GM Exec Wants To Make Premium Gas The New Regular Gas
jalopnik.com/gm-exec-wants-to-make-premium-ga...Posted Mar 13, 2018, 6:21 AM UTC
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jalopnik.com
The problem is calling higher octane fuel “premium gas” implying it’s higher quality
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This is true. I've run into many people that have put premium in their Civic claiming it ran so much better.
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but was it VTEC?????????!
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Sadly those people never hit the redline and never knew the quantum physics of VTEC!
7
Is it true?
1
FWIW, I put 89 in my Honda even though it only requires 87. SIGNIFICANTLY reduces the smell of sulfur (bad eggs) at full throttle. Same scenario at high altitudes where they sell 85 octane gas, I need to put in 87 up there or I'll be leaving a trail of stink if I ever step on it.
I suspect my cats are slowly going bad, but could my car be running too rich and somehow higher octane would offset that?
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I never trust 89. It's just 87 and 91 mixing just before the nozzle. Who knows if the mix is accurate.
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Unless you think the regular or super dispensers are inaccurate then you don’t have to worry.
I don’t like 89 because you’re paying for 2 parts super 1 part regular when in reality you’re only getting 2 parts regular one part super. If you manually pumped regular and super to get 89, you would get a better price.
Not to mention the fact that super only costs stations 10 cents over regular and charging 30cents more wasn’t enough, now they’re bold enough to charge 50 cents over.
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I've seen 89 cheaper than 87 at Super America a couple times.
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Lol it’s very accurate with the digital pumps, which are now everywhere. Source: family member builds and refurbishes gas pumps.
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Hey, I put premium into both of my cars.
One because it's dual fuel and the way it's tuned it seems to hate low octane fuel (misses on 91 or 95, can't leave the fuel in the tank for more than a few weeks)
The other because I notice better drivability on 98 (more torque at lower revs, smoother running under load etc. Well, that and 10.5:1 compression on low octane fuel makes me nervous)
1
But it is isn't it? I mean for like high performance engines it does make a difference because they likelyhood of self ignition is lower.
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It's either necessary or it's not. Higher-octane means you can have higher compression, more advance, and hotter combustion chamber temperatures without detonation. If your car will run reliably on 87, putting in 91 won't improve performance. If your car requires 91, putting in 87 could damage it.
You often see race cars that use forced induction use higher-octane gas at the track, which leads people to think that more octane content equals higher performance, but in reality, those cars are tuned up on the track to make more boost or run hotter than usual, and thus require higher-octane fuel.
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it depends on how you define quality -- octane 91 is sort of the "key" to allow your car to achieve its throttle response and torque. otherwise, 87 will knock most mid engined cars.
it's very efficient gas, but would it be considered high quality?
-10
what?
3
It has the same additives i believe just a higher concentration of the octane booster which is lately ethanol (113 for pure ethanol)
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In Canada, they are likely "better", most brand's premium gas is ethanol-free!
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But ethanol is good. I try to find as much ethanol as I can.
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No it's not its corrosive to a unleaded petrol engine and you need a specific tune to get the most out of it, let alone E10 which is a shitty octane fuel boosted by ethanol but costs the price of premium or E85 which you'll have to sell your first daughter to full the tank. Then you've got less mileage per gallon in the same car which makes it even worse for dailying
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E10 which is a shitty octane fuel boosted by ethanol but costs the price of premium
That's not exactly true. For example, in my area, the vast majority gas is E10. 85, 87 and 91. Ethanol free gas is considerably more expensive and much harder to find.
E85 which you'll have to sell your first daughter to full the tank.
What are you talking about? I just filled my Vette with 17.5 gallons of E85 last night and it was $30.625. 17.5 gallons of premium at that same station would have been $51.45.
Then you've got less mileage per gallon in the same car which makes it even worse for dailying
Yup, roughly 30% worse MPG. However, E85 is 68% cheaper than 91 where I am.
However, I can deal with worse MPG for how much more power I'm making.
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It generally is though, it's required to have a lower level of sulphur and sometimes has additives that inhibit corrosion of injectors and valves.
