Cheap Petrol & Diesel

It's possible to cut your annual petrol/diesel bill by a third, saving £100s. Yet as most fuel costs go in tax as a deliberate result of Govt. enviromental and anti-congestion policies, it takes more than just finding the cheapest forecourt. It’s about pain-free, speedy ways to make your car and driving more efficient and pay the right way.

Of course, the trite answer to cutting petrol bills is to use your car less, walk more or take public transport; and of course that benefits the environment too. Yet even if you need to do the same mileage, you can hugely slash your costs and get there at the same time...

Step 1: Make your car more efficient.

It's possible to make big improvements by making minor tweaks to your vehicle. It's estimated that someone who averages 35 miles per gallon (in old money) could get 40 mpg by driving better, a near 15% saving. Thanks to the RAC for help with the efficiency improvement data.

• Keep your tyres correctly inflated. Efficiency Improvement: Up to 3%

  Lower tyre pressure increases the drag on a car meaning you need more fuel, so regularly check the pressures are correct and your car needs less oomph to keep it moving.

• Declutter your car. Efficiency Improvement: Up to 2%

  The lighter your car is, the less effort it needs to make to accelerate. Therefore, by decluttering, clearing out junk from the boot, and not carrying unnecessary weight, you can make extra savings.

• Take your roof rack off. Efficiency Improvement: Up to 2%

  A roof rack, even unused, adds massive wind resistance to a car, increasing drag and making the engine work harder. So if you don't need it, take it and anything else that's inefficient off. Even closing the windows'll make the car run slightly more efficiently.

• Turn off the air con. Efficiency Improvement: Up to 8%

  Air conditioning also uses an incredible amount of fuel, so make sure it's turned off unless you really need it. However, if it's really hot, it can become a more effective proposition, as driving with the windows closed is more economical than having them all open, due to the extra drag it causes. Also, don’t keep the engine running; drive off as soon as you start up and switch off the engine as soon as you reach your destination.

• Don't fill it up. Efficiency Improvement: Up to 1%

  Fuel is heavy, so by filling the car up you're adding quite a weight. The less fuel your car has in it, the more efficiently it drives. Thus filling up slightly more often and putting less in (to 1/2 or 3/4 full) will make the car run more efficiently.

Step 2: Drive more efficiently

It's possible to drive the same distance in the same time, yet use considerably less fuel. You can chop up to 60% OFF your fuel costs without cutting your top speed. It’s simply about driving more smoothly to boost your fuel efficiency.

• Accelerate gradually without over-revving.

  Speed up smoothly; when you press harder on the pedal more fuel flows, but you could get to the same speed using much less power – a good rule is to stay under 3,000 revs.

• Drive in the correct gear.

  Always drive in the highest gear possible without labouring the engine.

• Slow naturally.

  Rather than brake all the time, let your car slow naturally and use its stored momentum.

• Think about road position.

  To do all this takes road awareness, so the more alert you are, the better you can plan ahead and move gradually.

In many ways this all comes down to one little rule of thumb...

Every time you put your foot on the accelerator, remember the harder you press the more fuel you spend.

Just being conscious of this and your road position, should increase how far you can drive on a tank of petrol enormously.

The impact in the real world...

On a recent overseas holiday I got to test this due to a sexy little digital display in the hire car, which gave me a km/litre readout. For every trip, I drove normally on the way there and used the ‘think when pressing the pedal’ method above on the way back…. And if you’re thinking did he really bother? while on holiday, yes I did, and I loved it; luckily my girfriend is very understanding!

The improvement is enormous

Overall I drove about 500 miles and the different ‘efficiency’ averages per litre of petrol were incredible: for normal driving, it was 11.2 kilometres per litre, but for efficiency-conscious driving, a remarkable 13.4 kilometres per litre. Most intriguingly, the efficient driving didn’t cost me any time at all, and on motorways my top speed didn’t change. Others drove harder only to brake harder at the next traffic light...

For someone who spends roughly £50 a week on fuel, this 20% efficiency increase would save around £500 a year. And, according to the RAC, boy racers can expect annual efficient driving gains to be up to 60 PER CENT. For more info on this read my petrol efficiency experiment blog and if you try this type of driving or want to see experiences go to the Driving efficiently discussion.

Step 3: Find the cheapest Petrol/Diesel

The easiest way to find the cheapest petrol stations is online. Two websites list current petrol station prices, they do this by buying data from corporate fuel card firms. These cards are used by big company fleet drivers when they pay for diesel or petrol and as a by product information is collected every day on almost every petrol station's costs.

Both sites are free to use, but require you to register. Their business models are based on collecting huge database of customers which they can potentially develop other services and referral systems for. Website technology is cheap to implement, so it's a cost-effective way of building a popular consumer service.

Find the cheapest petrol station near you...

