Yesterday I had to drive to a nearby town, just 20 minutes away, and noticed that every single petrol station there was a good 5p per litre cheaper than my town. I might plug this into a map.
When see things like this, I always think of the Chinese proverb
"An inch of time is worth an inch of gold, but it is hard to buy one inch of time with one inch of gold"
Which always says to me that its not worth it just use the quickest option
Take the example drcongo posted:
"Yesterday I had to drive to a nearby town, just 20 minutes away, and noticed that every single petrol station there was a good 5p per litre cheaper than my town. I might plug this into a map."
Assume he uses 30 litres a week (high end of average UK usage) that's £1.50 per week saving but assume the extra miles use half a litre, that takes about 65 p off the saving (ill not go into wear and tear) over 30 years of work 50 weeks a year this means a saving of £1,275 over 30 years ... sounds a lot but
20 mins away - this assumes 40 minutes per week over 50 weeks is 2000 minutes, and over 30 years 60000 minutes. Now assume you are awake for 16 hours a day this equates to 62.5 days of free time - more than two months of awake time
so as the saying goes... which would you prefer £1,275 saving or 62.5 days of time
The typical use case is probably much more like deciding which station within half a mile of home is cheapest, and that could easily be a variance of 5p or more.
It would be really nice if say apple maps on my phone when connected to airplay could get the Fuel level in my car and distance to empty, and then when you plug in a route, and press add a gas station to my route, it picks the best one based on time out of the way, how much fuel you have left, and best relative price. ideally you could set your preferences in the app (e.g. never more than 5min out of the way, below median price if less than 1/8 tank, lowest quintile price if >1/8 tank etc.
That's an extreme case though, and not what this sort of thing is aimed at.
Here in Perth, Western Australia, it's common for pump prices to vary significantly even within a small radius. But they're all on https://www.fuelwatch.wa.gov.au/ so you can see what the price is ahead of time.
If it's 14c cheaper per litre (coming up for 10%) to go 500m one direction vs 500m another direction, which one are you going to choose?
This is great news. There used to be a handy email newsletter that did this, but then when everything became "apps" the newsletter disappeared in favour of an app, which then became a premium paid service only.
More unnecessary meddling, this causes price convergence so anyone living close to a typically lower cost source of fuel is going to have an almost imperceptible increase in relative cost.
They certainly love spending taxpayer money on nothing don't they.
It doesn't mention any filters beyond batch number and effective start date. They're definitely storing the lat-lon information though, so it would be nice to do area-based queries, especially if you're building an app with a map view.
That's often out of date, and the UI is pretty buggy (at least on iOS).
There's also 'Gaspy' which is really a NZ app that was very popular in NZ (I used to live there) where people submit and confirm prices, but in the UK there aren't that many users (hasn't got critical mass), so there are often no prices or things are very out-of-date.
This is a great innovation and I'm sure in time it'll become a useful source of information. There are some edge cases of course.
If you live on the Irish border, you'll have a choice between getting your petrol on the UK side, or the Irish side. For about 20 years, petrol was cheaper on the Irish side, causing a bunch of petrol stations to spring up just over the border, attracting drivers from the other side with cheap prices and good exchange rates.
In the last 10 years or so, the position has reversed. Petrol is now roughly cheaper on the UK side of the border, or at least not worth making a special trip for.
There's even a petrol station in Belleek mentioned here[1] that straddles the border and apparently has or had pumps on both sides.
What are the price variations like over short distances?
In the US gasoline short distance price variations are ridiculous. I've seen it where one station was $3.50/gal and another station on the same main road just a 30 second drive away was $4.30/gal. These two stations almost always have a large difference like that. This kind of large difference over a small distance is common all over the country.
Yet a surprisingly large number of people will always choose the more expensive station, even if they know about both of them (and the other stations with prices consistently in between that are also about equally close). There's nothing about the layout of the town and traffic patterns that make the expensive station more convenient, or make it easy to find. All these stations are about equally busy so it is not like the expensive one is faster. The less expensive one even has a way better convenience store.
This is one of the higher gas price states and people are constantly complaining about how much it costs to fill up, and when I ask complainers about where they buy gas it is often the expensive stations.
Many of them think that if they don't buy at the expensive station it will be bad for their car. Different brands add different detergents and additives that fight clogging and build up of deposits in your engine and fuel system.
However in 1995 the US got a federal standard that all gas has to meet, and then in 2004 several major car makers developed a standard they called "Top Tier" which is about 20 times more effective than the federal standard. Most major gas brands now sell only gas that is certified to meet the Top Tier standard.
Most testing has found that going for something beyond Top Tier doesn't really have a significant benefit for most people. For nearly everyone the best approach is:
(1) Avoid gas that is not at least Top Tier. Generally the only places that sell gas that isn't at least Top Tier are grocery store brands and maybe some convenience store brands. The savings with those brands is usually only a couple or so cents a gallon compared to the least expensive Top Tier brands (ARCO, Costco) and your car will perform better (including improved mpg) and need less maintenance.
(2) Buy the least expensive Top Tier or above gas that is convenient. You aren't going to notice any difference in performance or maintenance if you pay extra for some brand's particular proprietary blend.
Last year there was a study done in Germany. The gas station prices change an average of 14 times a day. This really shocked me. I wonder if this is normal practice most other places.
This is exactly the sort of thing a government should be doing in a free market. Fair access to pricing information is essential to the operation of a free market. Now do this for all EV charging stations.
Why is the government doing this, this seems like a ridiculous waste.
Here in Germany private corporations provide APIs for this. Google maps straight up tells you the price at nearby stations.
