman on Flickr
All around the country - alright, mostly in California - more and more companies offering to have fuel delivered straight to your car are beginning to pop up like mushrooms after a rainy day.
The idea that supports them is simple: pumping gas into your car’s tank is a waste of time, a detour from your commute and an activity that brings absolutely no joy to you, the driver. It’s also quite a dirty job if you’re the one who’s actually handling the fuel nozzle.
WeFuel makes no exception, insisting on the convenience of this on-demand fuel delivery procedure. Based in Palo Alto, California, the new start-up promises to have your car topped up in 30 minutes or less from the time the order has been placed.
The user needs to access the iOS application (an Android version will become available in the spring), choose the type of fuel they need, opt for one of the payment options, and then go back to whatever it was they were doing. Probably work.
A special WeFuel delivery truck will then magically appear next to your car in less than half an hour, provided the vehicle is in either Palo Alto or Menlo Park. The program has plans of expanding to cover San Francisco by summer and the entire Bay Area by 2017.
WeFuel isn’t alone, though, and just like conventional gas stations have been competing for years, a new similar war is set to break out between these end user fuel-delivering companies. Sooner or later, one of them is going to make a move and try to enter another’s territory, as this is a free market after all. Obviously, this should be very beneficial for the clients, as prices will have to drop or another type of incentives will be used.
We’re not very far from that moment, but there’s another prospect looming that’s also caused by the expansion of these services: the disappearance of the classic gas stations. You know, that place built specifically for cars where you went and had a short bonding moment with your vehicle, right before you went in and bought a pack of gum or cigarettes, said “hello” to the owner or the clerk, chatted a little, said “good bye” and went on with your day a little happier. So what if you lost ten minutes of your day - they weren’t lost, they were just spent taking care of your car and talking to a stranger.
There’s no denying these services have their uses. Imagine, for example, you’re running out of fuel, and there’s no gas station around to save you from the embarrassment. You casually park your car as if that’s what you wanted to do all along and fire up the WeFuel app. Ten Angry Birds levels later and you’re good to go, as if nothing humiliating had ever been about to happen.
But do we really want to have everything delivered to us? Do we really want to spend even more time in front of a computer, sitting at a desk or looking into a telephone screen? Is it really a good idea to have a large truck burn a few gallons of fuel to reach our car in order to fill the tank? Depending on how these services evolve, we’ll probably find out the answer to all of these questions, but I’m afraid we already know what it is.
WeFuel makes no exception, insisting on the convenience of this on-demand fuel delivery procedure. Based in Palo Alto, California, the new start-up promises to have your car topped up in 30 minutes or less from the time the order has been placed.
The user needs to access the iOS application (an Android version will become available in the spring), choose the type of fuel they need, opt for one of the payment options, and then go back to whatever it was they were doing. Probably work.
A special WeFuel delivery truck will then magically appear next to your car in less than half an hour, provided the vehicle is in either Palo Alto or Menlo Park. The program has plans of expanding to cover San Francisco by summer and the entire Bay Area by 2017.
WeFuel isn’t alone, though, and just like conventional gas stations have been competing for years, a new similar war is set to break out between these end user fuel-delivering companies. Sooner or later, one of them is going to make a move and try to enter another’s territory, as this is a free market after all. Obviously, this should be very beneficial for the clients, as prices will have to drop or another type of incentives will be used.
We’re not very far from that moment, but there’s another prospect looming that’s also caused by the expansion of these services: the disappearance of the classic gas stations. You know, that place built specifically for cars where you went and had a short bonding moment with your vehicle, right before you went in and bought a pack of gum or cigarettes, said “hello” to the owner or the clerk, chatted a little, said “good bye” and went on with your day a little happier. So what if you lost ten minutes of your day - they weren’t lost, they were just spent taking care of your car and talking to a stranger.
There’s no denying these services have their uses. Imagine, for example, you’re running out of fuel, and there’s no gas station around to save you from the embarrassment. You casually park your car as if that’s what you wanted to do all along and fire up the WeFuel app. Ten Angry Birds levels later and you’re good to go, as if nothing humiliating had ever been about to happen.
But do we really want to have everything delivered to us? Do we really want to spend even more time in front of a computer, sitting at a desk or looking into a telephone screen? Is it really a good idea to have a large truck burn a few gallons of fuel to reach our car in order to fill the tank? Depending on how these services evolve, we’ll probably find out the answer to all of these questions, but I’m afraid we already know what it is.
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