Never mind the price per litre - what's the calorific value of the stuff they sell ?

wyze

Octane is not a performance indicator if I read this right http://www.torquecars.com/articles/fuel-octane-ratings.php. On high compression engines you get more power but it more of a case of an engine running worse on low octane than an improvement with high octane.

peterbaker

Got an important email from Shell Drivers Club this morning

I was directed here: http://www.shell.co.uk/home/content/gbr/products_services/on_the_road/fuels/fuelsave/

Once more re-animated by what is not written there as opposed to what is, and somewhat for the sheer hell of it, I thought I'd drag up this old chestnut (thread) from a beef I aired two or three years ago ...

More bang for your bucks anyone, or more smoke in your rear view mirrors ?

skiddlydiddly

I want to burn it not drink it;).

There's such a thing as too much information.The average person just wants to fill up with what's cheapest and the fuel companies know this.

Hammyman

peterbaker wrote: »

I am gettig heartily sick of oil companies and retailers taking us for mugs.

Why are they permitted to sell us fuel without disclosing its energy content?

How do you think it'd help you? I'd honestly love to know because I don't think its how you think it will.

peterbaker

Hammyman, internal combustion-engined vehicles used to work on a wing and a prayer, and it used to be joked that the engine in a Chieftain tank could use any fuel it captured, from rocket fuel to cold tea

I do believe however that things have changed somewhat. We invest in engines which are designed to extract the energy content from internally-combusted fuels more and more efficiently.

The principle value of a fuel like we put in our cars is primarily its energy content. Take 2 tonnes of car and occupants from a sea level dip to the top of a 300 foot hill on a motorway and most GCSE schoolkids can make a reasonable estimate of how much energy is required to do it.

So why do you think that when they eventually take their places as the consumers who buy fuel for their cars at higher and higher cost per litre, that it will not help them with their fuel-buying decision or with their politics regarding whether fuel companies should be forced to disclose energy content per litre on the pump so that the public as a consumer group can be sure they are not being secretly ripped off?

Most petrolheads know that there is a marked difference in energy content in fuel you buy in the United States versus in UK. What is that difference about? And how do we know that Wal-Mart for example, as a major US and UK petrol retailer is not tempted (and able) to reduce the difference when it feels like it?

A NASA engineer with responsibility for certain budgetary costs of a nation, calculating the cost of a project to Mars would not dare deny himself this type of information, so why do you think that a motorist contemplating taking a job requiring a personal daily commute from Cambridge to Birmingham might not need something similar to properly control and protect his or her family fuel budget? Do a few percentage points of potential household savings through understanding differences at the pumps beyond the price per litre somehow not count as worthwhile discussion?

Look after your pennies (your percentage points) and the pounds will look after themselves.
A fool and his money are easily parted etc.

:money: