It is unclear why something designed to pump fuel into a car needs an ad-spewing computer strapped to it, but here we are Welcome to a bumper edition of The Register's ongoing series of screens surprising users. The petroleum retail industry is today's culprit in a double borkage. Americans insist on calling them "gas stations" while those in Blighty prefer the pre-fix "filling" or "petrol". Others might refer to the refuelling locations as " …
I once went to an open air market and noticed a stall selling crockery. The price list included
Plates £5
Side plates £3
Mugs £3
Cups £2
Sausers £2
Bowels £2
I aked the stallholder why he was selling his intestines, but the comment went straight over his head.
ElReg, we need a "Whoosh!" icon please.
In the UK pumps have had adverts for many years. Although you probably don’t take any notice of the add for AA or Direct Line on the back of the nozzle. Or the placards on the pump itself.
Seems logical if the pump has a display panel to extend it there.
T4Media have a service adNozzles that specialise in fuel pump ads in the UK.
Petrol pumps have a horizontal surface for placing the fuel tank cap with keys attached - a surface on which my local Gulf petrol station helpfully taped a tent-shaped advertisment for their loyalty card, leaving nowhere to put one's fuel cap.
I appreciate many vehicles have a hinged fuel cap that stays attached to the vehicle, but it would seem that the advertising team thought that *all* cars have them.
That horizontal surface is designed to ensure a certain percentage of drivers leave their fuel cap behind. I think blocking it is doing us all a favour.
Next time you're filling up, tell the cashier that you left your fuel cap behind on your last visit. They'll probably have a huge box full of them behind the counter!
All the vehicles I've owned or hired that had a removable fuel cap, also had a "slot" in the back of the cover to store it while removed.
Of course, some vehicles will have lost the cover, but one assumes fuel pumps are designed for vehicles as-built, rather than after several "incidents".
The Pontiac Fiero had the filler cap in the normal location.... however the door release was hidden in the door B pillar underneath the mount for the shoulder strap. If you didn't know where it was, you certainly weren't going to find it.
> a "slot" in the back of the cover to store it
And I've never had a car where the cap actually fits in that slot.
Late 1980s Subarus (or maybe just the XT) had a dual action lever on the floor next to the rocker panel. Pull it to open the trunk, push it to unlatch the filler cover. Not at all obvious and the graphic didn't help because it looked like one was supposed to move it to the right, not push down.
My father had a 1956 Chevrolet BelAir sedan. The filler cap was cunningly located behind the hinged left hand rear light cluster. Part of the chrome trim was used as the locking knob, to open it you turned the vertical strip to horizontal, and then the whole light cluster pivoted out backwards from the fender to reveal a conventional filler cap inside. Made for hours of fun as gas station attendants searched around the back and sides of the car to try to locate somewhere to insert their nozzle (oo-er missus!). Back in those days, there was no such thing as self service at the pumps, it was all done by an attendant.
Petrol pump symbol on the fuel gauge which tells you the side the filler cap is on?
I have never owned a car with an arrow or other symbol telling you which side the filler pipe is on. Until recently, I'd never even seen such a thing, but discovered a little petrol gauge arrow on a 2019 Qashqai intended for the US market. Maybe it's a cultural thing?
And how many don't know about the Petrol pump symbol on the fuel gauge which tells you the side the filler cap is on?
From experience of the many hire cars I normally have to endure per year, around 10-20% of motor manufacturers...
It's always fun in such vehicles when you have to fill them before returning them, and you just have to guess when you pull up at the pump unless you've remembered to check first.
It's the first thing I note when I walk around a hire car to check for pre-existing conditions damage on account of usually taking fairly large trips. That said, it's been a while since I've come across a car that did NOT have the little arrow near the tank symbol but it's become a habit, as is locating the means to open it.
My current car has such a bracket, but my previous car had such a discreet arrangement that I didn't notice for about 2 years - the fuel cap had a couple of notches in the side, allowing it to perch atop the flap. It was also tethered so couldn't be removed entirely. A brilliant bit of design, masked by the fact that nobody knew about it - I told several other owners of similar cars who all responded with "wow, never knew that!"
Prior to that car though, there was no such arrangement. The cap either got placed on the pump, or on the car roof. I never had a problem with that either.
If the car didn't already have one, I have always purchased a locking fuel cap and keep the key for it with the ignition key. Left the cap off? No ignition key to start the car and drive away.
That became a habit after buying three replacement fuel caps for the same car in the '70s.
