"I walked home to save bus fare."

"Gee, you could have saved a lot more by not taking a taxi!" - An old joke

Of course everyone already knows the answer to this one, get a more fuel efficient car, take public transport whenever possible, plan your trips more efficiently and use your bike for short trips... but people aren't very rational about their cars, they want V6 and V8 cars and everyone dreams of owning some vast monstrosity that was originally designed for military service so they can join the anonymous swarms of rugged individuals braving treacherous asphalt carparks in three tonnes of manly, leather clad comfort....

An alternative is switching to LPG as a fuel. While LPG has 20% less mileage per litre than petrol, the cost is almost half as much. The cost of switching to LPG can be very high but the Australian government is keen to promote this fuel, since Australian reserves of gas are far more abundant than oil, Australia can produce enough LPG to satisfy domestic needs, however the majority of oil is imported.

The WA Govt offers a $500 subsidy on all new LPG vehicle registrations and conversions. Kleenheat and BP, two major West Australian producers of LPG also offer their own incentives, and Ford, who now produce a line of factory built LPG Falcons also give another $300 rebate. For these new Ford vehicles the subsidy is approximately $965 (according to the RAC, Road Patrol) magazine Feb/Mar 2001, pg 11).

Conversions cost around $1800 to $2200 for the typical Falcodore Australian V6 car, however may be a great deal more expensive for some engines that also require upgrades of the valves and valve seats, doubling the cost. Service intervals can be extended in LPG cars because of the inherent cleanliness of LPG fuel, however additional maintenance in the form of an annual check to the system and a test of the pressurised fuel tank is required every 10 years.

An LPG conversion is likely to pay for itself after about 70,000km in an average Australian-built car. For smaller cars the conversion may take over 100,000km and performance may be more sluggish due to the very heavy weight of the LPG gas tank. In addition LPG conversions do not reap their full return in improvement to vehicle resale values. There is very little point converting a small car to LPG, the expense is not justified on an inexpensive car and at any rate a small vehicle is likely to have running costs as low as any large car on LPG. Also if you do not drive a large number of km every year the conversion will not make sense.

Recently, following petrol price hikes the WA govt introduced new legislation to prevent profiteering in the petrol industry. Now, all petrol stations must advise the WA Ministry of Fair Trading one day in advance of the price they intend to charge for petrol, and may not change that price for 24 hours. The prices are advertised on the WAMFT web site and drivers know the wholesale price of petrol and where to go to get cheap fuel. It is amazing how much the prices have come down for some of the relatively expensive service stations, while the price of petrol has largely fallen recently as this is being written (Jan 2001), certain stations who had for years been charging 10c a litre more than the average are now offering more reasonable prices. See www.fuelwatch.wa.gov.au.

In Perth, you know about two day's prices. You have been driving around all day and know what the price of petrol is (it is fixed until midnight), watching the 6 o'clock news (7 and 9) you can find out what tommorrow's prices will be like. If you are going out later on you can choose to fill up with petrol tonight, or tomorrow, knowing what the price will be. Stock market investors never had it so good!

A national web site that does something similar is http://motormouth.com.au