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The story
According to a survey by Teikoku Databank, bankruptcies and voluntary closures among gas station operators have risen for five straight years running, with more than 1,700 companies disappearing over the past decade. In rural areas, filling stations have grown scarce — in the mountains of Hakone, there’s reportedly a large sign warning “Only two gas stations ahead.” On the thread, users debated whether this signals a full-scale shift to EVs, or whether gasoline demand still holds strong for things like portable fuel cans and farm equipment, drawing on the realities of rural life.
Posted 9/12 (Sat), 7:00 AM
Teikoku Databank
Trends in bankruptcies and closures among gas station (“SS”) operators (January–August 2026)
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
( ∪^3▃▃▃▅▆▇▉ BWOOOOOOM
Last week I went to Hakone, and right around where Route 1 enters Hakone-machi, there was a huge sign that said:
"Caution! Only two gas stations ahead in the Hakone mountains!"
In rural areas people keep portable fuel cans in the car
since they use gasoline for brush cutters and farm equipment too.
That's probably how it'll go
you'll end up having to drive dozens of kilometers just to find a gas station.
what would you even use a gas station for?
Vehicle inspections
Wiping windows
Cleaning out the ashtray
Hybrids, maybe, but you barely see EVs out in the countryside. Aren't you mixing something up?
but nowadays if you're driving through the countryside at night, you'd better check ahead of time or you're in for a rough time.
There are more self-service stations than there used to be, so hasn't the number of 24-hour stations actually gone up?
Just head for a shopping mall — there's usually one nearby.
Keeping gasoline in your car during summer will make it explode
way too dangerous.
It's not going to explode. Never even heard of that happening.
There was that famous incident where a fuel can exploded at a festival, remember?
Leaving gasoline sitting out in the summer heat is dangerous.
If portable fuel cans were that prone to exploding, motorcycles would be blowing up all over the place, no? Their tanks are basically the same thing.
In the end that's the only way.
Build EV charging gear at roadside stations and shopping malls like AEON, and push home charging the rest of the way.
For travel, ryokan and hotels will just have to install chargers.
At current charging rates it doesn't even pay for itself.
No current Japanese automaker could pull off those specs.
Probably won't sell — if it breaks down there's nowhere nearby to fix it out in the countryside.
Heard that exact same line when the Sakura launched too.
For old folks in rural areas who don't want anything to change, installing home charging along with an EV is a high hurdle.
They'd probably forget to charge it every day anyway.
Just stuff like brake pads and tire changes.
What about brake fluid? Even if you barely drive, it absorbs moisture and degrades over time.
Brake fluid
Wiper rubber/blades
AC filter
Coolant (for the motor/battery)
12V battery (most EVs still have one)
That incident happened because a fuel can placed right next to a generator's exhaust vent got abnormally hot,
and since it was filled almost to the cap, the gasoline that sprayed out when the cap was opened caught fire.
That's not an explosion.
Re: #134
The suspension is the same as on an engine car, so tie-rod end boots need replacing every few tens of thousands of kilometers
— sooner if you're doing a lot of tight turns on mountain roads.
Even now, with low upfront investment and subsidies covering almost the whole installation cost, charging stations still aren't profitable.
Demand is small because there just aren't many EVs out there, and home charging is convenient.
Tesla owners mostly charge at home or at Superchargers, so they're not going to bother with CHAdeMO except in an emergency.
Some shady shops deliberately damage worn parts and then act like "it was already like that," others take payment upfront and just keep pushing the delivery date back with no explanation.
For older cars, parts supply is drying up too, so maybe the only option left is to give up on cars as a hobby and just treat cheap Chinese EVs as disposable.
Toyota's actually started supplying reissued and modernized parts for old cars now, so things are getting kind of surreal.
Chinese EVs have it even worse for getting parts
it's turning into a problem in countries all over lol
Is it just the dying rural hamlets where they're disappearing?
What's disappearing is the old-fashioned full-service stations.
Self-service stations keep slowly increasing.
For now it's really just customers consolidating around wherever they can still get gas.
Do the boats run on electricity too?
"Mainstream"? You should probably separate "remote islands have a higher EV ratio than the national average" from "mainstream."
According to data as of July 2025 (compiled by Miyakojima City's Eco Island Promotion Division), the number of EVs registered in the city is 423, putting the EV share of all vehicles on the road there at about 0.75%.
For comparison, other areas:
・Okinawa Prefecture overall: about 0.29% ・Ishigaki City: about 0.17% (84 vehicles) ・National average: about 0.3%
but from around 2035 it'll climb into the 30% range,
and by 2040 it'll pass the halfway mark.
After 2040, engine vehicles will only be sold for niche special-use cases, so it'll effectively become forced EV adoption.
Sounds like Honda's blueprint.
If "adoption rate" means share of new car sales, then EVs would need a 30% share of new car sales for 10 straight years just to bring gasoline cars down by 30%.
Background and key points of debate
The decline in gas stations isn’t simply down to EV adoption. It traces back to the 1998 deregulation of station openings, which drove a shift from full-service to self-service stations; under that thin-margin, high-volume model, smaller operators without the financial cushion to compete have been dropping out ever since. Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry treats municipalities with three or fewer stations as “gas station deserts,” a designation that also matters for securing fuel during disasters. Where the thread split was over whether rural fuel demand will keep centering on gasoline going forward, or genuinely shift over to EVs and charging networks. On the question of storing portable fuel cans, one claim that they “explode” got corrected — the real festival incident involved gasoline igniting after spraying out under high heat, not a straightforward spontaneous explosion. It’s also easy to miss from the article alone that the “over 1,700 companies gone” figure includes not just bankruptcies but plenty of voluntary closures due to a lack of successors.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “[Gas Stations] Rural gas stations disappearing — bankruptcies and closures rise for 5th straight year, over 1,700 companies gone in a decade.”
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