How long before we have no jobs anymore?

"Grope" in the headline makes me read "Then it opens the flap, unscrews the cap, and pretty much does everything you would do if you were pumping, minus the beef jerky and Red Bull" very differently.

I sense that this idea has lots of potential sexual applications... but that's just the way my brain works.

With the words "robot" and "gropes", admit it: we're all thinking of Bender.

What's the incentive to install these? Convenience for the customer, driving more sales to the station? Would this be enough of a reason to result in a competition by owners to upgrade their stations?

I guess my question is - why pay 100K for a robot to pump gas when your customers will do it for free?

@joemono: Well, in places with extremely inclement weather, there might be a substantial incentive for customers to go to a place that has robot gas-pumpers.

@braak: Okay, I hadn't even thought about weather. In places that require employees to fill tanks (Oregon, NJ) I wonder how quickly a robot gas-pumper would pay for itself? I'm too lazy (and rusty with numbers) to do the math.

It'll just be another footsoldier in the robot uprising. I wonder if the robots will laugh as we run around in vain to extinguish the blaze?

@joemono: Well, I don't know the score in Oregon, but I know this would never happen in New Jersey. The reason it's illegal to pump your own gas there is precisely to keep gas pumpers employed.

If you assumed the average gas-pumper makes 8 an hour and works a 40 hour week, an 111k robot would pay for itself in a little less than six years--not counting any kind of benefits or matching social security payments or payroll taxes.

Men carrying large amounts of metal are warned to stay away from these. If they are lucky, what will happen to them is considered illegal in many states. If they are unlucky, illegal in all of them.

@braak: And I'd want it even less than I want the guys who pump my gas now. One of the many things that suck about living in Joisy is that they don't trust us to pump our own gas.

@NefariousNewt: Bwah-ha-ha! Have you ever seen the Daily Show sequence with...I think it was a state legislature representative from Jersey trying to defend the ridiculous "Can't pump your own gas law?"

I think it was a Rob Riggle special report. If you haven't seen it, I'd recommending finding it, and then watching it, and then if you feel like it, laughing at it.

I wonder what the robot will do when it encounters my car, which has a gas flap that can only be opened by pulling a little lever inside the car?

@grenacia: Your car gets robo-raped, of course.

We had something like this installed in a couple gas stations near where I lived awhile ago.

[www.popularmechanics.com]

I remember the only caveat was you needed a special fuel cap. For whatever reason it didn't take off then so I'm not sure why the Dutch are revisiting this 10 years later.