"Textured Soy Protein" (texturedsoyprotein)
12/14/2015 at 14:08 • Filed to: None | 4 | 25 |
Gasoline is super cheap right now! Everyone go out and buy gas-guzzling SUVs and sports cars, because gas is under 2 bucks a gallon! Just make sure they run on regular fuel because gas stations are now charging almost a dollar per gallon more for premium.
I can’t speak to whether this is a national trend, but here in Madison, WI, the gas stations keep charging a bigger premium for premium. First it was $0.40/gal more, then $0.50/gal more, and now all of a sudden a whole bunch of the stations in town have jumped to a ridiculous $0.90/gal or $1.00/gal extra for premium. This weekend I saw a gas station charging $1.10/gal more for premium!
The worst part of it is more often than not, gas stations don’t put the price of premium fuel on their sign. They list regular unleaded and diesel. You’re lucky if they even put mid-grade on the sign, because at least you could guess what the cost of premium will be based on how much mid-grade costs over regular. I drove past a whole bunch of gas stations before I could find one with all 3 grades of fuel on their sign for this picture. Also...SLURPEES.
So you roll into a gas station in your premium-required car, and only when you walk up to the pump do you realize you’re getting shaken down. Then you say “ah fuck it, I don’t feel like trying to find somewhere that’s not going to gouge me so bad,” and pay the extra $0.90/gal for premium.
It’s a fucking racket. Driving a car that requires premium gas is now an exercise in checking GasBuddy before every fill-up. It’s enough to make me seriously question whether I can bring myself to buy another car that takes premium gas. Because once a price-gouging trend happens, it’s unlikely to reverse course.
Leon711
> Textured Soy Protein
12/14/2015 at 14:27 | 0 |
That’s ridiculous, over here premium is usually 3p per litre more so roughly 15c per us gallon more.
Nerd-Vol
> Textured Soy Protein
12/14/2015 at 14:28 | 0 |
That’s insane! I thought it was bad in TN at .40. Oh well. I’ll just start putting 87 in the Mazdaspeed 3. It makes a bit of a racket, but dammit, I got bills.
;)
BringBackTheCommodore
> Textured Soy Protein
12/14/2015 at 14:28 | 0 |
[rant]They gotta make they’re profit somewhere. Bastards. I’d know they are, I am one.[/rant]
BigBlock440
> Textured Soy Protein
12/14/2015 at 14:32 | 0 |
Yeah, it’s getting to be a huge gap. I understand with inflation it won’t only be a $0.10 difference forever, but holy crap, it’s not inflation causing those jumps.
ADabOfOppo; Gone Plaid (Instructables Can Be Confusable)
> Textured Soy Protein
12/14/2015 at 14:33 | 0 |
After owning my premium-required SVT Focus for nearly 10 years I’ve stopped looking at the difference in price.
Still, that’s utter bullshit.
Manwich - now Keto-Friendly
> Textured Soy Protein
12/14/2015 at 14:33 | 0 |
In the Toronto area as well.
I recall in the 1980s, you paid an extra cent for mid-grade and 2 additional cents to get super. In terms of percentages, it was maybe around 5% extra.
And since the 1980s, the markup has grown.
And now the difference is 10-13 cents per liter around here... or a 10-15% premium.
And for a frame of reference, 87 octane sells for a little under CDN$1/liter at the moment.
Master Cylinder
> Textured Soy Protein
12/14/2015 at 14:35 | 0 |
My car calls for premium, but fortunately it will run fine on midgrade, so I usually do that. I think the days of mid and premium being a 10-cent increase over the next lower grade are over, and I’m not really sure why it happened. Midgrade is now usually 30 to 40 cents more than regular and premium is a wildy variable crapshoot, like you’ve pointed out.
Logansteno: Bought a VW?
> Textured Soy Protein
12/14/2015 at 14:38 | 0 |
Surprisingly, at least at the gas station I always get gas at, it’s usually a very modest 20¢ jump from regular to mid to premium. A whole dollar more, that's crazy.
Autohaus Derp
> Textured Soy Protein
12/14/2015 at 14:44 | 0 |
Same here in MI. 1.69 for Regular, 2.89 for 93. Madness. I’m going to start hoarding bottles of octane booster when they appear in the reduced bin (occasionally) in my local parts store.
Unfortunately my Camaro is timed up to run on 93, although at least it doesn’t get driven much at the moment.
asenna
> Textured Soy Protein
12/14/2015 at 14:51 | 0 |
yes happening in the North East also, it freaking sucks big time lets get dateline on this
lone_liberal
> Textured Soy Protein
12/14/2015 at 14:52 | 0 |
Still a .20 markup for premium here, which is what it has been for years, but at the same time regular is $2.25 so it’s a bit of good and a bit of bad.
Chariotoflove
> Textured Soy Protein
12/14/2015 at 14:59 | 0 |
My car “requires” premium. I almost never use it though. I’m down a little in hp, but it’s no big deal.
Captain of the Enterprise
> Textured Soy Protein
12/14/2015 at 15:05 | 0 |
Same in Michigan, I’m car shopping and this is actually eliminating cars for me.
Ash78, voting early and often
> Textured Soy Protein
12/14/2015 at 15:26 | 0 |
Same exact thing here in Birmingham, AL, but it depends on the station. I’ve noticed the gouging is far more common at stations that only list a SINGLE price for regular, so that people who are already committed to pulling up to the pump won’t care about the price premium.