The problem is associating high octane fuel with increasing performance or mileage. Simply unless the car has a computer that calibrates it's knock tables changing to a higher octane fuel will slightly reduce fuel economy and performance in a normal car.
2
Well, in Europe our 95 octane (your 91) is regular across the board. 98 (93) is premium, and I believe the markups aren't horrendous.
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It's not a bad idea for America to do it too.
Here in the UK our regular is 95 RON which translates to 90 AKI from a quick Google.
Now we need to start getting E85 popular here as no garage I have seen sells it.
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Move to Sweden, almost every fuel station has E85.
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Don't you need to get your car modified to run on it?
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I mean, yeah, gotta get more fuel through the injectors and replace rubber fuel lines, that deteriorate in e85. Some cars come factory ready for e85 though
Might as well screw in more boost or compression too, but it's not 100% necessary
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Don't you need to get your car modified to run on it?
Some cars, yes. Other cars are designed to burn either E85 or gasoline from the factory.
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How does it compare price wise to regular?
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95 octane is about 14-15kr, so like 1.40-1.50€, E85 is about 10kr.
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At approximately 1 Euro per liter, that's about $4.69 /gallon. That's almost double the fuel costs in America. I'd say that's kind of horrendous
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I wish it was 1 Euro/litre :(
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That was my quick estimate of the average based off the map I was looking at
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I don't know which map you were looking at, but in Croatia 95 was 1.07/litre 10 years ago. It peaked at 1.70 in 2012-13 and is currently treading towards 1.40 again.
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Lol it's around 1.30€ to 1.40€ most of the time
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Europe is a big place, and gas prices aren't the same everywhere.
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Yeah true. Germany is just a special kind of expensive...
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I'd take $4.69/Gallon for 98 octane gas at every pump. If I messed with my car too much and needed higher octane (Eg Supercharging) I'd be looking at like $10+/Gallon I'd have to special order..
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Keep in mind, this is all RON. US numbers are RON+MON/2. So 98 Octane to Europeans is about the same as US 93
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I need this. I have to be careful with my engine timing due to moderately high compression and once I supercharge, won't even be able to run past 6psi boost on 91 octane..
If we had 98, I'd have so much more freedom with tuning my car. That's practically racing gas over here..
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Europe's 98 is the same as your 93.
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It depends on the state in America. Some states, such as California, 91 (95 RON) is premium. But in Texas, 93 (98 RON ) is premium.
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I think it's because you guys get good midle-eastern gas, while over here in North America, our gas comes from cruder sources like Canadian tar sands and the Gulf of Mexico.
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The way I understand it is that switching to 1 blend would reduce refinery costs making it more affordable.
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economies of scale, pretty well established economic idea.
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We really really really need to move away from regional blends. That alone would make a huge difference.
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It depends on altitude does it not?
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It also depends on population and air quality. The gas sold in LA is going to be different from the gas in Las Vegas
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Is it? I thought Arizona/California/Nevada gas was different. https://www.bobistheoilguy.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=2808264
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No, that's just a bad idea. There are very good reasons that regional blends are a thing.
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As someone with experience in Mogas blending in a refinery, good luck putting the same blend of gas in your car in Florida as you do in Michigan in December. Among other specs, RVP requirements change throughout the time of year as well as the region.
Additionally it is not as simple as adding octane. Sending Light Naphtha through a reformer to create high octane components is not free and adding higher octane components to a blend will require more energy and reformer capacity let alone the additional hydrofining and other feed prep processes to that reformer.
Switching to a higher baseline octane would require major modifications to US refineries which would not be cheap.
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Nope. It all ships in the same truck. Additives are added at the station.
-1
Source?
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Octane is not an additive it is a property of the gasoline determined by the molecular structure of the component blend in the fuel.
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My professor was always big on this. Auto companies are basically required to meet all emissions standards with no assistance from gas companies. If gas companies offered different fuels, it could be easier to meet emissions/CAFE standards, because higher octane means higher compression, which allows for increased efficiency.
