Pump Price Difference - Petrol vs Diesel

azazl187 said:
Nice. I like your thinking. What about maintenance costs though... dont diesel need a little extra money spent on them in regards to filters and stuff getting blocked up? I drive a petrol Civic Type R on a 3 mile commute.... Obviously efficiency isnt my bag but its interesting to see the difference.
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Raw costs for parts are fairly similar between both, i think my last set of filters was around £25. Indy/dealership pricing for servicing between petrol and diesel may differ though.

I think diesel has more parts that could potentially go wrong compared to a petrol, but a lot of that comes down to how the car is being used. If you had a diesel for your 3 mile commute, then i wouldn't be surprised if you started seeing problems at some point, diesels like a good run at a reasonable speed (during a 50mph avg speed check road works, mine will happily fluctuate between 80-90mpg), they unfortunately don't like a bumper-to-bumper crawl at <5mph.

Edit: Oh, and as much as most petrol owners hate it, VED on Diesels are generally much cheaper. Mines £20/yr, compared to my partners where hers is £120/130 a year.
 
I'm not so sure about a 25 mpg difference between a petrol and diesel of roughly the same power in the same car. My Octavia VRS petrol will see low 40s on my mostly motorway commute, the diesel equivalent is not seeing 65 for the same trip. Some of the 1.4 and 1.5 TSI can do 50 no problem in similar circumstances and the TDI 150 isn't seeing 75mpg. Around town on shorter trips I see about 30 and again the diesel equivalent isn't getting 55.

Diesel is still more economical, no question, however the gap is not as large as the example you gave from my experience.
 
robj20 said:
Yes it comes out of the fractional distillation much lower down.
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But you get more than 2x the petrol than diesel from a barrel of crude oil so the economies of scale on Petrol are much better making it much cheaper overall to extract.
 
Semple said:
Raw costs for parts are fairly similar between both, i think my last set of filters was around £25. Indy/dealership pricing for servicing between petrol and diesel may differ though.

I think diesel has more parts that could potentially go wrong compared to a petrol, but a lot of that comes down to how the car is being used. If you had a diesel for your 3 mile commute, then i wouldn't be surprised if you started seeing problems at some point, diesels like a good run at a reasonable speed (during a 50mph avg speed check road works, mine will happily fluctuate between 80-90mpg), they unfortunately don't like a bumper-to-bumper crawl at <5mph.

Edit: Oh, and as much as most petrol owners hate it, VED on Diesels are generally much cheaper. Mines £20/yr, compared to my partners where hers is £120/130 a year.
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I believe VED (as of last year is the same for all cars (less the stupid extra if its more than £40,000 new). I'm sure all cars now are £140 purely due to people getting low VED cars originally and the government not making money on it.
 
what is the volume split between petrol and diesel for non-commericial vehicles ...
since, from a garage business model perspective, if diesel cars are spending more time refilling/pump-blocking that could justify some of the diesel premium too.
 
ahenners said:
I'm not so sure about a 25 mpg difference between a petrol and diesel of roughly the same power in the same car. My Octavia VRS petrol will see low 40s on my mostly motorway commute, the diesel equivalent is not seeing 65 for the same trip. Some of the 1.4 and 1.5 TSI can do 50 no problem in similar circumstances and the TDI 150 isn't seeing 75mpg. Around town on shorter trips I see about 30 and again the diesel equivalent isn't getting 55.

Diesel is still more economical, no question, however the gap is not as large as the example you gave from my experience.
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Yeah i appreciate between two similar models that gap may not be as large, was more comparative examples of my 1.6 diesel versus my partners 1.4 petrol.

theone8181 said:
I believe VED (as of last year is the same for all cars (less the stupid extra if its more than £40,000 new). I'm sure all cars now are £140 purely due to people getting low VED cars originally and the government not making money on it.
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Fair point, although i was thinking more along the lines of anyone who's owned a diesel before the recent VED changes were made.
 
