Fuel Price And Rav4 Ownership

[bluevortex]

I just wondered what your thoughts are on the reports that fuel could reach £2/litre in 2011? This is worrying for me as a T180 owner. I'm already starting to feel expensive fuel bills at current £1.33/l as I drive 20k miles per year (70 mile commute per day to and from work)

Luckliy, my VW Golf's 56mpg has absorbed alot of this cost over the last few weeks/months but then I have had an expensive car sat in the drive only being used on snow days and local driving/weekends.

Anybody else starting to feel the pinch / worried about this fiasco with oil prices...?

Blue

[Davrav]

I just wondered what your thoughts are on the reports that fuel could reach £2/litre in 2011? This is worrying for me as a T180 owner. I'm already starting to feel expensive fuel bills at current £1.33/l as I drive 20k miles per year (70 mile commute per day to and from work)

Luckliy, my VW Golf's 56mpg has absorbed alot of this cost over the last few weeks/months but then I have had an expensive car sat in the drive only being used on snow days and local driving/weekends.

Anybody else starting to feel the pinch / worried about this fiasco with oil prices...?

Blue

I think we all are Blue. Apart from selling on and trying to find something more economical [which in itself is expensive] all we can do is try to cut the miles and reduce consumption by driving economically, keeping vehicle in tip top condition with correctly inflated tyres etc. Also removing all unnecessary weight in/on the car. I am seriously considering removal of side steps and rear bar just now.

This is currently on the BBC news website:

Gas Muzzlers

[Jan&tone]

I have no doubt that the reports may turn out to be accurate.

I remember paying 4/6d PER GALLON!!!! When i first started driving. The fact that we are now paying for petrol per litre is a con of the first order, and that the government takes 70 pct of what we pay in tax is another rip off.

Hence my buying a Prius, no RFL, lots of MPG thereby depriving HMRC of revenue as far as my motoring is concerned.

As to what we can do about it?? Bugg*r all I'm afraid. The only option that I can come up with is to pack up commuting, work within 5 miles of home and buy a horse or bike to get there.

Sorry not to be of more help, but I really get P*ssed off with petrol prices, especially when the yanks pay a fraction of what we pay:(

[DjRav]

I got the Rav to save fuel (other car is the enemy; LR) as I do around the 20k per year as well. Just enjoy every drop of Diesel, in one of the most economic 4x4's there is!!

[bothwell_buyer]

I'm paying about £1.33 a litre for vpower petrol ... and get 200 miles to 50 litres. I don't work, so don't commute but for longer journeys have started using the train if I can get cheap tickets (normally by splitting the journey - sorry ancs).

I've reduced useage of the cars a lot in the past 6 months...partly due to petrol cost and partly as the arthritis in my knees is getting much worse. If I can get Cobra seats to modify a seat for me, then I'd probably use number 1 RAV more as I enjoy driving it.

For diesel, theres a place in Glasgow that manufactures bio-diesel and I think thats about 20p cheaper. Then you can buy veg oil from the cash and carrys for around £1.05 a litre.

Even the red diesel for the forklifts and genny is getting near 70p a litre!!! :censor: :censor:

[Davrav]

The sooner the promised RAV4 Hybrid is available [promised early 2012] the better. That's when I'm hoping to change the current one but I bet it will be at a premium price :(

[jps71]

I am now paying 150p a litre and due to lack of public transport etc have no option but to keep running the rav.

At least it gives good mpg better than any other 4x4.

[Parts-King]

I remember paying 4/6d PER GALLON!!!! When i first started driving.

Blimey Tone you ARE old

I bet you collected those bullet hole stickers you could get from the Regent garages, and collected "Put a tiger in your tank" stickers too

My dad sent me off to the garage once for a quart of oil, when I got there I asked for a quarter of oil, the man just gave me a can with a bit of oil left in the bottom with no charge Now then, where's my Violin?

Kingo

[bluevortex]

Recently my wife changed jobs and it means we can car share. However, that means we have two vehicles and only use one of them daily. Initial thought was to sell my Golf GT and make the saving on outstanding finance and insurance, tax, etc... but that would mean running the T180 as a daily runner. Something is telling me that would be bad fiancial decision the way things are going the Golf has been great achieving 56mpg. Option C would be sell both and buy something completly different?

Blue

[Davrav]

Recently my wife changed jobs and it means we can car share. However, that means we have two vehicles and only use one of them daily. Initial thought was to sell my Golf GT and make the saving on outstanding finance and insurance, tax, etc... but that would mean running the T180 as a daily runner. Something is telling me that would be bad fiancial decision the way things are going the Golf has been great achieving 56mpg. Option C would be sell both and buy something completly different?

