How can petrol forecourt prices increase so quickly?

Two garages in Featherstone across from each other (more or less) 1 is 175 one is 189. We filled up at Sainsbury's in Wakefield 174, unbelievable the difference in prices.

 

Greedy sods running the pumps plus greedy oil companies

 

one further up north already topped £2 p/l

What i don't get is the government removed the energy price cap because energy companies couldnt buy and sell the energy at a profit - and hence a load of em went bust because of the fixed tarrifs they setup... so why cant the price cap be put on the oil companies instead?

Even with all this going on there is a lot of folk still spending money like theres no tomorrow.

 

Everybody is going to have to radically change their lifestyles and wean themselves off hydrocarbon fuels either by going electric or simply not using cars. I appreciate that will be difficult for many - mainly because we were encouraged to "get on our bikes" to find jobs which in reality meant driving 30 or more miles each way to work - I know because I did it myself for 22 years. In a way the current fuel price crisis might be a blessing in disguise.

 

This is the thing isn't it? We're allegedly aiming to be weaning off petrol and diesel and with such a spike in fuel prices, you'd think this would be a prime moment for a government to assist that transition given the pain high costs are causing our citizens. The desire and need to change is perhaps at its highest, though the ability to do so doesn't match.

But nothing. A token 5p reduction in petrol thats already been swallowed up. There could be more assistance for buying the lower end of the EV ranges to assist those who have to commute to their workplace, and maybe key workers given priority. There could be an acceleration in charging point programmes and an aim to bring convergence to a complex fragmented infrastructure. And could even reintroduce subsidies for installing charging points in homes.

But that mimics the scrapping of incentives to green homes and the nominal schemes to encourage people to change how people heat their homes.

If we could be powered by hot air from the governing party, our issues would be much less.

 

It's ok cos Fishy Rishi is looking to help......at some point .

Meanwhile.........

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61754394

 

A similar sentiment is uttered every Budget Day when another 10p is added to a pint.

Most people hold out for about a week, and those that rule us know this too well.

 

Just seen RAC figures published that unleaded petrol has risen by 7p a litre in the last week alone. Ouch.

 

It's a difficult one. On the one hand, it needs the government to be much more radical in providing the carrot to get people to switch. We need only look at Norway, where the government have offered generous incentives and where EV sales are now at around 80% of new car sales. A grand or two off a 35k grand car does nothing for most people.

But they need to find ways of doing it that are hands off from the suppliers because every scheme they come up with, suppliers just milk the incentives. There is evidence for example to suggest that manufacturers just price the car up to the grant limit. Unsurprisingly, when the max price that attracted the grant was cut, so was the price of several cars. Similarly, lease companies providing salary sacrifice schemes seem to inflate the gross price to increase their margin because the net price will still look attractive to the employee.


Norway went all in and removed VAT from EVs to bring them pretty much to price parity with ICE cars. They combined it with other incentives like free parking for EVs, toll exemptions etc. We need to do that. They are starting to roll it back now, because the job is nearly done but it's been hugely successful.

Or how about extending across the UK the interest free loan facility for EVs they have in Scotland.

They could take it further and make the financing of an EV tax deductible on a tax return, so everyone could benefit, whether their employer offered a salary sacrifice scheme or not, and it wouldn't have to be based on leasing a car.

What bugs me is that what incentives we do have are not targeted to assist the average person. Salary sacrifice car schemes actually provide twice the benefit to a higher rate tax payer than they do to a standard rate taxpayer because they are designed to save you tax at your marginal rate. That needs a rethink. When combined with the fact that lease companies seem to inflate their gross price in salary sacrifice schemes, it means that standard rate taxpayers often will find no benefit to use the scheme compared to the open lease market. But higher rate taxpayers can save a bomb.

 

The govt really shouldn't be involved in funding the install of chargers in my opinion. Not directly. The public sector doesn't generally know their arse from their elbow when it comes to knowing how best to provide suitable charging infrastructure in their local area. The govt chuck some money at councils in the form of grants that local authorities can apply for and the result is that they get the grant, chuck a few single lonely rapids in some car parks, which is really not the solution the public needs any more, and then neglect them and leave them to rot.

The govts role should be:

a. Funding the power infrastructure improvements to bring the high power connections into the places where they will be needed and where the provision of hubs would otherwise be not economically viable.

b. Regulating the market to ensure minimum service level standards (99% uptime of chargers)

c. Legislating and providing support to ensure fair spread of provision, so that charge point operators are compelled to, and are supported to provide chargers in remote areas where they would not be commercially profitable but are going to be socially beneficial. Charger provision is going to need treating like the universal provision expected of the post office. Leaving it entirely to the market results in what we see now where there are 10 times more chargers in London than in the whole of Wales and the West Country.

 

Whatever happens, the govt need to be the ones to develop a plan and orchestrate it and pardon the pun, turbo charge it.

Because as things stand, certainly from general reports and seeing things in my local area, very little has changed in the last year.

And the vehicles that are being changed are the very expensive high end suvs, not small runaround’s or family cars.

Im certainly no expert, but the nutshell is we’re still a long way from the phase out of ICE vehicles in the space of just 7.5 years. And the data suggests it’s worse still beyond London.