Petrol is expensive but there are ways to make it cheaper.
Petrol is expensive but there are ways to make it cheaper.
Opinion by Diana Clement
Diana Clement is a freelance journalist who has written a column for the Herald since 2004. Before that, she was personal finance editor for the Sunday Business (now The Business) newspaper in London.
Filling the car up with petrol is eye wateringly expensive. In fact a litre of petrol costs considerably more than the same amount of full cream milk.
With inflation biting, saving fuel is becoming imperative. Especially so if predicted petrol tax hikes come to fruition.
Everyone’s situation is different.I tend to find that a very good way to spend less on petrol is to leave the car in the garage and replace most of my local trips with walking and cycling.
I no longer have children to ferry around. But not so long ago I found that school buses were a great alternative to drop-offs and pick-ups. Carpooling with other parents to after school events saves money as well. It takes a village to raise children.
From personal experience, I can say that owning an electric bicycle cuts my petrol costs dramatically.
On your next upgrade consider buying a hybrid or electric car.
Find ways to be a one-car household.
Drive more efficiently.
Keep your car maintained.
Avoid carrying unnecessary weight.
Only use the air conditioning when necessary.
Avoid expensive petrol stations.
There are some very useful apps out there for saving on fuel. Gaspy, for example, tells you the cheapest fuel in your area. When I needed to fuel up my old gas guzzler, I always checked Gaspy for the routes I would be taking and stopped at the cheapest service station. The app is invaluable and does save money.
Z Energy has a very clever app, Sharetank, which enables you to save in a variety of ways at its service stations.
If you see a good price, for example, but don’t want to fill up that day, you can fill your virtual tank in the app at that price, and use it at a later date. It allows you to buy up to 1000 litres at a time for unleaded, premium and diesel.
If you haven’t pre-planned and pull into the local Z-station, the app scans Z service stations within 30km and lets you pay the lowest price.
At the time of writing, the nearest Z to me was offering fuel at $2.58 a litre. Sharetank would let me fill up there, but buy it through the app at $2.409 per litre, which was the cheapest price in Auckland at the time.
Gaspy helps you find the cheapest fuel in your area. Photo / Andrew Warner
The Sharetank app has a feature that allows users to share their savings with others. At the time of writing, for example, the cheapest price for 91 unleaded fuel on the Devonport peninsula was $2.55 a litre at Gull. Z Northcote was $2.58. I could, however, have paid my daughter in Christchurch to fill up a virtual tank for me at Z Woolston for $2.39 a litre, then let me use it.
People who travel a lot fill up their virtual tanks in the cheapest locations and use it once they’re back home. For Aucklanders, that’s a real bonus because it avoids the regional excise tax.
Z put me in touch with Glenfield man Grant who is a keen user of the app. The app tells him he has saved $1497.52 since February, 2020, although he didn’t drive much during the lockdowns. Whenever Grant and his wife, who both use the app, head out Auckland they top up their virtual tanks by as much as 1000 litres each. Last time that was at $2.229 per litre in Hamilton on their way to Rotorua. At the time, petrol was about $2.40 in Auckland. Petrol has crept up significantly in price since then, but the fuel going into Grant’s car is all from the top up he did at $2.229.
For the record, Z doesn’t allow users to use both pumped discounts and Sharetank. It’s one or the other and that has to be factored in when comparing prices with offers from other petrol stations.
Sharetank and Gaspy aren’t the only way to make savings. Other fuel companies offer up to 16c a litre on discount days. And cards such as Kora enable savings. Kora is linked to the Gaspy app.
You do need to be quite organised to take advantage of savings on fuel. People who are as organised as Grant probably use their cars less as well by planning trips out, such as to the supermarket.
