Selling cheap gas to promote electric cars?

Let's see. You're a gas station owner who wants to get out of the petrol business and into something a little more eco-friendly. Electric cars, say. How do you mark the transition? For Milton Grin, owner of a Valero in Kansas City, Missouri, the answer was to attract attention to his new venture by selling his current product at discount prices - like $1.99 for a gallon of gas (diesel prices remained high). To take advantage of the media and customer attention his sale generated, Grin had three EVs on display at the pumps. To me, this is a pretty good way to highlight the difference between fueling at a pump and charging from a plug. You need gas? You gotta drive somewhere and wait in line. You need electricity, just plug it in. The gimmick worked, and the response was so huge that Grin had to stop the sale in the early evening because of the traffic swarm.

See news stories of the cheap gas sale here, here and here. Tipster Andrew (whose last name is also Grin, according to his Flickr profile) has also posted a collection of photos of the event over on Flickr. Thanks, Andrew.

[Source: KCTV5]