This is the bane of my life at filling stations. My Spider has some sort of high tech design that somehow recovers vapour from the tank and feeds it into the engine (no. I have no idea how or indeed why it does that). As a result the filler cap is around 17cm long and perfectly round, so wherever you put it it will roll onto the ground and under the car.
The only method to avoid this is to hold the filler cap in your hand until you've finished filling and put the cap back in before paying.
But then it is Italian, so the filler cap, like anything not directly related to performance, was designed on a napkin over a particularly boozey lunch
It's the evaporative emissions control system, or EVAP for short. There is basically three lines coming from the fuel tank: the main fuel line, the fuel return line, and the vapor line. The vapor line connects to a canister filled with activated charcoal which stores the fumes from the gas tank when the vehicle isn't running. When you start the vehicle, the intake of the engine forms a vacuum. The computer opens the EVAP purge valve which connects engine vacuum to the EVAP system (charcoal canister, vapor line, gas tank). The collected vapors are drawn from the canister to the engine to be burned, and any subsequent vapors from the tank are sent to the engine as well. So while the engine is running, the gas tank is under vacuum. There is a sensor that monitors the pressure in the evap system. That's how the computer knows you left the gas cap off (and will light the check engine light) when you drive off. This system isn't really high tech. It's been around since the 1970's I think, definitely since the 1980's...at least here in the U.S.
Thank you for the detailed explaination of the EVAP system, that certainly explains the whole check your filler cap advice regarding the check engine light.
I think I experienced something similar once on a Vauxhall Astra that brought the light on when I was literally running on fumes or had really topped off the tank.
Icon because: She likes a Tiger in her....err tank & never is lost as to where the nozzle goes.
If you top off the tank, you run the risk of getting liquid fuel in the EVAP system which is not good. It can saturate the canister and you can end up with a gasoline smell when the car is off. When running, the engine will run rich which can screw with the emissions, injector timings, etc.... The only fix if that happens is to replace the canister.
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lsoas local petroleum officer (yes they exist) from the local authority could have invoked serious sanctions up and including revocation of petroleum licence IIRC (yes for my sins I worked in a petrol station for 4 years between end of high school, through college and up till I started university....(they are a kack place to work with hours as bad)
US fuel pump handles usually have a built-in latch, so you can let go of it while it continues to pump. I suppose a case could be made for the nozzle coming out of the car and spraying everywhere, but it seems an extremely unlikely accident - especially if the user isn't touching it at the time.
Its not so much that, its the potential for static spark discharge due to different potentials building between the user, the car and the pump.
Particularly an issue for those wearing nylon/synthetic underwear and tights/pantyhose, can build up a static charge at quite a rapid rate, example lock on pump, go and get purse from car etc, walk back go to click off pump, static spark, potential vapour explosion (as its the vapour thats the biggest danger with petrol/gasoline)
Pumps we had, had the lockout catch ground off the handle casting at factory, we still had the rest of the componenets to lock it out though (inc the lever below the trigger handle) and so were visually identical to pump handles in the USA, it just wouldn't lock due to the piece ground off, to the bemusement of american tourists who would fiddle with it and then come in and ask if we knew the pump lock was broken and were equally bemused to find it was illegal, one local customer who brought a large plastic peg to clamp the pump trigger got strips torn off him by my boss, she read the riot act to him well and truly about it. don't think he got a word in edgeways
Back in the 1970s I was working for Rediffusion as a TV engineer. Once, while out repairing TVs in one of the company supplied vans, I stopped off at a petrol station for a fill-up. Then, after driving off, I was flashed and beeped at a couple of times by a car driving behind me. I stopped and so did he in order to point out that, as I'd driven around a roundabout, the van had chucked out rather a lot of fuel over the road. I looked on the roof of the van to find the petrol cap still sitting there! Oops!
>I appreciate many vehicles have a hinged fuel cap that stays attached to the vehicle, but it would seem that the advertising team thought that *all* cars have them.
The most common type of fuel cap in the US is a plastic one that sits behind a door that's released from inside the car. This cap is attached to the car by a piece of plastic and you may find a couple of bits of bent tin on the door that you can put it in while fuelling so it doesn't dangle down and mark the paintwork.
I haven't seen a removable cap for many years, its probably an emissions requirement (leaving the cap off will eventually trigger a engine check warning).
Its to do with the EVAP system on US vehicles, system needs to be sealed to work properly and you also burn more fuel due to evaporation of fuel vapours without the cap, hence why the UK mot checks for
the presence of a seal on the fuel cap - so your car isn't spewing flammable vapours and ergo a mobile fire hazard
The typical high school or college kid won't voluntarily read a chapter book, but will stay glued to any digital screen within viewing range. As such, the screens are more effective than paper and cardboard.
