The UK is ( or was ) one of those places where LPG conversions seemed like a good idea, propane was really cheap for a number of years.

There really are options to petrol if you're willing to change your ways.

I had kind of forgotten that you can get petrol 24/7 when i drive the petrol car it's kind of foreign.

I agree that we're kind of spoiled here.
People complain,but it's almost always while
driving big Hummer-type vehicles.
I had a GMC 3/4 ton 454 cid tow vehicle.
42! gallon gas tank.I was thinking about how
lousy the milage was while waiting at a stop
light.I sold it for $1/lb. - $6800!
What a waste of money to drive everyday.But I notice that the younger guys
love the jacked-up 3/4 ton diesel crew cabs
- to haul a honda Quad,etc.And they always
have to to their "foot to the floor"when they drive.How cool is that?
I wish that I had money to waste like that!

- Doug

Quote:

At the moment LPG is just under half the cost of petrol but this is under an EU agreement which was to last ten years. That period ends next year i think and I'll wager the government will whack the tax onto LPG. They did something similar with diesel in the past. The price of diesel was help down well below that of petrol until the point where 1 in 3 new cars sold was a diesel then BANG on goes the big tax and now it's more expensive than diesel.

The uptake on LPG hasn't been quite as fast as people expected and as such you can't get it everywhere unfortunately. You still have to have dual fuel capability because of this.

I did run my 4x4 on vegetable oil for a bit and it went fine on that but here it's illegal unless you pay fuel duty on it. Of course if you do that it's then no cheaper than diesel

Fortunately, more non-US car manufacturers are starting to offer more diesels here in the US.

I have been considering buying an older Mercedes to run on waste vegetable oil which is somewhat plentiful and free if you're willing to go collect it from various restaurants. I'm sure as demand goes up, the availability will change. Bio-diesel will also become more available in the future.

VW is going to introduce a diesel Jetta Wagon here soon. They claim it gets 54-55 mpg on the freeway. That would be perfect for my work commuter.

B210 sleeper has it right. the pain hasn't reached the brain...yet!

The rest of the world seems to have a leg up on the US - there are small efficient diesels offered by many, many manufacturers that are totally unavailable here. Mainly due to import tariff's & EPA standards (the standards aren't necessarily bad). I called Isuzu America once to see if they had plans of importing their Z-Max crew cab pickup, comes w/a turbo 5 cyl. diesel, no go, import tarif's made it unattractive to bring in. Besides, American Auto makers never pay attention to the public until it's too late.

I used to work for Clark Lift trucks, we had another German line "Linde Baker" that sold highly efficient, very clean emissions, diesel powered trucks designed for running inside warehouses & enclosed area's w/no CO & HC problems whatever. Used all over the world. If a forklift Mfg-er can do it, so can car makers.

There's no reason that Detroit can't make small efficient diesels, they just made WAY, WAY more money over the last decade & a half selling monster sized SUV's. No incentive, now large vehicle sales have lagged & guess what, smaller & fuel efficient is cool again! Go figure.

I'll be quite happy to get my Datsun on the road & quit driving my full sized van. thats the other thing the rest of the world seems to get that we don't. Work & utility vehicles can be efficient & smaller, there's very little of that here. I find it interesting that if you look at both Nissan & Toyota their full size trucks are as large as any Ford or Chevy w/as big or bigger engines available....funny considering they were the import innovator's in the 70's of gas mizer cars & kicked Detroit's butt at that time, maybe they haven't learned their lesson yet either.

Quote:

this is a bit old, but still a good comparison
http://fueltaxinquiry.treasury.gov.au/content/issues/issues-05.asp
scroll down to Table 6.4 International comparisons of petrol prices,
March quarter 2001(a)

worst thing in Aus is not just the excise, but the GST on top of it. GST is applied to the retail price, so we're getting a goods and services tax on the excise component of the fuel price as well! Plus everytime prices rise, the state government gets a financial winfall beause their take is a % of the pump price.

I saw a movie on the cable TV called 'who killed the electric car', seems a bit relevant to this posting. The Verdict was the car makers & oil companies were responsible. Example was an American company making batteries for electric cars. They were bought by an oil company to stop them putting the batteries into cars, which would have tripled the range. All sounds a bit conspirital, but it seemed that the cars had been nobbled. In fact somebody was doing a show on crushing old cars for enviromental reasons & found they were crushing brand new electric Honda's. & to think that Nicola Tesla went to Westinghouse around 1900 with a plan to make the planet a huge battery & all you had to do was plug you're appliance into the ground.Seeing as the power couldn't be charged to the consumer, Westinghouse didn't take him up on the idea. Gee the cars just run out of juice, I'll just plug into that lawn over there.

I don't know why, but inserting this image just seemed like a good idea at the time.

Datsun Saves.

lucky my lpg install is 90% there, 42 uasable lt of lpg at 114 octane :).
$30 to fill up at 70c a lt. seeing as stock only took 35lt of petrol

nice tank size I have the 34 lt tank and it's too small. remember lpg is like 80% as dense, so you need a bit more volume to be equivalent. The comparisons are kind of interesting, when you look at density and btu content between petrol and lpg.

I went to get lpg tonight, still $2.80 /gal, and i looked up and 92 octane petrol was seriously $3.95 / gal! Up $0.30 in 5 days!

Too bad I need gas and couldn't wait till morning to get it at $2.25...