Fuel Prices

[skomaz]

5 hours ago, lol-lol said:

 

I think you live in one of those luck areas where you pay a few pence per litre less than the UK average.

 

 

Well it is God's own county...   🤣

[lol-lol]

35 minutes ago, skomaz said:

 

Well it is God's own county...   🤣

 

God made Yorkshire to train the faithful, no that is Arrakis.     I am not saying nowt about being too tight to fill the tank so cheaper prices to encourage larger fills. 

[OldTrilobite]

Why are fuel gauges not marked in litres?  On my Fabia it is just marked 0,  1/2,  and full.

OK, I can look up the handbook, where it gives the tank capacity as 'about 45 litres' (including some reserve). How many ordinary owners, who just use the car to drive between home, office, factory or seaside, have ever studied the handbook carefully? Do they just cautiously put in 20 litres at a time, or a fixed sum of money?

Skoda claims on the cover of its handbook: "Simply Clever".

Well, wouldn't it be clever to mark the fuel gauge in litres?

 

Grumpy old trilobite.

[skomaz]

1 hour ago, OldTrilobite said:

Why are fuel gauges not marked in litres?  On my Fabia it is just marked 0,  1/2,  and full.

OK, I can look up the handbook, where it gives the tank capacity as 'about 45 litres' (including some reserve). How many ordinary owners, who just use the car to drive between home, office, factory or seaside, have ever studied the handbook carefully? Do they just cautiously put in 20 litres at a time, or a fixed sum of money?

Skoda claims on the cover of its handbook: "Simply Clever".

Well, wouldn't it be clever to mark the fuel gauge in litres?

 

Grumpy old trilobite.

 

Eh?  Just put in a value in £ or fill it till the nozzle clicks off.  No need to be cautious.

[J.R.]

1 hour ago, OldTrilobite said:

How many ordinary owners, who just use the car to drive between home, office, factory or seaside, have ever studied the handbook carefully?

 

Thirteen point five.

1 hour ago, OldTrilobite said:

Do they just cautiously put in 20 litres at a time, or a fixed sum of money?

 

They fill the tank when it is near to empty.

[lol-lol]

8 hours ago, OldTrilobite said:

Why are fuel gauges not marked in litres?  On my Fabia it is just marked 0,  1/2,  and full.

OK, I can look up the handbook, where it gives the tank capacity as 'about 45 litres' (including some reserve). How many ordinary owners, who just use the car to drive between home, office, factory or seaside, have ever studied the handbook carefully? Do they just cautiously put in 20 litres at a time, or a fixed sum of money?

Skoda claims on the cover of its handbook: "Simply Clever".   Well, wouldn't it be clever to mark the fuel gauge in litres?   Grumpy old trilobite.

 

In litres, or UK gallons, or both, but also preferably a digital rather than analogue displace.

VW Group cars are better than some in that at least they continue to show range, kilometers or miles, when the fuel light comes on, and that event is one of the best guides to actual fuel left in the tank, usually, it seems, around 7 litre or a gallon and a half in old money.  Renault, for reasons only guessed at, remove the miles left just after the reserve fuel light comes on.  Love to know why ?   Presumably so you do not get near the dregs of the tank, suck in what could be gunky fuel in the those last dregs.

 

Skoda Fabia VRS would go well below zero miles range ie 15 or more, which is a non-sense, and then one could put over 50 litres in a 45 litre tank if one pressed the little button in the filler month, and it wanted 98 octane fuel so quite a pricy fill up for a little car but then it could also do an indicated 60 mpg when pottering along. 630 miles between fill ups best I got.  Wish car manuals made it easier to know what the reserve light actual is telling one how much fuel is left.  As with many cars it would stay showing full for at least a hundred miles before moving off the full tank indication on the dial.

 

Even EVs tell drivers a partial story.  Western EVs mostly carry a reserve of ten or twenty miles beyond empty and all the ones I know start limiting performance when getting near an empty battery.  Chinese cars, not so much.  Hydrocarbon fuel has been getting more expensive as Russia and Saudi supply less or supply less or none to certain countries due to embargos.  Luckily those with a mixed fleet are going to be benefitting with cheaper electricity as prices continue to fall. 

 

Also a factor that bosses, along with their 16% pay rises, are sometimes on company schemes like having fuel cars so effectively are only paying 40 or 45%, or maybe on 20% if using the new £60k ceiling for tax free pension contributions, of the fuel price as a BIK.  Fuel cards, I think, do not even pay the published at the petrol station price, think they get a bit of discount. 

 

At least UK government still discounting excise duty by the 5p a litre but that could come off as the £200B per year interest on debt starts to bite.

[lol-lol]

Crude oil up 6 pence per litre in the last 3 months which is now filtering through to the pumps. 

 

Inflation going to blip in September even the UK Chancellor admits.

 

Saudi wants to keep the price up and Brent is nearly $90 a barrel, up from about $77 a barrel to $89 with the autumn/winter season approaching.   

 

[lol-lol]

 

£70 nearly to fill the little 50 litre tank in the Renault Ark, think petrol price, E10, was £1.56 a litre in Stone, probably was cheaper in Stoke.  

 

Range only showing 610 miles as I think my mpg was drop from nearly 70 mpg I was getting to more like 60 mpg as the ambient temperature drops, darker, wet roads.

 

That £70 would buy me about 3,000 miles range in the Renault Zoe EV.  Q car park chargers are out of action, again, in Liverpool.

 

Inflation may be edging downwards and UK Gilts well off their peaks from a few months ago but diesel, particularly, and petrol price rises look like pulling inflation the wrong way. 

 

[Ootohere]

It is not up to the 190 - 200 pence a litre that Diesel had got to when there was so much moaning about the cost of it, June 2022.

 

How short memories are, but then there are some in the media says at a 10 month high. 

[lol-lol]

5 hours ago, toot said:

It is not up to the 190 - 200 pence a litre that Diesel had got to when there was so much moaning about the cost of it, June 2022.

 

How short memories are, but then there are some in the media says at a 10 month high. 

 

I heard that Saudi was refining Russian crude which I did not know they did and there is reports that this one million barrel a day cut by Saudi is disproportionately hitting diesel prices rather petrol due to the heavier specific gravity giving more diesel than petrol hence we are seeing again the divergence in the pump price of the two fuels. 

 

Wall Street Journal earlier this month....

https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-today-dow-jones-09-05-2023/card/diesel-fuel-prices-harder-hit-by-saudi-arabia-russia-production-cuts-ExaqjHU1NFAaf9mTLfYl

The price of diesel fuel used in trucks has been rising faster than regular gas—and that trend is likely to continue.  On Tuesday, crude oil rallied after Saudi Arabia and Russia said they're extending their oil production cuts. Diesel fuel surged even more.  Russian and Middle Eastern crudes tend to be heavier and yield more diesel, jet and marine fuel than U.S. shale oil, which is lighter and more prone to producing products like gasoline. It's why OPEC production cuts and Western sanctions on Russian crude oil have had an outsized impact on those heavier fuels.