You know Blind Freddy and government would avoid vehicle costs at all costs (the auto clubs occasionally go there) while extolling what a deal utilities are in comparison.
Some of us do not use our vehicles every day, but how many do not use their utilities every day? Everything has a cost but what is the comparative value? Which is easier to live without? The vehicle or utilities? (@gordon is excused from this question)
(/media spinner application to government)
I wish my bike was as cheap to run as my car 
When power is required/used energy usage increases sometimes/many times logarithmically 
Big bike > big consumption 
The power obtained from the energy in the wind increases as cube of the speed. Double your speed, eight times the available wind energy.
Scope there for a waste energy recovery system strapped to the back of the bike? 
/humour The perpetual engine rises from the ashes like the phoenix of ancient lore, 
Whatever would we ever do without the profound wisdom of the ACCC.
What a fantastic piece of advice from the ACCC in response to the Prime Minister putting them on notice to act on petrol prices.
Last month in Europe, unleaded 91 prices ranged from around AUD1.95/L in Romania to AUD2.55/L in Paris, Germany and Austria. Hungary and Slovakia was around AUD2.10/L
These are significantly higher than in Australia and had me a bit gobsmacked as I thought Australia was expensive enough. In retrospect, I was pleased we took the high speed train, regional train, bus, tram, ferry, funicular, chairlift, cog train, metros/underground and other methods of public transport to get around rather than hiring a car and filling up regularly.
A post was merged into an existing topic: Public Transport: What we like, dislike, & what improvements
New Zealand unleaded is $2.30NZ or approx $2.12AUD per litre typical.
Any where out of the major cities it can be much dearer based on recent travel experience. Amazingly so given nowhere in NZ is really remote compared to travelling around Australia.
What a classic. Coles is suing the ATO for a $40 million refund of taxes they paid on fuel they claim either leaked away or evaporated.
https://finance.nine.com.au/2018/11/05/13/15/coles-sues-ato-over-fuel-excise
What next. LPG retailers claiming discounts for the gas that escapes when they are refilling the bottles?
And you have just got to love the historical Coles Express price board image that Nine.com.au found showing Unleaded 91 for 82.9 cents/litre.
Our local Coles Express outlets seem to have interrupted their synchronised swindling program, as when we travelled on Saturday from Mount Sheridan, a Southern suburb of Cairns, to North of Mareeba, we noted that whilst all the Coles Express outlets all had the highest prices for Unleaded 91, they were not all the same price as they had been for many months.
The outlets that were near United or Puma servos were priced at $1.669/litre whilst the outlets without any real competition had jacked their price up to $1.699/litre.
One would think that their inflated prices should more than offset their claimed losses
Woollies has struck a new deal to sell their petrol outlets.
I almost remember? I think the ration ticket in general was of no cash value and only served as elegibility to purchase. You still needed to exchange cash for the actual produce, fuel etc and surrender the tickets equal to the purchase.
Any Choice member in their 90’s might also remember.
My 90 year old family brains trust who worked in a department store in Rockhampton during WW2 has the same recollection from when she worked the counter.
The Cairns area fuel rip-offs continue with Coles Express apparently reintroducing synchronised swindling.
Our local United outlet’s price for Unleaded 91 has dropped from the peak of 159.9 the other week to 150.9 and their Diesel is the same price.
The nearby Puma outlet is 151.9 for Unleaded 91 and 151.7 for Diesel, and the nearby Caltex outlet is 152.9 for Unleaded 91 and 152.7 for Diesel.
All 3 of the Coles Express outlets I drove past today were 156.9 for Unleaded 91 and an absolutely disgraceful 169.9 for Diesel.
A full 13 cents for Diesel above their own price for Unleaded 91 and up to 19 cents for Diesel at our local United.
I drove past most of these sites today whilst picking a mate up at the airport on his FIFO stopover, and he could not understand why diesel should be more expensive than other petroleum derived fuels.
He was a supervisor during the major upgrade at the Caltex refinery in Brisbane some years ago and he said that diesel is the first cut from the crude oil at the refinery and thus has the least processing costs.
When I fuelled up our vehicle at our local United a couple of days ago, the driveway was packed and vehicles were waiting to get to the bowsers, but the Coles Express outlets I drove past today were lucky to have a single vehicle at the bowsers.
As I said to my mate today, there seems to be little point in having a high profit margin if you are not selling very much.
United may have a lower profit margin than Coles Express on fuel but they are selling tanker loads, and even have their own-branded B Double tankers whilst Coles Express use private delivery tankers.
Yes the Cycle continues.
Brisbane on Friday 30Nov18 had standard unleaded for $117.9 to $119.9 Puma, 7-Eleven, etc. Diesel was still in the $1.50’s where it had also been in the weeks prior when unleaded was up in the $1.40’s.
So petrol has a cycle, but diesel does not? And 30c-40c more for diesel than petrol.
note:
Without adding a fuel stabiliser it is not recommended that you store unleaded for extended periods of time.
Diesel is far more tolerant of long time storage if you keep the moisture out. My last cheap supply is now all but gone. 
Prices in Brisbane started going up on Sunday. Started jumping up to about $1.45-$1.50/L. Still available at some of the independents in the low $1.20s…but expect these will creep up as well shortly.
@fred123, Coles in our area is nearly always the most expensive and ranges from around $0.06-0.10/L more than the next dearest fuel outlet. The only time they may cheaper is if they were caught out by the fuel cycle and there may be a short period where they are yet to raise their own prices and they are slightly cheaper than others who have raised their prices. Maybe Coles relies on fuel discount voucher loyalty (customers use their vouchers even though the fuel is more expensive - blinded by the voucher discount) and fuel cards instead of passing motorists?
What I don’t understand is in the past few weeks/month, the oil price has not changed significantly, neither has exchange rates (in fact the AUD has bubbled slightly upwards over the past week). So what triggers the overnight 20% price increase. Maybe someone can offer an opinion to why?
You are correct, Mark. As a diesel driver for the past three years, there is muuuuch less fluctuation in pricing for diesel. I have been tracking the fuel consumption of my van ever since I bought it, and it’s interesting to see how the pricing operates of years of collected data. I will try to attach it here.
Hopefully the image isn’t too small, this forum doesn’t allow tables to be pasted in so I had to create a long screenshot. All fuel stations were Brisbane-based or SEQLD, with NSW and Vic stations being noted. You can see that diesel has been quite steadily rising since September last year. I haven’t crunched the data in a statistical program, but it doesn’t look like there’s much of a correlation between cheapest prices and specific brands, over years (I almost always chose the cheapest fuel price available). Also, I have a 4c/L staff discount for Coles Express, so +4 to them and this data would fit the fact that Coles Express tend to be one of the most expensive.
A couple of days ago I spotted a Coles Express which was 21c/L more expensive than the cheapest in the area, just around the corner. It’s crazy how they stay in business honestly.
Some one is buying it. Coles had 6.1% decline in sales to $5.761 billion in 2017/18 year.
Coles total fuel volumes for the same year declined 16.8 per cent, with comparable volumes declining 17.8 per cent.
So it looks like their pricing strategy may not be paying off as ~17% decline would be concerning if one was responsible for that part of the business.
Compared to Woollies, their main competitor in the sector. Value of petrol sales were up 3.1% to $4.784 billion with comparable volumes declined by 6.5%.
In 2017/18, Coles still sold more fuel than Woollies (based on $ revenue) even though they have been found to have typically higher prices. This is why the fuel discount loyalty and fuel card customers may be what drives their sales and maybe these are less price sensitive?