I have two stations on opposite sides of the same interstate that I frequent — Chevron and Shell. Both list only the price for regular on the big sign.
Chevron: $1.89, $2.19, $2.49
Shell: $1.89, $2.79, $3.19 (and $2.99 for diesel)
That’s just messed up.
MATTLEE!
> Textured Soy Protein
12/14/2015 at 16:14 | 0 |
Isn’t this caused by the gas station selling less premium therefore not being able to lower the price as fast as regular? That has been the case in my area in the past when the price plummets ~60 cents in a month like it has here. (Maryland).
uofime-2
> Textured Soy Protein
12/14/2015 at 16:18 | 0 |
Same deal here near Chicago, sounds like I should start using gasbuddy, if the delta varies as much as you suggest.
Klaus Schmoll
> Textured Soy Protein
12/14/2015 at 16:23 | 1 |
German gas stations have to report their prices in real time to some sort of data bank. There are several gps based apps that let you check prices in your area, before you head out. (This only started about a year ago, so the whole system isn’t working perfectly, but it’s a start.) Also, all stations list all the prices on their signposts.
450X_FTW
> Textured Soy Protein
12/14/2015 at 16:34 | 0 |
Same in Michigan. Back in my day mid grade was +10 cents, and premium was +20 cents over regular. Times sure have changed.
Textured Soy Protein
> MATTLEE!
12/14/2015 at 17:01 | 0 |
Typically the price at gas stations is based on things like the cost of crude oil and how prices look at competing stations in a certain territory. The price for mid-grade and premium are typically a set amount of money higher than regular.
If cause of the larger price gap up to premium were the result of premium selling more slowly than regular and creating a temporary lag between prices, you’d see the gap from regular to premium get larger, before shrinking back down again as the cheaper supply of premium went into effect. But that’s not how the prices move—they all move in unison.
This is simply opportunistic pricing by gas stations. They know that most people think about where to go for gas based on the prices they see on the sign, and if they increase the price jumps of mid-grade and premium over regular, people are less likely to notice the increase in price. Their total average price per gallon goes up, even while the price of regular stays below 2 bucks.
While some people buy premium for cars that don’t need it, I’d argue that the majority of people who buy premium gas do it because their cars require premium gasoline. More and more cars are running turbos to hit high MPG numbers and require premium gas. Which is not necessarily a big deal if premium doesn’t cost that much more than regular, but on the sign I posted above where regular is $1.89 and premium is $2.79, premium is 1.48x more expensive than regular. That’s enough of a difference where the additional cost is something that really needs to be figured into the math of whether it makes sense to buy a particular vehicle.
Mercedes Streeter
> Textured Soy Protein
12/14/2015 at 17:17 | 0 |
THANK YOU FOR THIS!
Shit, I thought I was going crazy. For a long amount of time that I’ve owned my smart, Premium was only 20-30 cents more than Regular. But in the past six months, I’ve been seeing constant gouging of 90 cents to beyond a dollar. I’ve found a handful of stations that are still sticking to reasonable increases...but damn is it getting hard to find cheap Premium.
Textured Soy Protein
> Klaus Schmoll
12/14/2015 at 17:33 | 0 |
In the US we have an app/website called GasBuddy. Prices are reported by users of the site, and not updated in real time. Also Google Maps and perhaps other navigation apps will show gas prices. Google Maps just added a feature where you can look for gas stations along your route and it will show you prices.
The biggest problems are that many, many gas stations do not list the cost of premium gas on their signs. They all have regular and diesel, but whether they include mid-grade and/or premium is up to them. They also have widely varying price increments between grades.
In my area, within the past couple years all of the stations went from $0.10/gal increments to $0.20-$0.30/gal increments. I remember the first time I happened upon a station with $0.35/gal increments which made premium $0.Right now the cheapest stations for mid-grade and premium are charging an additional $0.20/gal for mid-grade and $0.50/gal for premium. But there are a whole bunch of them that are now charging $0.50/gal more for mid-grade and $1.00/gal more for premium. It’s only a matter of time before the rest of the gas stations that aren’t gouging so much on the higher fuel grades join the trend.
mike
> Textured Soy Protein
12/14/2015 at 18:22 | 0 |
Plus, most modern vehicles that state “premium required” can run just as safe and economically on regular. Wife has been driving a gs300 that states premium only on the gas cap, have only used regular for 4 years and haven’t had a single issue.
Dr. Zoidberg - RIP Oppo
> Textured Soy Protein
12/14/2015 at 20:17 | 0 |
Premium? Never heard of it.
MATTLEE!
> Textured Soy Protein
12/15/2015 at 12:22 | 0 |
Maybe it’s different at different stations, or my information came from a non-standard station. The owner of the station around the corner from my mother’s house(been buying gas there for 15+ years) said his pricing was .01-.02 above cost and they would average said cost based on what they add to the tank.
So the working average on premium lingers at higher (or lower) prices based on the fact they move far less premium vs regular. Almost 100 to 1 is what he mentioned.
The idea of a fixed price gap infuriates me as my DD takes premium.
Textured Soy Protein
> MATTLEE!
12/15/2015 at 12:28 | 0 |
Pretty much every gas station I see on a regular basis always has the same gap from regular to midgrade to premium. Well, except when they keep increasing the price gaps. If you search on GasBuddy and look at any individual station, the gaps from premium to midgrade to regular will be nice round numbers. If the price of premium varied independently of regular you’d see all kinds of odd price differences like $0.47/gal or something.