Fuel Brands And Consumption

May 7, 2011

I thought some of you might be interested in some fuel data which I have collected over a number of years and it may assist with answering question about which petrol gives better consumption. This was essentially for my own use to see the differences between different fuel brands.

The car is a 2002 Avensis Petrol Automatic which has now covered about 150,000 miles. It is maintained as well as possible and the driving was carried out mainly by me in a spirited way over a variety of roads and conditions but predominantly country roads. The results are averaged out over three and a half years with the car and approx. 60,000 miles. I have recorded similar data with a second car previously and will post these when collated.

Fuel Comparison by Grade

Rank, Brand, No. Fills, MPG

1, Shell FS, 7, 30.76

2, V-Power, 102, 29.94

3, Esso UL, 11, 29.29

4, BP Ultimate, 9, 28.34

Other Results

Rank, Brand, No. Fills, MPG

1, SP 98,

(French non-brand UL)

1, 33.70

2, BP UL, 3, 29.82

3, Shell UL, 2, 29.49

4, Total UL, 2, 29.33

5, Texaco 95, 1, 29.21

6, Total Excil, 1, 27.98

7, Esso Supreme, 1, 27.79

As you can see, although the formatting isnt great, the fuel of choice is V-Power and the fills over each year were mainly consecutive tanks of V-Power over with odd fills of other petrol (when it wasn’t convenient to search for a petrol station) – the overall MPG for brands other than V-Power may not be scientifically conclusive owing to the change from V-Power to another brand and back again. However there is about 2 MPG difference between best and worst - >7% approx.. More recently I have filled the car with consecutive tanks of Shell Fuel Save petrol. There have been good results although the car does not feel as punchy compared to V-Power.

Overall in both cars I found V-Power to offer the best drivability over any other petrol whilst Shell Fuel Save is pretty good also but lacks a bit of punch. My only criticism of V-Power is sometimes the Avensis seemed hesitant at low engine speeds during warm up. The worst petrol in driveability terms is Total - there seems little difference between Excilium and regular whilst both make the engine drive less smoothly (second car). However, the MPG returned was good. Esso and BP are somewhere in between. The 98 RON petrol used in France was on a long journey and the results for the tanks either side of that fill were also high representing the good MPG returned on that trip. But as only one tank filled, inconclusive except to demonstrate the type of driving helps fuel consumption – in this case the car was running most of the day on a long trip mainly over motorways and dual carriageway roads.

A good experiment in the future may be to obtain figures over ten consecutive tanks of each brand or, if anyone else is interested, to allocate say a few drivers a brand each then swap after ten fills let me know. Over the years I have also collected cost data. Let me know again if this could be useful to anyone.

Many thanks for reading,

Robert