AIBU to have not heard of E10 petrol?

[BycullahRoad]

OK so went to the local garage this evening, needed to fill up to get to work in the morning. "Something" looked different and I noticed that the 95 Octane petrol has the label E10 on it.

Did a quick google and it said as a country we were switching from E5 to E10 petrol from 1st September 2021 and some older cars can't run E10 petrol.

Did a longer google and realised that my vehicle is one of those older cars affected and will have to use Super Unleaded petrol from now on, which is considerably more expensive.

Am I the only one not to have heard of E10 petrol? If you have heard about it, how did you hear of it?

It’s use premium unleaded while it is still available

Do you think it will come to a point where premium is simply not available - or even banned?

I may well be interpreting this unfairly, but it does seem to me that, if standard petrol is being 'changed' and thus many people now having to switch to premium; it does suggest that, rather than the mixture of standard just being altered for supply/sustainability reasons, normal petrol is clearly being reduced in quality across the board - with no commensurate reduction in price.

Incidentally, are there any figures available/released about if this change will impact the mpg that your car can achieve? If premium often yields more miles per tank, I wonder if standard petrol apparently moving further apart from premium might mean fewer mpg, and thus a stealth increase in petrol prices. Or is this completely wrong thinking?

Do you think it will come to a point where premium is simply not available - or even banned?

The DfT has said it will protect supply of E5 fuel for at least five years.

No guarantee that it will be any longer.

The daft thing is that E10 reduces fuel economy which, in turn, increases CO2 emissions, plus there are claims that the extra space needed to grow the crops to manufacture ethanol is leading to increased deforestation.

I only heard of it a few weeks ago. So YANBU not to have known.

I've been seeing this on my new feeds for quite some time now.

I've just checked my car, a NIssan, on the GOV.UK checker and it's telling me that all Nissan petrol models from 1st January 2000 can use E10.

Anything older should continue to use E5. I assume that means Super unleaded.

Ah, thanks, Etulosba - I hadn't heard that bit. It's crazy, isn't it?

Just another way for the government to show their contempt for the poorer people in society, then, who can afford to run an old car, but have no hope at all of being able to replace it with a newer one. The posh boys probably think that 5 years is loads of notice - probably assume that everybody gets a new car every 3-5 years anyway, so how could that possibly be a problem....

In fact, I'm wondering now if this is directly linked to the scheme to ramp gas and electricity prices right up across the board this year, because of new laws and regulations about how the energy is produced and supplied?

@Etulosba

apparently my very elderly (23 years old) car is okay

Our very elderly (66 years old) car isn’t.

It’s use premium unleaded while it is still available or change the petrol pump plus all the rubber pipes and seals in the fuel system.

I'm buying a new-to-me car soon, so it's fine.