XSeries-forum

2 months ago my local BP put the price of LPG up to a ridicules £1.30 about 9p less than petrol. They went 6 weeks and never ran out because no one was buying. It is now down to £1.09 and they seem to have a regular queue. again. It never ceases to amaze me how many big companies try (and mostly succeed) in taking a monetary advantage at every opportunity.

LPG probably also linked to the price of oil. The OPEC+ consortium was playing hard ball as the Saudi’s have been trying to keep oil at the $100/barrel mark to support their economic switch away from oil in years to come. It backfired so now they’ve dropped the price. It was about $75/bl last week. Petrol and diesel both fallen back a bit too.

But you’re right, prices rise like a rocket and fall like a feather! There’s a BP station on the A1 just north of Junction 10 that has been charging obscene prices for a long time now. Typically £0.20p/litre more than the AppleGreen Station on the southbound at the same spot. It’s not even on the A1(M) so no justification other than ‘because they can’.

Great when trade dries up and they need to undo it :

I think a lot of them are ripping the lpg out and converting to electric charging

Amazing how they get rid of a fuel that is much cleaner than petrol or diesel to try and redirect you to EVs. I comfort myself that the people in the know?? tell me that all these changes will make electricity soooo much cheaper. Probably not in my lifetime though.

I don’t think electricity will ever be that much cheaper until we get working fusion reactors working. That always seems to be at least 30 years away so I’m not holding my breath.

LPG still needs oil as it’s a mix of butane & propane which have to be refined from crude oil. It is cleaner though. Can you fit a big enough storage tank into a car that fully replaces the petrol system?

All I can say is that my EV costs less than £6 to give me a range of 300 miles. The downside (and it’s the big one) is that to buy mine today will set you back £84,000. That just isn’t sustainable. Indeed if I was looking today, the i4 would be well out of my budget.

I did see that if you’re buying some of the BMW petrol V8 cars next year, your first year’s VED will be £5,426. Ouch!

My tank is 85ltr and that more or less fills the spare wheel well. I know you need room for expansion but it only takes 67 ltr. To much hassle to remove and bend the float arm for a bit more capacity. I suppose the problem is I like the vehicle so much and it’s in such good nick I don’t want to sell. As it’s a V8 and 22 years old with 180k it’s value is, on a good day about £1500.

X5Sport wrote: ↑Mon Nov 11, 2024 6:21 pm
I did see that if you’re buying some of the BMW petrol V8 cars next year, your first year’s VED will be £5,426. Ouch!

The good news though is after 6 years it will drop back to 170

With this government?

If I ever see a V8 with a tax rate of £170 I’ll probably have a stroke. Only in heaven are V8s acceptable and no tax either. Now, that statement is as believable as the £170 tax in 6 years. I used mine to tow my sons reasonably new Renault traffic home with a failed alternator so no or not enough volts to run things and it stopped. Changed that and he was telling me how impressed he was with the stop/start which he didn’t think he would like. Next day I went and towed him to get it started as the starter had failed. Interestingly he had to abandon his work as he didn’t know how to stop it from switching off when he stopped.

X5Sport wrote: ↑Tue Nov 12, 2024 6:12 pm With this government?

welll I dunno about that but those rules were put in place last government , think its only fair after 6 years when values have tanked on most cars that they pay the same , its a luxury high value tax at the start

I agree. The ‘luxury’ tax threshold is still set at £40k (inc options) when new. Been at that level for years. Needs reviewing as many cars now exceed that amount.

As the tax is rolling in and they need the money they probably won't look at it and anyway all new cars are a luxury these days few can afford which is why the likes of vw are in big trouble This is the end game for relentless price rises and trying to roll out ev's too fast that the car buying public are just not ready for yet .

It was interesting to see the most polluting city on earth (in India)today on the news. It will take a long time to get that down to any sensible level. Also that China pollutes more in one day than we manage in a year. Will they find a cheaper way or don’t they care. Mind you, China seems to be able to produce the EVs much cheaper but we want to put tariffs on them. Yet the big boys were quite happy to use their cheap labour to keep their European profits up.

They’re making them cheap because of Chinese government subsidies so giving an unfair advantage. That is against trade rules so tariffs are being applied to ‘level’ the field. Some Chinese models won’t meet EU or Worldwide safety standard (hence not being sold here) and those also see increased battery fires. Same as is happening with some e-bike/e-scooter power units.