A tentative first trip out in the New Year today as the roads were dry and an errand needed to be run. A few pumps on the accelerator had me fired up after the first turn of the key and settled into a fast idle. First into Colchester then down the A12 to Ipswich before returning home via the back roads through Freston, Holbrook, Stutton and Brantham. A good mix of country and fast roads to break me in after lying idle since the BOCEA Christmas Lunch on 5 December.
While in Ipswich Neil filled me up with Shell Optimax at the cheapest petrol station in the area, but it was still expensive at 129.9 a litre (standard unleaded was 121.9). This brought to mind the posting Neil made on my blog on 15 August 2010 about Shell’s new Fuelsave petrol and associated publicity campaign.
You will recall that Neil took a cynical look at Shell’s claims that you could gain the equivalent of an extra litre per tank if you used their new fuel and the ‘coincidental’ timing of the launch with the school holidays when traffic is light. Neil’s Citroen XM, being equipped with some kind of device that records his fuel consumption, was measuring 28.6 miles per gallon before the school summer holidays.
2 months later in October Neil installed a new battery in the Citroen that made it forget all its calculations. It started measuring them again and has been calculating the average fuel consumption ever since, so we are now in the position of being able to make a direct comparison between fuel consumption before and after the introduction of FuelSave.
And the result of all these calculations, comparisons and cogitations? I can reveal that the difference Shell FuelSave unleaded petrol has made, in this admittedly unscientific but real-world study is … absolutely nothing. Fuel consumption is exactly the same. Whether the XM’s engine has been lubricated in parts it never knew needed lubrication before or not I’ll leave to Neil’s mechanic to decide, but as far as fuel consumption is concerned there is absolutely no difference.
Thanks for confirming what I have always observed on my own VW Passat mpg gauge the only things that really make a difference to fuel consumption that I have observed are large 10 degree C plus differences in ambient air temperature, in winter the fuel economy plummets which I offset by cleaning and checking the plug gaps in mid November, and tyre pressures.
ReplyDeleteI have always understood that fuel is held in large depots which hold the different octanes in separate tanks and that all the different brands in any particular area are then supplied from the same depot.
All of the fuel companies marketing is nothing but what I believe is legally termed an 'Advertising Puff', including the term 'lead free' which an oil company executive in the eighties once assured me is nothing of the sort, 'lead free' he told me is actually 'reduced lead'.