Hello Chelmsford,
like everybody in Chelmsford, I suppose, the rising cost of petrol is a concern to me.
I do a lot of miles travelling around Chelmsford visiting customers, networking, talking to prospects etc etc and I have noticed that I am putting petrol in the car more often as the £20 fill allowance on my petrol credit card is used up more and more quickly.
It made me wonder what type of fuel is more cost effective over the running life of the vehicle.
I decided to work it out with the help of an excel spreadsheet and some figures taken from the Ford website.
Comparing a Ford Mondeo Zetec 2.0i with a 2.0TDCi was quite interesting.
The diesel gives 47.9 mpg whilst the petrol gets 35.8 mpg, which equates to 10.53 and 7.87 miles per litre respectively - but the diesel is obviously more expensive.
Using todays prices of £1.16 per litre for petrol and £1.279 per litre for diesel I did a calculation on the cost of 10000 miles.
10000 x 7.87 x 1.16 for petrol is £1,473.95 and
10000 x 10.53 x 1.2790 for diesel is £1,214.62
so you save £259.33 every 10000 miles using diesel.
BUT if you bought your car new then you paid £1,500.00 more for the diesel at Ford's OTR list price figures, so it doesn't balance out until about 55,000 miles have been done.
If you are on one of these 3 year lease purchase, or contract hire deals, then you are better off buying a petrol car if you dont get to 55K.
On another point, do you know where the cheapest petrol in or around Chelmsford is?
If you do, leave a note below and let everyone else know.
Thanks.