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They have this option now to a degree but nobody wants to develop an engine profile for 91/93 (US) octane if it means consumers will perceive the vehicle as more expensive to drive. If a Civic is going to cost 30% more to fill up than a Corolla to gain 10% better economy, you know that's going to hurt the bottom line.
My escape allowed me to run either regular or premium and I filled up with premium maybe half a dozen times that I owned it. Mileage improved about 2-3 mpg on the highway but that nowhere near offset the $.60 a gallon price increase.
Going even higher in octane is even more expensive so I think we're already to the point of diminishing returns on value. If they can do higher octanes at similar prices then fine; I just don't see that happening.
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Higher compression does result in more efficient cars, but it also results in more nitric oxides which are far worse than CO2.
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I understand where he's coming from, but here's the deal. Cars were getting mid 30 miles per gallon in the late 80s on regular gas by virtue of light weight, small profiles, and lax emissions regulations.
Now adays, CAFE laws incentivize larger vehicles, people tend to buy larger vehicles, safety regulations require a lot of weight addition, and emissions regulations strangle the engine to run poorly to reduce NOx emissions.
With modern engines utilizing direct injection to pull off huge compression ratios, the use of aluminum in the frames, and modern CFD dictating design to reduce drag, if we budged on any of those requirements, we could have cars hitting 40+ mpg without the use of hybrid technology, CVTs, auto start stop, or any of that nonsense.
You can't have your cake and eat it too. Something has to budge
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In the ‘80s they also didn’t have nearly the same safety regulations, speed limits were 55mph in most places until ‘87, completely changing not until ‘95.
Direct injection isn’t the end all. It does improve emissions in certain applications, but increases others.
Exactly though, something has to give in order to make more efficient cars. I think emissions has really pushed it a lot, and it’s why we’ve had so much inovation in engines. I think safety standards that basically kill the small car are what need to be opened up more.
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Driving an 80s car in today's modern world with my commute on 75 mph roads, I still get 30+ mpg on average.
I don't think safety regulations killed the small car per se. The Fiat 500 and SmartForTwo are about the same size as a CRX, maybe smaller. And the MX-5 weighs 2,300 pounds. I think it's still possible to make a small car, but CAFE standards are interfering
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That’s fair.
CAFE definitely doesn’t help the case, but safety regulations definitely have a lot to do with it. Those are all 2 seaters though, like the CRX. However, even an Accord weighed about 2500lbs. People wanting more luxury options and safety has definitely played their roles in making cars bigger and heavier. CAFE as well, but mostly in wheelbase and track, because those reduce the required economy.
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Yeah. So it seems like emissions regulations play a larger role than footprint (wheelbase and track) since the Accord of that era had about ~28 mpg despite weighing 2,500 pounds
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regretting not waiting for the Skyactiv-X? :P
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I don't know. While the engine technology is huge, I'm disappointed the new Mazda 3 will have a torsion beam suspension for "refinement" when that's not even the root cause for Mazdas cabin noise complaints
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Lets not. After using 93 in my TL for the past year, I love going to the pump and paying $2.20 and not $3.20+.
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If there's only one type of gas, the refinery process is simplified and the savings could be passed onto the consumer.
Gas would simply have "one" price. It would still vary by state due to taxes, but there'd be one octane to rule them all.
I don't see how doing this would affect supply or demand - 'all' cars that can take regular can take premium and mid-grade 89 octane serves no purpose that I can tell.
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the savings could be passed onto the consumer.
I hate it to break it to you...
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Seriously. Canadian here, our gas is still over a 1.20 per liter, even though oil is cheap.
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But your taxes on the fuel is what I assume is high? Here federal gas tax is 18.4c per gallon, it hasn't been raised since the early 90s. The states can levy however much they feel necessary though, which is why gas is comparably expensive in California and NY.
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LOL I paid $1.73 yesterday for premium.
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savings could be passed onto the consumer
Yeah, because oil companies have always been so consumer-minded...
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The only place where you save money is on tankage/logistics. The same exact components are blended into premium and regular just in different ratios.
