Be Excellent To Each Other

"The US consumes 20.8 million barrels of petroleum a day. A barrel of oil costs about $100 now I believe, go with that as it's a nice round number. In the US alone, a 5% improvement to fuel economy is a saving of $104mill PER DAY. If we assume the US uses, oh, 1/5th of all petrol then worldwide a 5% improvement in fuel economy is an approximate saving of $189.8 billion per year.

If you had the secret of magic things you could put in fuel that would improve fuel economy by 5% you'd be rich enough to hire Bill Gates to dress in a monkey suit and follow you around carrying your Nobel prize.

There are a lot of snake-oil products for fuel, but octane boosting additives, for example, are used and with measurable effect.

I don't think it's bizarre for the fuel companies to understand petrochemicals enough to add more ingredients to standard gasoline or whatever to make it work better. They already have different octane fuels besides.

Umm, what do you think fuel octane is? It has nothing to do with power output. Edumacation here.

Employ a person at every gas station to ensure everyone's tyres are inflated to the correct pressure. 5% improvement to fleet mileage.
Where do I get my prize now please thanks?

Seriously though, fuel economy is taken so un-seriously in the US, that pretty much any measure would have a dramatic effect. The point you are missing is that the oil and car industries and the government *DO NOT WANT* to reduce their oil consumption. It would not be a "saving" to them, so it is not in their interests to do it.


On the fuel difference thing, I'm not making it up, really. I didn't believe it, then I tested it, now I'm asking why there's apparently a measurable difference. Do Tesco heat their tanks or something?

edit:


So it's probably just that, right? Tesco gets a slightly lower blend from the refiners for a slightly lower price. Nothing to do with additives.

did I mention power? I don't think so.

Prevailing speed of traffic, traffic light cycles, air temperature, wind direction/speed - all vary slightly. As does the exact formulation of the petrol between batches - or possibly even the top and bottom of the underground tank, which will never be completely empty. Petrol does go off, so if it's been there for a long time it might be slightly less useful. A quieter station will probably have a dirtier tank too, so you might be getting more water/other contaminents in your tank too.

It might not vary so much that you'd notice day to day, but potentially enough to have a noticeable effect over the course of a tank of fuel.

You'd need a hub dyno running in a temperature and pressure controlled room and electronic control of the throttle to even get close to accurately measuring differences between fuel from two tankers.