Featured What octane gas are you really putting in your car

Lovely. Thank you! That's really clear. Quite sad, though. And your fuel isn't even expensive. Drive-offs are very rare here, even though our fuel is almost twice the price.

Yes, same here. A diesel nozzle is much bigger than a petrol one.

(They had forgotten this when they made the diesel Chrysler Grand Voyager I used to use for transporting stuff to Broken Hill - one of the many things Chrysler forgot, like that people in RHD countries don't have two left feet, or that radios work better with an antenna. I got to learn which stations had relatively small diesel nozzles that I could just about squeeze into the filler, although I still had to fill very slowly, as the filler was so narrow it would create a feedback that caused the pump to auto-cancel.)

We have red-dyed diesel for farm machinery here too. But we also have non-dyed, taxed diesel from wide "Hi-Flow" diesel pumps for trucks at some stations.

 

Copied and pasted the above ^^^ straight from the U.S. & Canada Gen 2 Prius owner's manual. I am assuming (without checking the owner's manuals) Toyota probably recommends regular unleaded 87 octane gas for other models and generations of Priuses as well.

Well stated.

Good point. If you are using the regular unleaded 87 octane all the time, there is nothing to lose, but only to gain, if the previous guy filled it with a higher octane.

 

i have filled up all over the country, and have never seen a pump with more than one hose.

 

Extremely rare, but there are some old gas stations around with more than one hose. One hose for petrol and one hose for diesel is quite common, nowadays, though. Also, about 97% (I want to say, 99%) of the car owners fill their gas tanks with 87 or higher, octane gas.

 

Chevron's in our part of Canada have a single pump for the first 3 (ascending) octane choices, and they all have the decal about "may contain up to 10% ethanol". The top octane choice, 94, has it's own hose and a decal saying ethanol-free.

 

The ethanol free premium around here is pretty pricey. Not as bad as mysteriously high priced diesel though.

 

Diesel is higher price mostly because of refinery shutdowns, and other markets wanting it.

 

Not sure what you are trying to say here.
Gasoline and diesel are NEVER dispensed through the same hose.

And you can't GET gas lower than 87 octane unless you are at a high elevation......in the mountains.

 

This is what you'll typically see here. This is a fairly new pump. They're the same in Britain.




Looking at the prices, though, this is from at least a year ago.

 

Diesel used to be cheaper than petrol here, until last year. Now it's a good 10-20% dearer than petrol, even though petrol prices have risen by 30% or more.

There's a good article explaining why it's happening in Australia at the moment. Record diesel prices explained, further price hikes flagged | CarExpert

We don't make any of our own fuel, and while our petrol mostly comes from Singapore, Russia was a major source of diesel.

 

I am not from those high elevation locations. Even if I am driving a Prius through the states of Utah, Wyoming, or Colorado, I would still fill it up with an 87 octane gas, even if 85 octane gas is sold there and it would probably be OK for my Prius engine to run on 85 octane gas, while I am there. I am too chicken to fill a lower octane rated gas than 87, even during my brief trips in those high elevated locations and mess up my Prius engine. My take on the subject would probably change, if I move and live in those high elevated locations on a permanent basis, based on my independent research and conclusion at that point in time.

I am sorry for being short in my posts on an internet forum and not being able to write a Ph.D. thesis, Chief.

 

It's 50% higher around me. Probably still more than you. Places no longer getting Russian diesel means they are buying from elsewhere, including the US.

You only need to avoid 85 octane at high elevations with a turbo or super charged engine. Naturally aspirated engines are fine. Just top off with regular before leaving for lower levels.

 

We're at around A$2.30 per litre. So that would be about US$5.80 for a US gallon.

Our fuel taxes are generally higher than yours, I think, and they're a fixed rate per litre rather than a percentage of the price, which is probably why the differential between petrol and diesel is smaller, and why our retail fuel prices fluctuate a bit less than yours.

Sorry about buying your diesel...

 

If/when that's the case, there is no diesel fuel sold at that location. The diesel nozzles have a slightly larger circumference, so that you don't accidentally put diesel in your gas burner.



Notice the difference held next to each other?
Even so - a diesel owner can still screw up (put smaller gas nozzel in larger diesel fuel port) .... but you can't fix stupid 100% of the time.
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Barring some major tech upgrade to cars and pumps, so that they can ID each other.

 

i used to drive a mercedes diesel. the diesel pumps were completely stand alone around here, and very diificult to find, except on the highway

 

$5.99 was the highest it reached. Still around $2 more than regular gasoline. Pennsylvania has some of the highest taxes on fuel; a percentage rate on wholesale. The Northeast is paying more for diesel in general because the local refineries are almost all gone, and the Gulf ones want the instant profits of selling a broad instead of waiting a week to pipe it here.

That's how it was back when my friend had a diesel Rabbit in NJ. Now, nearly every station has it on a bay or two of the gas pumps.

 

Gosh, that's very expensive. It's rare to see American prices go above Australian prices.

Still, at least you're not in Britain. Diesel prices there have fallen to about US$8.40 for a US gallon.

 

there are many areas in So California that are especially High priced, whether low octane - high octane .... even to this day - besides their pricy diesel.
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hopefully it will come down within the next month as we will be back in the area visiting family .
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Gosh, you're getting close to British and European prices there.