Add in that the signage can be updated remotely so that you don't pay someone to drive around and deliver and set up signage, and that the ad agency can sell more, different ads into the same space, and the cost-return probably isn't too hard to justify.
"In the US add in “display adverts to customer”."
Shell in the UK are doing this now. At at least one filling station the noise is blaring and they all seem to play the same advert at the same time but a bit out of sync with each other. I complained to the staff but they just shrugged, so I assume either they have no control over the sound volume or someone higher up is in charge of that setting. Either way, I don't care. I just never go there any more.
For reference, it's the new Shell "services" at Leeming on the A1, Nth Yorks on the southbound side, not the long established Leeming Services on the northbound side (You can get to either from north or southbound direction.) I can only use Shell as the company fuel card is a Shell card, but there are many other Shell filling stations I can use.
Can't have that expensive cpu sitting around doing nothing. John Maynard Keynes suggested in his proposal for with the Depression, IIRC, that rather than pay people dole it was better to pay some people to dig holes, and others to fill them in again. And that's what a lot of the Internet seems to do these days.
"Can't have that expensive cpu sitting around doing nothing."
Worse than that ... I think I suffered "early onset grumpy-oldman syndrome" about 20 years ago when the "product division" told us in the CPU team that they'd want a 2x increase in processing power in 12 months time - when we asked why the answer was that their customer had decided that all the STB menus would look so much better with 3-d shadowing effects so they needed a lot more CPU power (this was pre GPUs) to render the dispaly
engineers no .. helicopter test pilot yes . Working on a touch panel design guy in charge for the buyer was an actual test pilot for the Apache .. guy had excellent requirements so what i was creating became easy to use with eyes closed . Much of what i learned then i still used in my latest designs for Crestron and AMX panels.
In my line of work, we get our repeat customers by being much more flexible than anyone else, at least that I've seen.
Pert near every single job is custom in some regard, and when it's field commissioned we have a rather large leeway to add/change features and customize to customer spec.
We have a saying: "Just like the last machine, different in every way."
Keeps me on my toes, and keeps the £/€/$ coming in.
Had a piece of equipment test software that always bugged me & a member of the design team from the first floor (AKA Skylab) sat with me to investigate the failure rates of the units out in the world.
He jumped on me when I set up a Voltage Controlled Oscillator at the upper end of the test limits (Unlike my idiot co-worker who always aimed them for the bottom of the range, we usually caught his ones at final test).
"WHOA! That's why they are failing in the field, you set them up too high" He smugly pronounced.
"Watch this" I replied even more smugly as I fitted the screening can lid I had kicking about & the VCO fell to dead centre of the range as I had hoped.
"Ohh I hadn't accounted for that" he dejectedly replied.
"Well while you are accounting for that, can you please correct the spelling of Course Adjustment to Coarse Adjustment at the same time"
CO
These modern days require us to have full touch screens with a multiverse of options. I suggest, that mere commercials are no longer adequate. As an example:
Option 1: do you want sugar with your gasoline?
Option 2: do you want windowwiperwash with your diesel?
Option 3: do you want tireair with your super 100 octane?
Option 4: do you want coupons with your mileage?
Option 5: ok
Then, after the free-form options have been burned into our minds, then we will make them a non-voluntary option and make you click through all of these before any drop of gasoline may flow. I'm sure, that "ok" will find its way up the ladder so we can both be done faster and have our pockets picked in an orderly fashion.
My missus just bought me a Wendy's breakfast Baconator (with sausage*) for the first time. Better egg & meat quality than Tim Horton's, that's for sure.
* The details: two layers of bacon AND a sausage patty, plus egg and cheese. Looks like I better skip lunch to make up for all that.
Then again Timmy's is a pretty low bar to clear....their peach juice for one is rank and chemically.....Their bagels are passable (well last time I ate one), tim bits aka timshits are ok if nothing else is on the menu or within visual range, albeit I did have a soft spot for a boston creme doughnut from Timmys
Haven't eaten fast food in about 10 years, subway in about 5 years...and tbh I don't miss it, albeit I do have a hankering for an Arbys (which thankfully for my waistline I can't get in the UK)
My wife (Who is a canuck, I'm just a nomad :P) was a both amazed and partly disgusted that I managed to eat not only most of 1 meal from wendy's but the 2 I was given gratis after they supplied me with a burger with green stuff I hadn't asked for on about 1/3 of it, Canada being almost as litigious as the states in some respects, manager promptly offered me burgers as compensation, her remark "I cannot believe you are going to eat both of them" my reply "you already said you didn't want one, I've not really eaten all day AND they're free"
Back when I could still see to drive I'd often encounter those buggers when I tried to refill the tank with petrol. Noisy, annoying, & ignored as much as possible, they were still enough to make me want to "accidently" back my truck over the pump... repeatedly.