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Everyone's missing the point. Switching to premium makes it easier for automakers to hit their mpg targets. That makes cars cheaper. The gas won't be cheaper, but lifetime cost of ownership might be.
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Yes and get us 97 for premium
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That's unleaded race fuel... Unless you have a custom tune or the rare freak with a race fuel mode, that is completely wasted on any current production street car.
Vehicles going forward could use it but the added cost of adding that to the infrastructure and the cost to early adopters would be staggering for just the slightest of improvement.
We as a society are past the point where going high octane is the logical path. Even as a car guy, I'd much rather see improvements to an EV infrastructure than it be wasted on the small gains of a higher octane when most vehicles can't even use the current premium.
6
If higher octane was more available, we'd see much more efficient use of compression, turbos, and superchargers. Modern vehicles don't use anything past 91 because it's just not available anywhere, but it could absolutely have it's use if put in wide production.
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But cars don't even really take advantage of this as it is with 91/93. My point being that if we're not even taking advantage of what's available, the trade-offs of taking it to the next level are excessive for the small amount of gain.
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I don't think they can as they need to cater for the widely available fuel unless they had a unit that calibrated the knock tables on the fly.
Removing 87/91/93 and having the lowest octane a lot higher would definitely help.
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high test and e85 at every pump
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I'd love to see e85 at every pump. I run it exclusively in my 9-5 and see a very noticeable performance increase. I rarely take it anywhere far because here in eastern PA, theres only a few stations that have it. Only one within 20 miles of my house.
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and you could still use the blender system for flex fuel
1
e85 at every pump
Yes, please.
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Yes, and please bring this to Canada :)
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Assuming this would make premium gas cheaper, this would solve my biggest roadblock to driving a Mercedes.
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Fun fact: pretty much all the engineers in OEM powertrain feel this way. But we still target regular fuel wherever possible due to the sentiments expressed in this thread.
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Fun fact: consumers are stupid. They want vehicle efficiency and pay for it at the dealer, but refuse to pay for it at the pump. They could possibly get a cheaper high mpg car that uses 91/93 and have lower lifetime cost of ownership.
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After the whole Tetraethyl Lead fiasco, I don't think GM should be deciding a damn thing about what kind of fuel goes into cars.
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We used to have 94 octane at the pump. Now 93 is the highest. I have ZERO qualms with upping the octane.
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In my country 95 is the standard, 97 and 100 are premium
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What happened to predictions made in the 1970s and 1980s that cars with better head designs, variable valve timing, and direct injection would allow higher pressures without the need for higher octane, even allow 80 octane fuel at compression ratios approaching 20:1 for gasoline? These concepts weren't from marketing PR departments but work done in engineering labs even several decades ago.
-3
Octane ratings simply measure the resistence to self-ignition and compare it to iso-octane.
Even if the engines are better designed, if you compress a mixture to it's self-ignition point, it'll detonate, so I doubt compression ratios that high are reachable.
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What about with plasma ignition? Apparently there's no flame front with it.
1
The problem with self-ignition is (as the name suggests) you don't need an external ignition source. If the compression ratio is too high, the gasoline will ignite before the spark plug acts (pre-ignition), leading to engine knock.
With plasma ignition you might have more freedom in the air/fuel ratios to be used, so it might be possible to work around it to a certain extent, but that's beyond my knowledge, and I don't think you'll reach diesel-like ratios. As far as I know, the highest compression ratio on current gasoline engines is Mazda's Skyactiv at 14:1. They might be able to increase it with the SPCCI on the next generation, but that system is designed to work on the limits of self-ignition, so I don't think "regular" gasoline engines will be able to have similar compression ratios, even with plasma ignition.
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True plasma ignition (not the junk that shows up with every other Google search for it) shoots fuel through an electrically charged metal tube spark plug that turns it into plasma, just before it enters the combustion chamber, where it soon burns everywhere at once, rather with a flame front that spreads out from a regular spark plug.
