Amazon Adds Gasoline and EV Charging Discounts to Prime

Amazon Prime over the years has expanded to include a hodgepodge of benefits, and starting today members will begin receiving a new one: fuel discounts.

Starting with gasoline, Amazon says that Prime members will receive a 10 cents per gallon discount at roughly 7,000 stations across the U.S. under the brands Amoco, AM/PM, and BP stations.

The company estimates that members could save about $70 annually on fuel, which is half the price of an annual Prime membership of $139 (it’s a bit more if you pay by the month). Next year, the company will add electric vehicle charging through BP Pulse.

Prime started by offering free deliveries on Amazon.com, but nowadays includes free streaming through Amazon Video, cloud photo storage, and Grubhub+ membership, to name a few benefits. Prime has over 180 million subscribers globally and is estimated to have generated more than $40 billion in revenue for the company last year.

Bundling is a typical way of reducing churn in the subscription business these days. Amazon is competing against Walmart for subscribers with its Walmart+ membership program, which also offers free shipping, gas discounts, and a subscription to Paramount+. By including lots of perks in the membership, Amazon hopes you’ll use a couple of them and decide it’s not worth the hassle to cancel and find replacements.

Anyone who has tried shopping on Amazon in recent years knows that it’s something of a mess, with sponsored listings taking up much of the page, millions of Chinese knockoff brands of quality that is hard to discern, inconsistent product pages that make it hard to find the information you want, and fake reviews making for an overall poor shopping experience. It’s not far off from Temu or Shein at this point, and not somewhere to search for quality items.

But hey, The Boys is a well-liked show, and those new Kindles look nice. Forgetting free shipping, the other perks are kind of the real reason to have a Prime subscription at this point. If you drive a lot, the new gas discount certainly is a nice addition.