Filled the bike last week it was £20! That’s the first time I’ve everput £20 on a motorbike!
I had a few emails recently about only buying fuel from certian places etc… Anyone reckon this would work?
I wish we could all do something like this…
Those emails are a crock of shite mate. Only by petrol from Tesco or Sainsbury and avoid bp and shell. Well who supplies Tesco and Sainsbury. Ultimately if everyone was buying their petrol from one supplier they would quickly run out and then stick the price up.
Most of the petrol stations are franchised anyway, so all you’re going to do is hurt the little man. The big oil companies wouldn’t notice.
As most of the price is due to tax and duty the only thing to do is to get everyone to bitch to their MP. With the horse trading going on at the moment perhaps it is the best time to start writing letters to their MP expressing the outrage of the price of petrol.
I would like to think we could do something, but I dunno what to suggest. Its up to 1.50 Euro a litre in France, Belgium and Germany.
We got more vehicles on the road than ever before. And more are coming. It obviously doesnt hurt … yet…
£1.30 for BP Ultimate !
does that ultimate/ performance stuff make any difference?..I bought it a couple of times and never noticed anything different in terms of performance or mpg…
Wish we could do something about it… London prices on average about £1.24 per litre now for standard unleaded- no sign of prices coming down either…
No - Results are inconsistent/not worth the extra cost.
When bike magazine tested performance petrol they found it actually lowered power output in the case of the BMW S1000RR.
+1although Yamaha did recommend it with the new R1. But i have never seen a difference in the bike, only my wallet!!
The only bike I’ve seen where it is required are the BMW R1150RT & 1200RT but those were police bikes, so not sure it the standard bikes require them.
thats not strictly true
about a 1/3 of it is a combination of duty and VAT.
e.g. lets say price at the pump is £1.20
VAT @ 17.5% is approx 18p
Duty @ 20% is approx 17p
Underlying Petrol price 85p
I very much doubt that writing to your MP will make a big impact on the duty/VAT structure that we have had for years. The UK has its largest debt on record. cutting taxation is unlikely to be a strong option.
Crude oil prices in the last 10 years have gotten a bit out of hand due to supply changes from OPEC, world events, speculation, growth in demand from both developed nations, and developing nations like China and India.
Basically oil is not cheap at the moment (although has fallen back from record highs), and looks set to continue to rise i’m afraid
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aXbyUkadN008
the fuel is allegedly supposed to have additives to help keep the engine clean, but seen plenty of people arguing that this is just marketing.
as far as i’m aware most motorbikes do not have a knock sensor so cant auto adjust to higher levels of octane (like some performance cars do). If the engine is designed to run reliably on 95 ron the performance as well as 98, then the settings cant be optimised for the higher octane.
if you’re a very good rider on track then you ‘might’ notice a marginal benefit. I’d be amazed if you actually did on the road, even if there was a genuine performance improvement.
Your figures are a little out there Ben, this is from the pre budget report from the Department of Treasury:
Fuel duties
Fuel duty rate changes will take effect from 1 December 2008 and 1 April 2009.
Fuel Type
Duty rate (pence per litre, unless stated)
Current Rate On and after 1 Dec 2008 On and after 1 April 2009
Ultra-low sulphur petrol/diesel
50.35 52.35 54.19
And then the VAT is added on the top of that. And since these figures there has been additional duty put on to it I believe that it is 58.19p per litre.
Certainly a lot of the recent increases are due to raising crude costs, and increases due to the restoration of 17.5 rate of VAT.
We are at same price of petrol as when the price hit $147 back in 2008 and yet the price of oil today is $80.
Some is making a lot of money out of petrol and the government is taking about 72p is going to the government leaving about 50p to be split between, price of extraction, refining, transport and retail.
But you’re right about bitching to the MPs as long as they get their milky coffee, biscuits and huge expense accounts they don’t care about the little people.
I dont mean to be a prophet of doom but the internal combustion engine is doomed. Petrol will never go down in price and writing to your m.p is a complete waste of time. He/she just dont give a toss!! just enjoy your bike while you cos soon it’ll all be too expensive. No amount of protesting will make any difference. 
i stand corrected kev 
makes it more like 1/2. ‘most’ is still probably inappropriate 
My brother works in the industry and he said that they make hardly anything from filling stations because there is so much tax. They make their money in industrial applications mostly I think.
Anyway if you buy enough Vpower you get your loyalty card upgraded to the Vpower club (Proud).
Don’t we already have about the cheapest (pre-duty) fuel in Europe?
When the cashier rang up £21.30 I said, na mate wrong pump, I genuinely thought he got the wrong one!
I can’t see how they’ll discorage cars by putting the price sky high, Everyones just getting more economical cars!
I feel like filling up and riding off, it’s getting silly …
We did, Brent Light Crude has one of the highest proportion of petrol than most crude oil. Therefore easier to refine and more per gallon. However will the diminishing output from the North Sea Oil fields more of our petrol comes from other sources that have a lower fraction of petrol.
Did some calculations
Petrol is 120p/L = (58.19p{duty} + (extraction+refining+transport+retail+OPEC))*1.175 {VAT}
So 120p/L = 58.19p + 43.94p + 17.87p
Therefore 58.19+17.87=76.06p goes to the Treasury who promptly wastes it.
Perhaps Ken Livingstone was on the right track when he wanted to do a deal with Venezuela !Global GasPump prices worldwide(Dollars per gallon as of Feb. 24)
CountryDollars per gallon
Netherlands$6.25Norway$6.21United Kingdom$5.94Germany$5.87Italy$5.72France$5.56South Korea$5.38Japan$4.54Australia$3.32South Africa$3.24Russia$2.38Mexico$2.36U.S.$2.23Nigeria$1.85China$1.93India (Delhi)$3.75Indonesia$1.67Vietnam$2.27Malaysia$1.93Bangladesh$2.42Singapore$4.09Iran$0.33Venezuela$0.12*