Blue

If you can clear a debt you will save in the long run. You will also halve your Road tax, insurance, Servicing MOT and incidental costs by only running one car. If the Golf goes you would then have more to spend on the T180 fuel.

In your position I think I would sit down and do some sums. Looking at what each car has cost in total over the past year is a good starting point. When you get your total, work it out as cost per mile.

If you do decide to sell one you also need to consider which vehicle is most practical for the bulk of driving that you do I guess. You can always buy another later if you need to. If you decide to shift the T180 you could always get snow tyres for the Golf. I suspect they would be cheaper and easier to source than the RAV ones.

[Parts-King]

Changing your car or replacing them with something else is likely to be far more expensive than the extra bit of fuel you use, especially if you need to finance it

Clearing debts and buying one car would be an option but only you know if that will work for you. It is possible that you will both need a car for a few days a month and one of you might incur taxi or public transport costs, as mentioned above, sit down, work out some sums and base your decision on some hard facts and not the fact that fuel prices are going up, they always go up and are not likely to come down!

Kingo

[El Bee]

Anybody got any "real world" fuel consumption figures for the 2.2 diesel?

Mine is reading 13.4km per litre, the engine has only done 400kms though and no long runs yet. I'm working that km/ltr figure to somewhere around 44mpg but I'm not famous for my maths :(

FWIW, the cheapest price for diesel here is currently around €1.19, a year ago it could be found for around €0.86c/ltr...

Lee B

[Jan&tone]

I remember paying 4/6d PER GALLON!!!! When i first started driving.

Blimey Tone you ARE old

I bet you collected those bullet hole stickers you could get from the Regent garages, and collected "Put a tiger in your tank" stickers too

My dad sent me off to the garage once for a quart of oil, when I got there I asked for a quarter of oil, the man just gave me a can with a bit of oil left in the bottom with no charge Now then, where's my Violin?

Kingo

Yes kingo, i am old!

I'd forgotten about the bullet hole stickers

As well as the 4/6d a gallon we got green shield stamps too!

[baz1631]

Hi gentlemen, just browsing the forum today and saw this post about fuel prices, . £1.36 on the west coast ( Oban area) and rising!. We should hold a couple of boycot days, and no-one buys fuel. It might get the message across to those in power. They would lose a few quid in tax at least One can only live in hope!

[bluevortex]

Recently my wife changed jobs and it means we can car share. However, that means we have two vehicles and only use one of them daily. Initial thought was to sell my Golf GT and make the saving on outstanding finance and insurance, tax, etc... but that would mean running the T180 as a daily runner. Something is telling me that would be bad fiancial decision the way things are going the Golf has been great achieving 56mpg. Option C would be sell both and buy something completly different?

Blue

If you can clear a debt you will save in the long run. You will also halve your Road tax, insurance, Servicing MOT and incidental costs by only running one car. If the Golf goes you would then have more to spend on the T180 fuel.

In your position I think I would sit down and do some sums. Looking at what each car has cost in total over the past year is a good starting point. When you get your total, work it out as cost per mile.

If you do decide to sell one you also need to consider which vehicle is most practical for the bulk of driving that you do I guess. You can always buy another later if you need to. If you decide to shift the T180 you could always get snow tyres for the Golf. I suspect they would be cheaper and easier to source than the RAV ones.

My golf is already wearing snow tyres

I could say with 100% confidence (and without a calculator) that the Rav4 is more expensive than the golf in every way perhaps the only exception being the golf is 2 years older/higher mileage so may prove more expsensive mechanically in the short term.

The advanatges of keeping the Rav4: 4 wheel drive, spacious and practical for my family, good relationship with Toyoyta Inverness, reliability , loaded with toys, Satnav etc, looks the <the spuds of lurrrrvve>s and I love driving it.

Diadvantages - not cheap to run (fuel), Road Tax is higher than Golf, £100/month more on finance, RFT's need replacing this year

Looking at purely on pro's & con's it comes down to MPG's/finance. But selling the golf may indeed make up the shortfall on that front.

I just really like the Golf and its power-economy ratio is spot on, would be sad to see it go and having had my fingers burned on cars in the past I worry that I might make the wrong decision... hmmm no firm decisions need to made until May/June time.

Blue

[Davrav]

I remember paying 4/6d PER GALLON!!!! When i first started driving.

Blimey Tone you ARE old

I bet you collected those bullet hole stickers you could get from the Regent garages, and collected "Put a tiger in your tank" stickers too

My dad sent me off to the garage once for a quart of oil, when I got there I asked for a quarter of oil, the man just gave me a can with a bit of oil left in the bottom with no charge Now then, where's my Violin?

Kingo

Yes kingo, i am old!

