Monday 26 November 2007

LPG vs Petrol

We have chosen our new car, it is the Ford Territory. We test drive it the other day, and my wife loved it! I am unsure if the Ford Territory is sold in only in Australia, but basically it is based upon the Ford Falcon except it has a different body.

The Ford Territory can be fitted with a LPG option. With the current fuel pricing almost hitting the $1.50 per litre mark, having the car on LPG (at about $0.60 per litre) is certainly attractive. We considered it, but after closely looking the maths. It take a while to break even at the cost of it. Lets have a look at the maths.
  1. The differential cost between the fuel and LPG is about $1 per litre.
  2. The cost of the fitting the LPG option is about $3500 and $4800, excluding the government rebate.
  3. The government rebate is $2000, which will being the cost to $1500 to $2800. We would qualify for a $2000, instead of a $1000, as this option is considered as an after market option as Ford does not recommend a LPG unit for the Ford Territory.
  4. We will start to save money after we have used up 1500 litres and 2800 litres of LPG.
  5. The Ford Territory has a fuel economy of about 12 litres / 100km. This works out to be a distance of about 12,500 kilometers or 23,0000 kilometers.
With the way, we drive our car, it will take about 2-3 years to reach that distance, which means that our savings does not really start until year 2009 at the earliest.

So we have made the decision to stay with petrol, and will revisit this option again later on.

4 comments:

Josh McDonald said...

You also need to take into account that Petrol has a higher caloric content than LPG, ie a litre of petrol goes slightly further than a litre of LPG, hence the break-even point is even further back.

Anonymous said...

Your forgetting that Petrol prices rise at a greater rate than petrol. I see LPG is still under $.60 while petrol is hitting $1.80, this brings down the amount of k's needed.

Anonymous said...

You're also neglecting to consider the environmental impact, with LPG having less carbon emmissions compared with petrol, therefore lowering your carbon footprint on the planet.

Anonymous said...

LPG will always be better, petrol operates on a different cycle to LPG. for example petrol changes prices daily, whereas lpg is on a monthly cycle. currently in melbourne it is only 38-40 cents per litre. and petrol is around 1.20. so its literally a 1/3 of the price.