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[geoffr70]

Hello.

AFAIK, and I may be wrong, LPG is so cheap compared to petrol and diesel because it isn't taxed so much. This I suspect will change when more and more people get LPG, if we haven't all got electric cars before then!

Anyway, does anyone know when the tax break on LPG will end? I read an article somewhere (must've been an old one) that said it finishes in 2009. Obviously it hasn't or must've been extended.

The reason I ask is that I'm considering LPGing my Elite, but if the tax break is to end in a few years it might not even pay for itself. I've only done about 6000 miles in the last year, but it still costs alot to fuel the beast!

Thanks!

[Lazydocker]

AFAIK, the tax differential was honoured until 2014 in the last budget by Labour... Whether the current government will honour that, who knows? I would have thought so as it is a cleaner fuel.

Anyway... If you go down the DIY route then 8-10k will see you break even but if you do lots of short journeys, have to go out of your way for LPG etc then this will increase your payback time.

[Entwood]

No idea when/if the "tax break" you refer to will go or stay ... politicians change the rules as fast as I change my socks !!

What I can tell you is on a 3.2 V6 Saloon LPG saves me just about 10p a mile.... or 40% of fuel costs !!!!

My estimated running costs on petrol are 24.98 pence per mile against actual running costs of 15.10 pence per mile on LPG. That is over 27887 miles since 17 May 2008, and includes a large number of miles towing a fairly heavy 'van.

I have an 80 ltr tank which means you can get 64 ltrs gas in ... at todays price that is about £41 for a full tank. That will get me about 180 miles towing, 250 miles around town, 330 miles "mixed" town/cruising or 400 miles sitting at 70 on the motorway (very difficult to do in an Omega . but cruise control helps until I get fed up ..   )

LPG gets my vote ...   

HTH

[ballcock50]

I think its 2011 but may be wrong.

[Lazydocker]

No idea when/if the "tax break" you refer to will go or stay ... politicians chaneg the rules as fast as I change my socks !!

What I can tell you is on a 3.2 V6 Saloon LPG saves me just about 10p a mile. My estimated running costs on petrol are 24.98 pence per mile against actual running costs of 15.10 pence per mile on LPG. That is over 27887 miles since 17 May 2008, and includes a large number of miles towing a fairly heavy 'van.

I have an 80 ltr tank which means you can get 64 ltrs gas in ... at todays price that is about £41 for a full tank. That will get me about 180 miles towing, 250 miles around town, 330 miles "mixed" town/cruising or 400 miles sitting at 70 on the motorway (very difficult to do in an Omega . but cruise control helps until I get fed up ..   )

LPG gets my vote ...   

HTH

Although I've not been anywhere near as anoraky dedicated as Entwood in doing the sums I reckon my figures are pretty similar in a 3.0 (as you would expect).

I have a 90L tank so 72L usable gas per fill and get about 210 towing, 270-280 town driving with a fairly heavy foot and anywhere 300-380 miles on a fast run... Recently managed a consistent 360-380 miles between fills on our holiday to Italy, setting the cruise between 80 and 100+ mph on the continent for some 50+ hours in total

I reckon if I could behave and set the cruise at 65-70 (and leave it there ) I could easily see 410+ miles to the tank

[Lazydocker]

I think its 2011 but may be wrong.

Sure it was extended again

Should add.. It's not a Tax Break... It's a Fuel Duty Differential. That is what the commitment is to keep

[ballcock50]

My biggest annoyance is availability, I have to drive about 10 miles to fill up, The motorway service stations aren't compelled to sell it. I had a local car sales than sold it till the council revoked their licence as you could only drive onto the pump from one direction (ie drive to it, reverse away) how petty.

[TheBoy]

I have a 80l tank, so fills to 65l, which is under £40 at prices I pay.  That takes me around 250 miles, though I have stretched out to 288 miles before running out recently.  I only dream about the ranges that others get from their LPG tanks 

Still, I tend to get 18-21mpg at 60.9p, and cost of fitted (excluding the 'complications' I had) was under £600, so payback seems to be in region of 6-8k, without taking into account where the filling stations are (I have a nice cheap one almost on the way to work).