I'd forgotten about the bullet hole stickers

As well as the 4/6d a gallon we got green shield stamps too!

And your tank was filled by a pump attendant whilst a lad checked your oil and cleaned your windscreen.

Cash/change handed over through the driver window...............

[Jan&tone]

Hi gentlemen, just browsing the forum today and saw this post about fuel prices, . £1.36 on the west coast ( Oban area) and rising!. We should hold a couple of boycot days, and no-one buys fuel. It might get the message across to those in power. They would lose a few quid in tax at least One can only live in hope!

Agreed. Unfortunately if you need petrol today, you will still need it tomorrow! So a boycott would simply put off for one day the inevitable

those in power would take no notice at all.

If we could not buy it today AND not replace what we didn't buy, then that may have some effect, unfortunately that ain't gonna happen.

[baz1631]

Hi gentlemen, just browsing the forum today and saw this post about fuel prices, . £1.36 on the west coast ( Oban area) and rising!. We should hold a couple of boycot days, and no-one buys fuel. It might get the message across to those in power. They would lose a few quid in tax at least One can only live in hope!

Yea, totally agree....just day-dreamin' too much time on ma hands !, well at least I've saved fuel money for 6mth. as car is still "off road" . better get back to doin ma housework a suppose!

Agreed. Unfortunately if you need petrol today, you will still need it tomorrow! So a boycott would simply put off for one day the inevitable

those in power would take no notice at all.

If we could not buy it today AND not replace what we didn't buy, then that may have some effect, unfortunately that ain't gonna happen.

[Manxrav]

Hi Blue,I think it is a no-win situation with the T180. When I had mine I could never get better than 35mpg so it got sold on (remmember diesel is always about 8p a litre dearer here than in the UK-£1.46ltr at the moment).The T180 is a superb machine but in this climate at the moment,with fuel going haywire,it would not be my vechile of choice. In saying that my X3 isn,t either, but hopefully soon that will be resolved

Regards Clare

[bluevortex]

I hate to say it but a Mondeo Titanium X seems to tick all my boxes at the moment, apart from snow performance but with the addition of snow tyres this may help. Not big financial decisions just yet, will stand back and look at this situation over the coming months!

Blue

[anchorman]

For a minute I thought you said MONDEO blue.

This little Kia of mine will do 45 knocking around and 60 on a trip. My last RAV would do high 30s knocking around so there are options. Think carfully about the blue oval though!!! What will you save in the difference to change the cars?

Is this fuel likely to come down after this little middle eastern mularky is settled? My guess is that the evil scheming government is quite happy about all this extra revenue from VAT. Next thing you know they'll rub our noses in it by raising the duty..........

.......hang on a minute!!!

Its time we had a government watchdog because this lot of robbing festering robdogs are out of control no matter what colour tie they wear.

[shcm]

If you try and take the emotion out of it for a minute and look at the real cost. There's a bit of a table here:

http://www.speedlimit.org.uk/petrolprices.html

By my calculation, using Jan 2011 RPI and unleaded price of about 129p/l around here, you get a figure of 127. So, in real terms at the moment, we are probably paying 27% more than we should be. Yeah, OK not a startling revelation. (probably that figure is a little high as fuel cost was lower in Jan).

Yeah, the calculation is a bit of a fudge. Yeah, my salary certainly hasn't gone up by the RPI. Yeah, I don't know whether fuel is included in the RPI, so the calculation could also be one of positive feedback (In a control system sense, which is usually bad). Yeah the RPI is a big fudge anyway, Yeah, the majority of the cost of fuel is tax......................

Don't get me wrong, I don't like paying these costs anymore than anybody else, but you probably have to give it a longer period, to see if things drop again, before jumping to any conclusions. Unfortunately our transport system is mostly car based.

I seem to remember some years ago, there was the "Mars Bar" method for calculating the real term cost of things. The Mars bar was considered a relatively stable thing for quality/quantity/price. So you found out the cost of a Mars bar previously and divided the price of the commodity then, by the cost of the Mars bar then, to see how many Mars bars it cost.

Then you did the same for the commodities current cost and the Mars Bar's current cost and compared to see how many Mars bars it now cost with previously.

Unfortunately they messed around with the size and quality of the Mars Bar

(.....and it's not even April 1st ).

[Parts-King]

I know something else about Mars bars but as they say.................that's another story

[Manxrav]

The name Faithful springs to mind!!!!!

Got to totally agree with Anchs on his post

Regards Clare

[Mike JD]

I know something else about Mars bars but as they say.................that's another story

And are you thinking of a regional speciality in takeaway (or carryout) cuisine or being faithful to the memory of another alleged use from the music world in the 60s ?

Mike D