Poor MPG with Tesco fuel

bexyboo1312

my husband also gets poor mpg from tesco fuel than sainsburys - we thought it sounded ridiculous but kept an eye on it and sainsburys recorded better mpg.

mikey72

http://www.tesco.com/Momentum99/files/Tesco-Momentum-99-Fuel-Report.pdf

The ethanol blend tesco sell is rumoured to be the 99 octane, not the 95.

bungle4by4

lol, the tesco refinery must be having a bad day, but the sainsburys one is working well...

dont forget mr patels local corner shop/petrol station. his refinery might be working to produce extra special petrol. try that

gerard1945

As a aged driver my father taught me many things to look for in life.
beware of rip offs, one was always log fuel economy on all my motor vehicles as it would save me a lot of money both on vehicle repair and fuel cost.
I do this even to this day. watch for the amount of fuel you recieve at point of sale, requires fastidious attention.
I filled my fuel tank at my regular fuel station regularly to the brim, did my mileage and then refilled the tank. checked mileage consumption against refill, if very low I then reported fuel station to local OFT for low pump measure.
this i have done this in the past with the local tesco stores for this problem

Wig

mikey72 wrote: »

It's more likely the tesco fuel pump cut off later, so you managed to get a litre or two more fuel in the tank, so the mpg looks worse.
You'll have to do more than one tank to get a meaningful figure.

cardinalbiggles wrote: »

Extremely unlikely for a number of reasons.

mikey72 wrote: »

It's a pressure switch in the pump handle the senses when the tank in full. So if it's a diferent brand of pumps between asda and tesco, I can easily see the pump switching off for different heights of fuel in the filler pipe, and depending on flow rate the pressure change will be faster or slower as well which will affect the switch point.
If the asda nozzle is an inch loger, it's stop sooner.

But you'll have to list a few reasons why it won't be different for me then.

cardinalbiggles wrote:

Yeah, ok you are telling me that your going on when the pressure switch cuts off and not brimming your tank, your having a girrafe now arent you?

Secondly, we are talking volumes here, the volume of fuel is controlled from a flow meter in the actual pump unit and takes into account the volume of fuel in the hose up to the nozzle. There will be very little margin for error in what is dispensed to you.

My advice, dont bleat on about mpg etc. etc. etc. until you actually brim your tank, its the only way to know accurately your consumption!

I think I can help here. Mikey was saying at the outset that the OP had maybe filled more into the tank on the second fill up than the Tesco one.

Mikey made an error also in saying "you filled more at Tesco" what he meant was "you filled more at the fillup after you filled up at Tesco" because in order to measure the Tesco fuels efficiency you need a distance/ no. of litres the no. of litres figure for the Tesco fuel calculation would have come from the following fill up. Or equally, "you filled less at Tesco"...... Filling **less** at Tesco would have bolstered the previous Asda figures and detracted from the Tesco figures when filling at Asda on the following fillup

So he was merely suggesting that if the tank contained 35 litres on leaving the Tesco forecourt, and it contained 37 litres on leaving the Asda forecourt at the following fillup there was a discrepancy which could account for the erroneous figures.

That's how I read Mikey's initial post and whether he was right or not is not what I am talking about, I am merely observing an altercation between two posters that could have been avoided.

Cardinal, then came and said "could not be true for a number of reasons"
But failed to list any reasons, if he had, it would have been clear to Mikey that he had misunderstood Mikey's post. And Mikey could have set the record straight.

Mikey was on about human error caused by variations in cut off trgger points.
Cardinal Assumed he was talking about a calibrated measuring error

Mikey, I'm sure, would agree with the blue text from Cardinal, but that has nothing to do with what Mikey was talking about.

At the point in the thread that Mikey posted, the OP had said nothing about brimming the tank.

Whatever the case the OP cannot rely on one fill up from a Tesco pump. OP, come back when you have driven 6 months on Tesco fuel and then we'll talk figures.

Wig

gerard1945 wrote: »

As a aged driver my father taught me many things to look for in life.
beware of rip offs, one was always log fuel economy on all my motor vehicles as it would save me a lot of money both on vehicle repair and fuel cost.
I do this even to this day. watch for the amount of fuel you recieve at point of sale, requires fastidious attention.
I filled my fuel tank at my regular fuel station regularly to the brim, did my mileage and then refilled the tank. checked mileage consumption against refill, if very low I then reported fuel station to local OFT for low pump measure.
this i have done this in the past with the local tesco stores for this problem

I wrongly thought I had been short changed by Tesco once, whilst I was on the forecourt. I complained to the Kiosk, they brought out a measuring container 20 litres, he took it quickly to 19.5 litres and went slowly the rest of the way to 20 litres (indicated on the fuel pump) by the time it indicated 20 litres, it was slightly over the 20 litre mark on the container. I was impressed.

It turned out to have been my fuel gauge was slow to reset itself. Which I discovered before he came out with the measuring jug, I told him not to bother doing the test, but he insisted that once a complaint had been made he had to do the test anyway.

Paradigm

mikey72 wrote: »

http://www.tesco.com/Momentum99/files/Tesco-Momentum-99-Fuel-Report.pdf

The ethanol blend tesco sell is rumoured to be the 99 octane, not the 95.

From memory all Greenergy (suppliers to Tesco) petrol contains 5% bio-ethanol imported from Brazil.

If so then this would account for the small increase in fuel consumption when using Tesco fuel as bio-ethanol releases 30% less energy per litre than petrol & therefore more would be required to do the same work!

OTH for the "greens" out there, ethanol is pretty much carbon neutral so, even though you may be getting slightly less MPG, you are saving the planet

mikey72

Wig

Exactly right.
Many thanks.

(As to brimming the tank, could be there's a tight turn leaving tesco's and the first few litres end up on the floor anyway, as another poster has mentioned)

Now as to the tesco test....... how do we know tesco's own measuring container wasn't "specially" calibrated. Not that I'm suggesting it would be, as they'd reguarly get caught, but even so.
Think he would have been even more offended if you asked for the cakibration certs back to the namas reference standard?

davidjwest

I do around 40k a year and so am pretty keen to make sure I get as much MPG as I can as spending £300 a month on fuel isn't fun.

I have found that Shell diesel gives me the best return, it's usually the same price around where I live as supermarket diesel or maybe 1p more and I tend to get about 2-3 MPG more with it. The premium Shell diesel doesn't give me any better return so I don't pay the extra 6-8p for that.

Haven't used Tesco very much so I can't say if it's worse that other supermarket brands or not, but I'll stick with Shell. I'm not affiliated to Shell either, they don't pay me commission unfortunately!

I've got an '04 Mondeo 2.0 TDCi for info.

Captain_Proton

Wig - I am quite impressed that Tesco went to such lengths to prove that the pump was measuring volume correctly. I stopped going to Tesco for about 2 years because the pumps at my local one were hopeless and the place was filthy (fuel spills and rubbish everywhere). I once had a pump that kept putting in about a pint of fuel and then clicking off, even though the car was near empty. After trying about 10 times I gave up, but I had still filled up about 4 litres by that point so I went into the kiosk to pay for it. I reported the faulty pump to the girl behind the counter and she was very rude about it "What do you expect me to do about it?". I told her the pump should be shut off and reported for repair, at which she got very indignant and started giving me abuse. Needless to say I left and didn't use that station again until recently, which brought up the MPG problem.

Anyway, I'm going to avoid Tesco from now on, they seem to have the only petrol station which causes problems in my experience.