The easiest way to find the cheapest forecourt in your area for petrol, diesel and LPG (plus more) is by using the free website Petrolprices.com. After registering, enter your postcode & tell it how far you’re willing to travel (2, 5, 10 or 20 miles) and it’ll list today’s cheapest petrol stations in your area for unleaded, diesel, LPG and other fuels. A quick check before you need to fill up should be enough to save you serious cash.

In Nov 08, for a sample postcode the average unleaded price was 96p, the highest price was £1.07p and the cheapest price 90p; this type of variance is typical regardless of the price. While the difference is only pennies, in percentage terms that means 5% cost cutting is possible, so for someone who fills up £50 a week it's a reduction of well over £100 a year.

Other filling up tips...

There are other ways to cut the cost too:

• Always fill up at least fifty miles before your tank's dry.

  This way there’s no panic and you’ve enough time to get to a cheaper petrol station. Leave it longer and you’ll fill up at ‘the next one I see’, and that means you're not focused on the fuel price. Of course this is slightly offset by the fact that a lighter car uses less fuel, but with 50 miles of fuel left, the difference is minuscule.

• Only use ‘better fuel’ if your car can cope.

  Many stations sell ‘high performance fuels’, yet there’s little or no performance difference for most non-performance cars; so only fill up with the super-fuels if you've a sports car that you've been specifically advised will actually utilise the petrol correctly.

• Fill up at night, but don’t overfill.

  This is a slight urban myth, as the differences are miniscule, pennies at best. Petrol pumps are calibrated by volume, so fill up at night when it’s cold and you get a tiny tiny extra bit.

• Don't try and put more in after the clunk.

  While filling up to full isn't great as it adds weight to the car (see make your car more efficient), yet if you must, don't keep going after the petrol nozzle 'clunks', because you're overfilling.

Step 4: Get cashback & promotions

Buying fuel is the biggest single regular expenditure that most people make by plastic or cash. This means that there are opportunities to increase the saving by the way it's paid for.

• Pay with a cashback/fuel credit card.

  Credit card reward schemes pay you back each time you spend on the card; so set up a Direct Debit to pay it off in full, so there's no interest charge, and you gain. Each time you spend on a cashback you can get up to 5% of your outlay back, which quickly adds up. Currently Amex Platinum* pays 5% for the first three months followed by tiered rates up to 1.25%, see the Best Cashback Cards guide for more info.

• Grab supermarket petrol promotions.

  Supermarkets commonly do petrol promotions, and as they're usually cheap for fuel anyway, utilising these schemes means you can save. Usually these take the form of "spend £50 and get a 5p off/litre voucher" deals. If this is the case, do ensure if you're spending more e.g. £60, that you pay for your shopping in three tranches to get three vouchers. The best of these promotions are always included in the free weekly MoneySaving e-mail.

  Current Promotions:
  
  Tesco, 5p/litre off until 27 September '09: Spend £50 in-store or online in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, and you'll get a voucher entitling you to 5p/litre off fuel up to a maximum of 100 litres.
  
  A voucher will be valid for two weeks after your purchase.
  
  Sainsburys, 5p/litre off until 14 September 09: Spend £50 in-store or online in any Sainbury's (excluding Calais) and you'll get a voucher entitling you to 5p/litre off fuel up to a maximum of 100 litres.
  
  A voucher will be valid for two weeks after your purchase.

• Use loyalty schemes.

  Buying petrol is a regular outlay, and you spend more on it in a year than you think (e.g £30 a week is £1,500 a year!). As many petrol stations (including the supermarket ones) run some form of loyalty scheme, it's worth signing up for the schemes for the forecourts you'll use most regularly to get a little bit extra back.

  However, never choose a petrol station just for its loyalty scheme, as the difference is small compared to petrol price variance (also see the Increase Your Loyalty Stash article).

• Is the Pipeline card worth it? NO!

  In earlier incarnations of this guide I included mention of the Pipeline card, which aimed to get 100,000 together and then said it could pull off a discount card for up to 5p/litre off petrol; it seemed worth a punt and cost nothing.

  Using the power of the MoneySavingExpert.com weekly e-mail that happened quite quickly; yet sadly Pipeline never delivered, and still doesn't look like doing so. Now it's taken a turn for the worse, tending to send e-mails to the distribution list for its own commercial purposes. As it's never delivered, steer clear and take yourself off the distribution list.

The savings from following the four-step system can be huge. For someone who drives 15,000 miles a year averaging 35 miles per gallon (12.4 Km/litre), just buying petrol at the average UK cost is £1,850. By following all four steps the reduction could be as much as 25% cutting the bill by £465 a year.

To work out the initial rough cost of running your car, the VCA (Vehicle Certification Agency) has a rough fuel cost calculator (it's best for new cars) which will work out roughly how much it'll cost you to run your car over the course of a year.