1
Sounds like serious optimist marketing. Direct injection and Ethanol have done a measurable effort to reduce chamber temperatures for higher compression with lower octane in modern engines, but like you said, there is only so far you can take it before cost/return ratio gets out of hand. Not to mention stricter emissions have really put a strain on combustion temperatures and fuel mixture.
0
That's what the Skyactiv X engine is. It's basically compression ignition aswell like a diesel.
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It's technology that has basically been available for at least a half century, only back then the computer power needed to make it work well wasn't available or was impractical.
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It is, look at Mazda and Nissan, the only way to utilise low octane fuel in a high compression situation is through variable compression (high compression at high rpm) or direct injection.
The other issue is at a certain amount of compression and combustion pressure you'll lift the head or blow through the cylinder walls. A lot of engine designs use semi or full open decks to improve cooling and reduce material costs which suffer due to reduced reinforcement of the cylinder wall.
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Because people regularly make predictions that are wrong? But why would engine designers design their engines to work on fuel that you can't even buy? If they could design an engine to run efficiently on 80 octane, they could design it to run even more efficiently on 87, so of course they're going to do that.
The only exception is the new Mazda Skyactiv-X which actually runs better on lower octane fuels because it detonates easier.
1
Didn't 80 octane fuel exist before tetraethyl lead was invented?
I thought those predictions were based on technology that was already available in forms that had been hanging around in sort of working form in development labs; in other words it wasn't like a Mr. Fusion reactor for a DeLorean but like the Texaco direct injection system that was tested in UPS trucks, around 1980. Also Ford had its PROCO all-mechanical gasoline direct injection system in the mid-late 1960s and had planned to produce it to meet 1975 pollution standards without a catalytic converter. It was much like current direct injection systems, only without electronic sensors or a computer.
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I honestly have no idea. I'm on mobile now but I'd like to read about that later if I remember.
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Chapter from a 1974 book about auto emissions control that evaluates several systems and engines: Texaco TCCS Engine
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TEL and Toluene had a huge effect on Octane in that era. TEL has been removed due to catalytic convertors, and Toluene has been significantly reduced due to taxation, and as it is an aromatic (sniffing).
2
Today’s gas sucks. When we had leaded gas premium was 95 octane at least on up. Regular leaded was around 92. And it’s does make a difference in performance of a engine
-4
Leaded gas was rated by RON, today's is RON+MON/2 which yields a lower number for the same octane. Regular leaded fuel was RON 92 octane, which is the equivalent of RON+MON/2 87 octane. Premium leaded fuel was RON 97 octane, which is the equivalent of RON+MON/2 92 octane. So today's gas is the same as the good old days gas except without the lead.
7
Depends on the engine. If the engine is set to run lower compression and/or retarded ignition timing it will actually run worse with higher octane. Higher octane does allow higher compression engines and engines with more advanced ignition timing to run way more reliably and efficiently, however.
1
At the Regular Price, sure
As someone that just filled up at a station that was $0.50/gal more, yes please.
.80¢ More per gallon we're im at..):
Costco membership. Premium fuel is always significantly cheaper at Costco.
I calculated that it paid for my membership plus a little more last year. Regular fuel is typically .20-.30 cheaper as well.
Obviously doesn’t work if you don’t live close to a Costco (mine is .5 miles away)
Closest Costco is 160 miles. Im moving soon so I'll be closer tho! I'll look into it! I've never been to Costco!
What time do you usually go to fill up? It's always a huge line up with at least 1 - 2 hours wait for me.
Or if you live in an area with Kroger gas stations. I routinely get a 20-30 cent discount on the already fairly low prices just by using reward points.
I also notice that unlike the local Citgo and BP, the Kroger gas stations don't float their prices down when oil prices drop. Usually I will see their advertised price drop significantly a good 3-4 days before the other gas stations catch up.
I have to use 93 octane so this would be huge for me
I mean, huge being like $20/m or so depending on how much you drive. But hey, extra avocado toast is extra avocado toast!
Well when you don't have a lot of money
It’s closer to $50/mo for me.
I mean, it’s technically more efficient, though I’m not sure how much.
You won’t be using as much gas.