Nation's gas stations undergo major transformations to attract

A robotic arm comes out of a gasoline pump and inserts itself in your gas tank. While it fills your tank, a scanner reads your credit card from a device attached to your key chain. You zoom off in two minutes flat.

The robotic arm, called "Smart Pump," and the scanner, called "Easy Pay," are both being tried out at a Shell station near Sacramento, Calif.

And that's not all. Most major oil companies are dreaming up other ways to transform the 160,000 gas stations in the country -- trying out robotic systems, for instance, that would check the tire pressure, oil and water while the gas tank is being filled. Does that mean that the old-fashioned American gas station is becoming a thing of the past? Maybe. And does anyone care? Maybe not. Surveys of customers show that Americans find buying gasoline about as appealing as cleaning their refrigerators. There is no thrill at the pump. "Unlike buying a Coke or tennis shoes, you don't taste or feel the product after you're done," said Sam Morasca, the vice president of marketing for Shell Oil Co. That's why people don't like to go to the gas station. And that's why Shell is also toying with the idea of home delivery, filling up your tank while the car sits in the driveway. But the oil companies are not giving up their stations so fast. Why? They happen to be sitting on a real estate bonanza. Since their stations are usually located on convenient corners and off major thoroughfares, they are perfect places for customers to drive into and out of quickly. There is no better business location. "You've got a good piece of real estate and you're trying to get good earnings from it," explained Brian Baker, the chief operating officer of the North America Marketing and Refining division of Mobil. The opportunity to make a bigger profit has set off a frenzy of experiments around the country to see whether gas stations can be turned into one-stop shopping areas, places to drop off clothes for cleaning, mail a letter, get a bank loan, send flowers and rent a video. The new gas stations would be more like micro-malls than simple rest stops with their usual staples of beer, soda, cigarettes and fast food. But if surveys have shown that people don't like going to the gas station for gas, why would they go to gas stations to shop for other things? Well, there is one thing that people dislike more than gas stations: going to a store, parking and standing in line to buy just a few items. When pay-at-the-pump stations first opened, in 1986, marketing executives feared that customers would stop coming into the convenience stores inside the stations. After all, gas stations had built those stores on the assumption that customers who came in to pay for gas would buy other things on impulse. "Historically it was tricking the gas customer into buying something" said Baker of Mobil Oil. But marketing executives were surprised by what happened at the pay-at-the-pump stations. They found that drivers who wanted to buy only a few items but did not want to wait on line at the supermarket or maneuver for a parking place at the store would gladly shop at the gas station instead. After all, the lines at the gas station's convenience store were relatively short because most of the gas was being paid for at the pump. In fact, surveys of consumers showed that only 1 in 3 going into a gas station's convenience store actually made the trip to buy gasoline. "It's a totally different game now," said Baker. The convenience store is driving the gas station. The gas station that runs on gas alone looks as if it is going the way of the cheerful attendant who used to come to your car to pump your gas, clean your windshield, look under the hood, take your money and send you on your way with a smile.

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