Philz0r said:
I remember this too, when I mentioned it in another board I was called a liar :S
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Nope, the early diesel cars were just horrible. I grew up in rural Hertfordshire and the only reason any were sold was because farmers wanted a family car they could run on farm diesel. With the bonnet open, the first Granada 2.3 diesel wasn’t much quieter than a Ford tractor.

I had a 1995 Escort 1.8TD estate as a company car for a year in 1997-98 and while it was far more civilised, you were still very aware of it being a diesel, especially when you looked in the rear view mirror after accelerating hard.
 
ahenners said:
I'm not so sure about a 25 mpg difference between a petrol and diesel of roughly the same power in the same car. My Octavia VRS petrol will see low 40s on my mostly motorway commute, the diesel equivalent is not seeing 65 for the same trip. Some of the 1.4 and 1.5 TSI can do 50 no problem in similar circumstances and the TDI 150 isn't seeing 75mpg. Around town on shorter trips I see about 30 and again the diesel equivalent isn't getting 55.

Diesel is still more economical, no question, however the gap is not as large as the example you gave from my experience.
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My Octavia with the 1.4 TSI can easily see 50mpg on a straight motorway run. I've had it even higher (60+mpg) if the motorways are full of 50mph road works.
 
It was only until VAG and PSA bought in the PD and HDI engines that diesels became remotely civilised. And that’s when the reliability went down. I think the UK was a bit late to the diesel game. The Europeans were using diesels in much bigger number far earlier than us?
 
The government want diesels gone, despite telling everyone to buy them for years.

Petrol engines have almost caught up for mpg now, if you don't mind an eco-box. But then diesels were never exactly interesting either.
 
Kermit said:
Perhaps on the mpg but down on power. My 2008 Mondeo TDI 2.0 (138bhp/236 Ib-ft Torque) always manages 40mpg with my urban commute and 47-49mph if mostly motorways but easily out performs most of the newer "eco" boxes I see on the road in terms of accelerating away and getting up to speed on 40-60mph roads and by this I don't mean flooring it but gradual acceleration changing up by 2500 and 3000rpm ie a nice balance between making progress and not being a k**b.

My experience of eco boxes is mostly limited to a Mocha X I hired on hols this year, nice inside, reasonably nice to look at, ok around town but terrible on any motorway with a slight incline of which there are a lot on Northern Spain. Seemed like every 5mins I was having to change down from 6th to 5th and very often 4th to get up an incline without dropping below 60mph. God knows how the high rpm's needed to get up the inclines affected fuel economy as it was all Km/Litre and didn't bother to work it out but i did think this engine will be lucky to see 100,000km's (never mind 100,000 miles) before its virtually scrap or at least so worn and running so badly it'll have lost any "eco" factor it might have had when new. I've no idea what engine it had other than petrol but suspect it was less than 1.3L (probably 1.2L) and 3 cylinders but thats just a guess based on how gutless it was.

When in comes to "eco" credentials I think there needs to be a better scientific take on them, as mpg or <CO2 etc is all well and good but if car engines wear out more often, then you need scrap sooner and build another one and that needs to be factored in.
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You mean running it in its peak power band compared to something thats not?
 
Kermit said:
BTW, can anyone name a largish petrol car that has 130bhp (not that impressive I know) but alongside 200+ torque that allows good progress and returns >40mpg?

I guess as petrol engines tend to be close to equal on BHP/Ib-ft, an equal petrol car would need to be making 175-185bhp?
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Does it really need 200+ lb/ft of torque? A Superb 1.5 TSI has 150ps and 184lb ft. 8.7s on 0-62mph compared to the 9.3 0-60 of the Mondeo with 140ps and 236 lb ft. Combined mpg is 52 officially on the 1.5, which is 13mpg worse than the Superb 2.0 TDI 150. The TDI again is 0.5s slower to 62 despite the same power and 251lb ft peak torque.
 
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