Petrol Cost Cutting System Article Discussion Area

redux

tomstickland wrote:

You cut and pasted identical text into two threads. You must be affiliated to this project.

... and cleared off rather than answer a couple of sceptical questions ...

Gingertom_2

Do not know if their Diesel is good or bad but it is always in my area ,Canterbury , at least 1p cheaper than any other supplier.
Linked to the ASDA Mastercard which I ONLY use for fuel, 25000 miles a year -it gives you 2p a litre off. ie roughly a saving of £55 a year on my mileage. For free.
ps I ALWAYS pay off fully each monyj by D.D.

Gorgeous_George

I think all cars should be fitted with some form of fuel computer. Whether it's a simple traffic light system where green is good and red is bad, or a more sophisticated data readout that shows currentl mpg.

Mrs GG had a Honda Jazz with just such a computer. I used to drive whilst trying to gain 50mpg. Ignore the readout and mpg fell to nearer 45/46.

Martin's article is good but Part 3 should be 1st as this gives the most savings IMO.

Assume:
a car achieves 50 mpg
petrol costs 89.9p at garage 1 and 87.9p at garage 2.
you draw 40 litres when you fill up

How far extra to garage 2 would you be prepared to travel?

I make it just over 5 miles each way based on fuel cost alone. There's also additional wear and tear on the car and the cost of your time.

A lower mpg makes the journey less worthwhile with a journey of only 3 miles each way being worthwhile (excluding the other running costs).

Add just 26 litres of fuel (car at 30mpg) and you can only travel 2 miles each way before you'd be out of pocket.

AND, if we all travel to Tescos then future generations will be able to thank us for the demise of the local garage. When there's less choice, the supermarkets will put prices up.

Now, we could talk about the quality of supermarket fuel.



GG

wollix

Never understand why when it comes to price cutting on car fuel costs LPG doesn't get mentioned - it does cost between £700 and £2000 to convert the car (which must be petrol) but with LPG prices between 42p and 50p thereafter it only takes about 1 to 2 years to repay this. I did it 5 years ago and have therefore been saving for the last 4 years
AND its much better for the environment
recently borrowed my fathers diesel citroen BX for a week and really knew the difference whenever i filled up...

wollix

as far as i know the government grant system for this is a mess and the converter has to be certified for the actual model of your car - not just cars in general - as this certification costs most converters arent able to offer the scheme which has therefore run into the ground through lack of use
the best thing is to ask all your converters in the area - if there are grants they will know about them

charlieheard

There is of course no guarantee that the government won't raise the tax to a level comparable with petrol and diesel, so you could be left at any time with a white elephant.

There is also the issue that many people shy away from LPG-converted cars, whether the converting firm is certified or not, so that their resale value is much lower than a comparable unconverted car. That could wipe out any fuel savings unless you keep the car for many years.

tomstickland

I just wrote a long post with info on why fuel additives might or might not work but it's gone. I'll research it more later and start its own thread; it's a fascinating topic for sure, and one ripe for charlatans to exploit.

thependragons

And I, for one, will look forward to reading it. Being new to the forum, how will I find it ??
Mike Pendragon

tomstickland

What particular catalysing method do your pills claim to use? The website is very vague.

TwistMyArm

Hi guys... I found this article interesting and have been thinking about how to save fuel for some time now.

For me, at least, I decided that saving fuel was not my real goal, but saving money was. The difference being that with the former I was trying to get the most kilometres / L whereas with the latter I was actually trying to get the most kilometres / $. That is to say, what was costing me the least to actually travel a certain distance.

I was wondering what others thought about that? I appreciate that other things get 'excluded' by this thinking (for example, increased wear on other parts) but as I'm leasing, I really don't care too much about that stuff as it's all covered anyway.

Anyway, I ended up writing a little program that tracked my km / $ spend and found that so long as I'm not buying the highest grade of fuel, I'm saving a little under a cent per kilometre. Now I know that doesn't sound like much but when I get about 500kms to the tank, that equates to a little under $5 a tank.

So two questions: is this is a stupid thing to be tracking and acting on and if it's not, would there be any interest in buying a program like this?

Many thanks...