Diesel 'price war'.

[fjord]

Yayaya bks to the news article, look at the graph on the right.

Im pretty stunned how much petrol consumption has dropped off in the last 5 years alone.

http://news.sky.com/story/1075775/diesel-fuel-pric...

[jones325i]

That shows that the total fuel consumed (petrol + diesel) have decreased overall. Can't be right surely, with all the extra vehicles about?

[otolith]

Recession, fuel prices and more fuel efficient cars.

eg

http://www.channel4.com/news/cash-strapped-drivers...

[to3m]

I suspect it's a combination of: greater general fuel efficiency, fewer total miles driven, more miles driven per unit petrol than diesel.

(For the drop in miles driven, see https://www.gov.uk/government/statistical-data-set... - note that miles driven by lorries and coaches/buses has dropped off markedly. That could explain why a mass switch to diesel-powered cars hasn't resulted in an overall increase in consumption of diesel to match the drop in consumption of petrol, because there's this big hole in diesel demand relative to 2007. But this is a forum post rather than a proper investigation so I'm not actually going to work through the numbers to check if it matches up )

Edited by to3m on Tuesday 9th April 15:05

Edited by to3m on Tuesday 9th April 15:05

[Krikkit]

That's a bloody stupid graph, designed to make the difference look as dramatic as possible.

From the AA:

AA said:

New research from the AA released this morning shows that total sales of petrol and diesel from supermarket and non-supermarket forecourts fell from 37.6bn litres in 2007 to 34.2bn litres last year.

The data also reveals a shift in the fuel mix. Sales of petrol fell drastically from 22.9bn litres to 17.4bn litres, while an increase in sales of more fuel efficient diesel vehicles and the trend towards corporate fleets purchasing fuel from forecourts meant sales of diesel rose from 14.8bn to 16.7bn.

So the overall difference is 10%, petrol is down by 30% and diesel up to compensate as more and more people buy a Golf/A3/3-series diesel on finance to keep up with the Jones'.

Edited by Krikkit on Tuesday 9th April 15:15

[fjord]

Krikkit said:

So the overall difference is 10%, petrol is down by 30% and diesel up to compensate as more and more people buy a Golf/A3/3-series diesel on finance to keep up with the Jones'.

Edited by Krikkit on Tuesday 9th April 15:15

3.4 billion litres of fuel reduction in what, 5/6 years? Sounds like a lot to me.

[Devil2575]

Krikkit said:

That's a bloody stupid graph, designed to make the difference look as dramatic as possible.

Nothing silly about that graph as long as you spot that the Y axis doesn't start at zero.

What is silly is calling it a "price war" and refering to a 2p a litre cut as "slashing prices"

It's a 1.4% reduction which is feck all.