Three gallons for a quid? But you’re going back to when there were 240 pennies to a pound, right … so it was 80d / gallon? Biggest con ever switching petrol prices from pence/ gallon to pence /litre. Around the same time as the Falklands so naturally the panic-mills started churning out rumours of possible fuel shortages and forecourt prices naturally climbed. Except this time every penny more on the price was 4.54 pence/gallon, only it didn’t sound like it.
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Hmm. Fifty years ago I started driving, and as I pointed out earlier in this thread - three gallons for a quid. The £1.57 per litre I recently paid for Shell V-Power equates to over £7.00 a gallon ! Wow !
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The power of inflation. The headlines saying petrol at highest price since 2012 neglect to mention that adjusting for infltion, that 142p liter of petrol in 2012 would cost 171p today; so not quite there.
50 years ago was decimal so 33 pence would inflate to £4.34 a gallon, or 95p a liter.
But with fuel, the cost at th pump isn’t so simple, because, as we know, the cost includes duty and VAT. Duty was set at various rates by past Chancellors for various reasons.
Good report on historic trends:
Duty has a dampening effect at the price of the pump. In the States, where there is little in the way of fuel tax, in recent years, they have experienced short shocks where the price at the pump nearly doubled. Of course, it was much lower than here. But Americans budget as well, and those huge changes can really cause disquiet, because something taken for granted has to cut back. A good friend of mine, a full Army Colonel and Professor (so on ~$100k a year) complained recently that he had to start filling up at Costco, because the price there was $2.40 a US gallon, versus $2.50 at regular places. Premium fuel, so like our E5, is about $3.50, so a huge difference between different grades.
We are seeing a spike in fuel prices, but when fuel was already at a high price. But its not the same as 2008-10, when fuel went from ~80p a liter to 140p
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Filled the NB up yesterday with BP Ultimate super unleaded on the Four Wantz roundabout Ongar, and that was £1.599 a litre. I did a comparison in our 1.5 ND when I was working, so driving every day and I got far better fuel economy with super unleaded than standard unleaded.
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Had to fill up this evening, I only had 10 miles left in the tank. (I don’t usually go that low 
). V Power was 155.9p a litre in Liverpool.
Not shell v power but was pointed in this direct on my other thread BP Ultimate now £1.73 at Rownhams Southampton. Are we heading to a £2 a litre fill up? Glad I don’t have my Mercedes ML 420cdi any more 100 litres tanks are always frightening to fill up!
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Super unleaded seems to be about 10% more expensive than regular, but I get about 10% better fuel economy, so it balances out.
In my day job I am a lubricant wholesaler and a fuel broker so see the true wholesale price of fuel all day. 95 RON E10 is about 4 pence per litre cheaper than the previous 95 RON E5, but I think that little detail might have got forgotten by the retailers.
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I’m sort of part through a sampling of 97
Ron as opposed to my normal flavour of the now E10 (standard unleaded) Cost difference when I last put some in was 5p per litre. Early feelings are the car seems smoother on start up, felt a little rough before but not noticed much else performance wise or economy yet. A few more miles maybe with that one. I did perform an oil change just before I put the 97 Ron in so maybe the engine is running a little better for this alone, who knows?
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E10 seems like a con. We have to destroy vast amounts of rainforest to grow the crop, then have it shipped across the globe to Europe. E10 has less energy which means 10% more fuel consumption so we have to use more of it and this helps the planet?
On my friends Elgrand Van, which has the Nissan VQ 3.5 V6 engine it seems to have drastically increase his fuel consumption, said he got about 110 miles to £70 worth of E10 but no idea what it was before, he just said it seems to empty the tank quicker at a rate that is noticeable.
I paid £1.57 for my high octane fuel, I looked at the E10 and then looked at my car and just couldn’t do it. 10p per litre difference, 100 liters of fuel £10 extra, isn’t going to bankrupt us is it? Hope not.
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The ethanol in E10 (in Europe) doesn’t come from Brazil.
Bioethanol used n Europe comes from sugar beet (grown in Europe), European grain, household waste, wood pulp.
There are many supplliers, eg.
Swedish company, using grain, and waste from the food processing industry
https://www.vertexbioenergy.com/en/index.php
Franco-Spanish, using grain and surplus wine for ethanol and other products
https://www.cropenergies.com/en/products/ethanol
Crop Energies, German manufacturer. One thing I didn’t realise is that bioethanol production also results in production of protein supplements for the animal feed industry
And of course AB, aka British Sugar
50% British sugar beet, 25% European, and the rest being cane sugar from outside of Europe. The cane sugar goes into speciality food products, so all the bioethanol they produce wll come from the sugar beet sources.
Using less fossil fuel helps the planet (or rather, helps the biosphere, which includes us). While some fossil fuels are used in crop roduction, for obvious reasons, the vast majority of the carbon in bioethanol is from fixation of CO2. Switching to bioethanol won’t reduce CO2 in the atmosphere (not appreciably) but it will reduce the addition fo fossil-fuel sourced carbon dioxide. The whole point of a mineral cycle, such as the carbon cycle, is this virtuous circle between the oxidized state (CO2) and the reduced state (flife). Adding fossil fuel carbon throws the cycle into a state of inbalance, leading to a gradual increase in carbon in the oxidised state.
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Sainsbury at Edenthorpe is the cheapest I have found for normal at £1.40, yet to to check the price of premium for the MX5 there but ESSO on Bawtry Road was £1.55.
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Thanks, I just assumed it was from Brazil.
I wouldn’t be surprised if it was cheaper and legal that Petrol companies would buy it from other sources outside of the EU.
I would guess the demand for sugar now will go up quite a bit, hopefully Europe can continue to supply ourselves.