My local Shell station was the worst for this with them forcing a 30 second ad on you before it would start to pump the fuel. I complained, they did nothing, so I stopped buying from Shell. Funny how that works, eh? Piss off your customers & they'll choose not to BE your customers any longer.
I found a local Mom&Pop station that did *not* have the ad slinging shite, switched almost entirely to buying my petrol there, & let them know the reason. The lady was rather pleased with my candour & replied that she valued the feedback. Then she gave me a free cookie from the rack. I wonder why they became my favorite station?
*Remembers the cookie & tries not to drool*
=-)p
TL;DR: Ads are bad. Chocolate chip cookies are tasty.
Some, though not by any means, all, of the pumps have a hidden "MUTE" mode. One of the eight buttons surrounding the screen, when "long pressed" MAY mute the audio for the duration of the sale.
WHICH button it is, or whether it exists at all, seems to be programmable on a by-pump basis. So this may not apply to you, but what else were you going to be doing for the 5 minutes it takes to fill your tank?
And there's always the "shove a sharp object through the speaker grille" approach, but I would never recommend vandalism.
I had a chat to the owner of an independent petrol station in the UK once.
He described how many millions of pounds the business turned over, Then how much he was able to pay himself, which was around national average income, despite all the money and effort. Other forms of income like advertising (historically renting videos etc) have always been necessary.
Here in Canadaland, the fuel sales typical just covers the rent & fee's the site operator has to pay, their income comes from the non-fuel sales. Close their station down, they are chomping at the bit to be back up. I had one complain about 10 minutes downtime, while I switched out a UPS.
This is an mix of the two calls, once for the fitting of a non-approved UPS as a stop-gap & its proper replacement two days later (Oh & the project to replace all the PedroCaanada UPS's a few months later).
Why do you need to do this now?
You logged a ticket, we have a SLA to be on site within X hours\We have a project from Buncorp to do this.
Why don't you come back tomorrow at 5am before the station opens & do this!
They don't have cameras; they are PCI payment keypad devices, so if they do have cameras they are more likely to be from the card skimmer 'add on' that is trying to capture your keypresses.
What does have cameras, is the convenience store and the canopy; pretty much every service station has a full set of cameras set to pick up drive-offs and cash being pocketed by staff.
So in summary, you are turning your back on a device which doesn't have a camera, and being picked up by cameras that are more likely to be doing ANPR and/or facial recognition these days.
(and yes, I do work in the industry)
The first image I'm pretty familiar with (it has caused a giggle about the office), and the simple explanation is twofold.
1) It's a telemetry and terminal management program. Any station that's more complex than the "Lift handle, attendant pushes button when the handle sets off a buzzer by them" ones are going to have one running on the dispenser. Imagine managing a forecourt with 64 stations and trying to pull logs and push configurations without one.
2) It's probably not running the latest version of software. Fueling is an industry that places emphasis on stability and security more than bleeding edge. I know, this image does not suggest stability, but there's plenty else to go wrong. Imagine having BigNameOilCo telling you that the dispensers keep rebooting in a Fibonacci sequence after lunch or don't recognize chip cards...
The second one... That typo is all on the fueling station co themselves, it comes from the POS system inside.
A lot of commentards mention there being buttons, one of which might be the one to hit to mute the sound. And those pumps being run by the big oil companies.
The only petrol station I know that has video ads on their pumps is one owned by a local fuel vendor (a dozen filling stations or so around the region). It has no sound, no buttons and just a small selection of static ads for local businesses (including themselves). Occasionally there's a video of the innards of a pump working to put fuel in your tank, still without sound.
But this may have changed in the past year as most of our filling-up is now done via a Mennekes Type 2 socket near the front door, and filling up the diesel has been reduced to maybe a quarterly event.
With an EV charger, the whole point is you plug in, punch up your credentials and walk away. If you charge up at home or work, you may rarely even use a public charger. I hate those screeching little speakers cranked up to 11 playing inane ads for things I can't afford or choose not to afford.
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