The petrol price hike is not that big of a deal for me right now. I’m still using my car a lot and driving a lot. I do try and do as little as I can during the day and when I’m home on the weekend. My plan is to keep using my car as long as I can.
My experience is that the petrol price hike is really very small. If I think about it, the only thing that really matters is what I use my car for, how I use it, and how much gas I use it for. I don’t really care about how much gas I use my car for, except for the obvious reason, which is I may not need it much in the future.
The petrol cost increase is about a $2 a litre increase, a cost of just under $2.50 that would come to $6.50 a gallon. That is a small price to pay, but still a significant chunk of change to the average household.
My average daily petrol usage in Australia last year was 7.8 litres. That is not a lot of fuel consumption, and it is far far less than most people think is a normal daily usage. Most people would be shocked to know that my average daily petrol use is 5.3 litres, or just under two gallons.
The typical household uses about 4.5 gallons more per day than that. I know because I did the research for this article. It was based on information that came from the Australian Bureau of Statistics. The Australian Bureau of Statistics doesn’t really have a clear cut measurement of the typical household’s usage. The typical household only looks at the number of people who use, or are using, fuel while doing their day’s activities.
As you might expect, the average Australian household uses about 4.5 gallons of fuel a day. The typical Australian household has about 6 people in it who use fuel in a day. This translates to the average Australian household with 6 people using fuel in a day consuming about 7.6 gallons of fuel in a day. This is more than double what we Americans generally use per day.
So why is this important? Because if you’re using a fuel that’s more expensive than the national average, then you’re at a greater risk of running out. For example if you’re using diesel in Australia, you’re more likely to run out of diesel than if you’re using petrol.
Some of you might be thinking, “What about the cars?” You might be right. If a car is about to run out of fuel its fuel economy is about half, but its fuel consumption is about double. The savings is even greater for vehicles that are going to be used only a few times before they will be replaced.
For the fuel economy, there is a big difference between the fuel consumption of petrol and diesel cars, and they are both very similar in their use of fuel. The main difference is the way fuel savings are calculated. Diesel cars, like all diesel vehicles, use more fuel to run the engine than gasoline cars (usually about 80%). So by being used only a few times a year, the fuel consumption of a diesel vehicle is typically half that of a gasoline vehicle.
Diesel vehicles use about twice as much fuel per mile as gasoline vehicles do.