Mine was fitted late April, and I'm probably in the region of break even now (I didn't really note mpg when I first fitted it, as I knew it would probably need a bit of recalibration quickly).


Which reminds me, I must have another play with calibrating the LPG gauge - its blooming miles out

[TheBoy]

My biggest annoyance is availability, I have to drive about 10 miles to fill up, The motorway service stations aren't compelled to sell it. I had a local car sales than sold it till the council revoked their licence as you could only drive onto the pump from one direction (ie drive to it, reverse away) how petty.

sites like petrolprices.com are helpful for LPGers, as its probably the most accurate (if they say somewhere sells LPG, they normally do, but don't always have all stations selling it).  Note that most of the other sites and mobile apps are pretty bad.

[PhilRich]

At the risk of being labelled anal or an anorak or a combination of the two  , here are my findings after lpg'ing my 2.2 auto in July this year.

Pre lpg conversion with Petrol @ 115.9p/litre (£5.27p/Gal) a £10 fill gave me an average of 40 miles, or 21mpg = £0.25p/mile. This was for mainly short distance town journeys with the occasional 76 mile return run to Newcastle upon Tyne.

Between 5th July (first lpg fill)& 29th September 2010, the average lpg cost has been £0.15p/mile with lpg costing a steady £0.56p/litre at every lpg station in my Town. This equates to a saving over the equivalent mileage on Petrol of £185.60p
The above calculations & savings INCLUDE the occasional petrol fill needed as a safety backup & for cold starting until the lpg vaporiser reaches operating temperature.
My breakeven point is approx. 7 [size=8]1/2[/size] months at current mileage/traffic conditions.

BTW, regarding lpg cold staring? I have found that the car starts immediately & runs perfectly on lpg from cold in the morning during summer months without the need for petrol warm up. When I have started on petrol during those months, the switchover to lpg has occurred before the car is off the driveway, a matter of 20 seconds or so! Obviously as the weather has got colder the switchover time has increased. This morning it took until I had driven approx.1/4 of a mile, so the extra petrol consumption during the colder weather would need to be factored in. So, to sum up; Is lpg conversion worth it? In my case Yes, most definately!

[Lazydocker]

Nice calculations Phil... Must confess I never really bothered as I knew that LPG was worth it for me! I reckon that your calculations match those I did and Entwoods (interestingly) and that it's safe to say that LPG on an Omega saves around 10p per mile.

From that you can easily work out that an outlay of £700, for example, which is probably about the average price to DIY convert is recouped in 7k miles... I would say 8k to be safe.

So... Is LPG converting an Omega worth it? Yes... If you plan to do more than 8k miles before selling it and LPG is within a reasonable distance of your regular routes.

Must add, with regards to the petrol warm up and switch over time... I think I used 4 tanks of petrol last year, which included me running out of LPG quite a few times and having to do up to 20 miles or so on the pricey stuff before the next fill up

[tunnie]

370 miles is easily achievable from my 90L tank, I rekon 400 is do-able.

For me, when i converted, I was saving £10 per day  

As others have said 7-10k miles will pay it back, i've done 13k since conversion so well into profit 

[Lazydocker]

370 miles is easily achievable from my 90L tank, I rekon 400 is do-able.

For me, when i converted, I was saving £10 per day  

As others have said 7-10k miles will pay it back, i've done 13k since conversion so well into profit 

But you drive slower than my Granny!

As for profit... I reckon I have saved enough to cover ALL my costs with the Omega apart from Insurance, which I'm slowly chipping away at, for the entire time I have owned it. I've done about 55k in it, 47k+ on LPG

[aaronjb]

Hmm.. Those of you with a toroidal tank, one question - did you keep the spare somewhere else, or do you just keep a can of fix-a-flat gunk in the car and/or an AA card?

[PhilRich]

Hmm.. Those of you with a toroidal tank, one question - did you keep the spare somewhere else, or do you just keep a can of fix-a-flat gunk in the car and/or an AA card?

IMHO fitting a toroidal is only worth doing if loss of boot space is an ABSOLUTE NO-NO as you are then limited on mileage range even with a full toroidal;) With the largest capacity cylinder tank fitted, the available boot space is still quite generous. Fit a narrower 75 litre tank & you can still fit long thin items into the car 's cabin through the gap above it