Some Russian drivers are waiting up to three days to fill up. Now the country’s biggest bank wants to help them find a pump with gasoline.
Sberbank has launched a service with a map to help drivers find a gas station where “gasoline is most likely available.”
The company says the map reflects a current picture of 23,000 stations nationwide. The service is based on anonymized fuel-purchase data.
Tapping a specific station shows when a gasoline or diesel purchase was last recorded there. But some stations — particularly those outside Moscow — are listed as having “no fresh data yet.”
Sberbank promised that information on station congestion and the availability of specific fuel types would be added “very soon.”
The day before, Yandex announced that it had begun displaying data on lines and fuel availability at gas stations in its Yandex Go and Yandex Zapravki services — but only for Moscow and St. Petersburg so far. Previously, Yandex made this data available only to taxi drivers.
As the fuel crisis spread to more regions, long lines formed at gas stations, with some drivers waiting a day or more. According to drivers, the worst was in the Zabaikalsky region, where waits could reach three days.
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