There's a very active (I hesitate to use the word 'healthy') conversation often ongoing in this forum about diesel vs petrol. All sorts of performance threads etc, but for this thread I'm not interested in that.
Diesel is very frequently referred to as the economical choice. Yes, that argument is often picked apart with a lot of factors such as fuel cost, mpg, VED, servicing costs, reliability etc etc.
One factor often referred back to is the annual mileage, and this is really the point of my question. Why refer to the total number of annual miles to determine which fuel (or indeed go broader and look at engine type and other factors) is best, and instead look at how those journeys are made.
12,000 diesel miles per year would be far better than than 20,000 petrol miles per year if they were made over 12 journeys compared to 120 journeys. Use is far more important than distance.
The reason I raise this is that I use my car for very short miles during the week, and for 8 months of the year don't use it at all - I use my motorbike instead. But then at weekends every fortnight, I use the car for a 300 mile round trip on motorways to see my son.
Is this situation unique? Do we need to look at patterns of use rather than just total use in order to make an accurate judgement? or is annual mileage still adequate to cover enough situations to be used as a guideline?
Diesel is very frequently referred to as the economical choice. Yes, that argument is often picked apart with a lot of factors such as fuel cost, mpg, VED, servicing costs, reliability etc etc.
One factor often referred back to is the annual mileage, and this is really the point of my question. Why refer to the total number of annual miles to determine which fuel (or indeed go broader and look at engine type and other factors) is best, and instead look at how those journeys are made.
12,000 diesel miles per year would be far better than than 20,000 petrol miles per year if they were made over 12 journeys compared to 120 journeys. Use is far more important than distance.
The reason I raise this is that I use my car for very short miles during the week, and for 8 months of the year don't use it at all - I use my motorbike instead. But then at weekends every fortnight, I use the car for a 300 mile round trip on motorways to see my son.
Is this situation unique? Do we need to look at patterns of use rather than just total use in order to make an accurate judgement? or is annual mileage still adequate to cover enough situations to be used as a guideline?
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