Maybe the UK government should focus on things such as their crumbling infrastructure, their almost non existent GDP growth or getting rid of their knife murderer and rapist population?
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 72.6 ms ] threadhttps://www.gov.uk/guidance/report-your-fuel-prices-and-fore...
So looks as though the requirement to report was only just introduced, hence the considerable missing data.
Edit: BBC reporting here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cp80dpzdg37o
Edit: after asking AI about this I would say the CSV is pretty useless as a comprehensive source of info on UK fuel prices.
Seriously?
I thought HN readers would have more sense than that.
"An inch of time is worth an inch of gold, but it is hard to buy one inch of time with one inch of gold"
Which always says to me that its not worth it just use the quickest option
Take the example drcongo posted:
"Yesterday I had to drive to a nearby town, just 20 minutes away, and noticed that every single petrol station there was a good 5p per litre cheaper than my town. I might plug this into a map."
Assume he uses 30 litres a week (high end of average UK usage) that's £1.50 per week saving but assume the extra miles use half a litre, that takes about 65 p off the saving (ill not go into wear and tear) over 30 years of work 50 weeks a year this means a saving of £1,275 over 30 years ... sounds a lot but
20 mins away - this assumes 40 minutes per week over 50 weeks is 2000 minutes, and over 30 years 60000 minutes. Now assume you are awake for 16 hours a day this equates to 62.5 days of free time - more than two months of awake time
so as the saying goes... which would you prefer £1,275 saving or 62.5 days of time
but if enough people use their time to go to the cheaper station further away, then they may force the closer garage to to reduce their price
either that or the close garage goes out of business and the one further away puts up the price because they can.
but still, it can be more complex
Here in Perth, Western Australia, it's common for pump prices to vary significantly even within a small radius. But they're all on https://www.fuelwatch.wa.gov.au/ so you can see what the price is ahead of time.
If it's 14c cheaper per litre (coming up for 10%) to go 500m one direction vs 500m another direction, which one are you going to choose?
They certainly love spending taxpayer money on nothing don't they.
aka competition
https://www.fuelwatch.wa.gov.au/
Nice to see the UK come onboard.
https://www.developer.fuel-finder.service.gov.uk/apis-ifr/in...
It doesn't mention any filters beyond batch number and effective start date. They're definitely storing the lat-lon information though, so it would be nice to do area-based queries, especially if you're building an app with a map view.
But they also need a little WebUI for stations to manually update prices, since small stations won't have a programmer on staff to do this stuff.
There's also 'Gaspy' which is really a NZ app that was very popular in NZ (I used to live there) where people submit and confirm prices, but in the UK there aren't that many users (hasn't got critical mass), so there are often no prices or things are very out-of-date.
If you live on the Irish border, you'll have a choice between getting your petrol on the UK side, or the Irish side. For about 20 years, petrol was cheaper on the Irish side, causing a bunch of petrol stations to spring up just over the border, attracting drivers from the other side with cheap prices and good exchange rates.
In the last 10 years or so, the position has reversed. Petrol is now roughly cheaper on the UK side of the border, or at least not worth making a special trip for.
There's even a petrol station in Belleek mentioned here[1] that straddles the border and apparently has or had pumps on both sides.
[1]: https://www.impartialreporter.com/news/25653110.border-filli...
Preview:
https://bf31ed2a-ec85-460a-a503-fa9bf86bf63b.paged.net/
Source:
https://github.com/markwylde/uk-fuel-price-map
You have to download the CSV manually from the gov.uk link.
In the US gasoline short distance price variations are ridiculous. I've seen it where one station was $3.50/gal and another station on the same main road just a 30 second drive away was $4.30/gal. These two stations almost always have a large difference like that. This kind of large difference over a small distance is common all over the country.
Yet a surprisingly large number of people will always choose the more expensive station, even if they know about both of them (and the other stations with prices consistently in between that are also about equally close). There's nothing about the layout of the town and traffic patterns that make the expensive station more convenient, or make it easy to find. All these stations are about equally busy so it is not like the expensive one is faster. The less expensive one even has a way better convenience store.
This is one of the higher gas price states and people are constantly complaining about how much it costs to fill up, and when I ask complainers about where they buy gas it is often the expensive stations.
Many of them think that if they don't buy at the expensive station it will be bad for their car. Different brands add different detergents and additives that fight clogging and build up of deposits in your engine and fuel system.
However in 1995 the US got a federal standard that all gas has to meet, and then in 2004 several major car makers developed a standard they called "Top Tier" which is about 20 times more effective than the federal standard. Most major gas brands now sell only gas that is certified to meet the Top Tier standard.
Most testing has found that going for something beyond Top Tier doesn't really have a significant benefit for most people. For nearly everyone the best approach is:
(1) Avoid gas that is not at least Top Tier. Generally the only places that sell gas that isn't at least Top Tier are grocery store brands and maybe some convenience store brands. The savings with those brands is usually only a couple or so cents a gallon compared to the least expensive Top Tier brands (ARCO, Costco) and your car will perform better (including improved mpg) and need less maintenance.
(2) Buy the least expensive Top Tier or above gas that is convenient. You aren't going to notice any difference in performance or maintenance if you pay extra for some brand's particular proprietary blend.
Current car says: 93, at a minimum 91. I don't have 93 here. So 91 it is.
But going the other way is just wasteful.
(no comments there yet though!)
https://www.bundeskartellamt.de/DE/Aufgaben/Markttransparenz...
Here in Germany private corporations provide APIs for this. Google maps straight up tells you the price at nearby stations.
Maybe the UK government should focus on things such as their crumbling infrastructure, their almost non existent GDP growth or getting rid of their knife murderer and rapist population?