95 RON is an artificially jacked up price used to be 5 cents over ULP!
Less than a buck for E10, that's cheap.
Unfortunately here in Queensland the E10 tends to be 2 cents/litre cheaper than ULP and last week-end, depending on when you look, it's been between 1.35/ltr to about 1.42 for ULP plus the usual premiums for 95 and 98.
But given that you burn about 10% more E10 than straight petrol, it works out more expensive and all one is effectively is paying a cane farmer (or the processor) for the ethanol and using the same amount of fossil fuel.
A disturbing trend is that a lot of the 95RON pumps are being converted to E10 and a couple of filling stations I've been to don't have 95RON fuel at all, so the offer is ULP, E10, or 98RON.
Thanks for that observation REN TIN TIN
I find these days 95 RON fuel price that used to be a five cent margin per litre over ULP, but as it became a more popular fuel of choice, due to many imported cars (including my Laguna) recommended to run on a minimum of 95, it suddenly took over as a higher priced fuel, with a creep to 10 cent "premium" margin and in extreme cases 15 to 20 cent margins, which is a real rip off if ever there was one.
I actually declined to fill with 95 at those rip off prices after finding that if I used 98 or 100 RON fuel I got much better mileage per tank and by watching the pump price closely I could find retailers with a lower percentage margin especially in the Country towns.
In some, the service stations would use the industry excuse of "Competition" (read that as artificial industry pushed price hike cycle)
as a reason to hike prices on ULP and 95, by 15 to 25 cents highs but didn't immediately jump the 98, perhaps because it either had an already padded in comfortable margin at the lowest price "cycle" or their users might suddenly question the added high cost.:nownow:
Many 1980's cars seemed to run better when filled with a tank of 98, especially if they had re-breather systems that recycled the aromatic vapour additives promoted in the 98 and 100 premium advertising. I noticed that "performance improvement" in using those fuels in the Fuego and so did others on this forum. It seemed worth the 10 cents over base grade fuels, but add 25 or 30 cents and ones consumer base might well question that jumped up price hike!
.
Most of us adopted a full tank to full tank filling routine, as we enjoyed our cars, could afford the cost and it was so much easier to check the impact of hiked price rises on the personal budget. IMHO!:wink2:
If you operated more than one vehicle and they had different fuel needs, you could fill at the lowest price and alternate between vehicles to avoid filling at rip off pricing. We did, so we could, but I was always cognisant
that others less fortunate could not, hence my trenchant opposition to oil companies using computerized industry data as a marketing tool to maintain a higher than normal "average" price across their fuel range while promoting the overall as some sort of motorists driven competition, when clearly it was not!.
I have not regularly used E10 but did fill once at one of those NSW Manildra? Service stations that sold ethanol from the pump, mileage per tank was much less than I achieved on other fuels
. Those ethanol stations seem to have gone by the wayside since.
I did toy with the idea of converting one vehicle to run on LPG, but glad now that I didn't, as that seems to be a grossly over priced product now, but others that regularly fill with LPG may see that in a different user perspective.
Diesel underpins most of the delivery and commerce in Australia and there appears to be a big push to pad out Diesel pricing to a more comfortable (for the oil industry) retail pricing level (and with the ACCC tacit approval it seems) that has been achieved in the metropolitan areas though I see signs that Shell is sometimes offering lower than their preferred price where their competition undersells them.
Huge rises in prices paid for Diesel in the trucking industry, will of course be passed on in the form of higher prices on consumer goods (where firms can) and one needs to closely monitor the margin pricing between Truck Diesel and so called premium or special Diesel pricing as margin creep and marketing already disclose higher margins in the industry.
Interesting as a consumer to closely watch the fuel marketing and pricing.
Regards
Ken
