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Comment by iso1631 | Hacker News Reader

Fuel in the UK is £1.58 a litre (£1.48 at one garage I passed today, £1.61 at another, some garages are certainly profiteering)

In 2022 is was £1.89 a litre and spent most of the year over £1.60 a litre

Adjusted for inflation that would be most of the year at £1.85, and a high of £2.18 a litre

https://www.racfoundation.org/data/uk-pump-prices-over-time

From 2011 to 2014 petrol was about £1.30 a litre. Adjusted for inflation terms that's £1.80-£2 a litre -- far less than current "highs".

The average UK car does 8000 miles and about 45mpg (uk gallons), or about 10 miles per litre. It thus costs 800 litres, or £1,260 a year.

Last year petrol was £1.35 a litre, and thus £184 a year less for the average car.

Fuel is insanely cheap in the UK in historic terms, just not as cheap as it was last year.

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> In 2022 is was £1.89 a litre and spent most of the year over £1.60 a litre

Why are you choosing the 2022 energy crises as your baseline? Not only your choice was arbitary but you managed to choose the year fuel was at its highest as a reaction to the war in Ukraine.

That price was not representative or typical, it was a spike. You can see it here.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/inflationandpriceindices/time...

Yes well people like to complain, and people have a short memory. If it were really a massive problem you would see a lot more smaller cars, rather than Range Rovers and BMWs.

We will see exactly the same thing again in a few years when people are 'shocked' that prices are rising again. And then expect the government to step in, even though on the interim they've bought a massive car on PCP rather than take some personal responsibility and buy a car that they can afford when inevitably something goes wrong.

Eh, last year I was paying the equivalent of £0.38 per liter over here in the States ($2 a gallon gas, $3.30 or so for diesel).

"Insanely cheap" for the UK to feels really strange for those of us way over here who tend to forget how good we have it.

> tend to forget how good we have it

That is an interesting perspective. We do not forget how good we have it, because we choose not to put high taxes on gasoline and diesel. Do drivers in the UK tend to forget that taxes are more than half the retail price they pay at the pump? Sometimes way over half. That is a policy decision.

Depending on where this crisis goes, it’ll be interesting to see what effect it has.

America seems to have a lot of large vehicles that use a lot of fuel. The UK less so.

The tax will have played a part in this (how much?).

I hope we can get the kinks worked out. Even in many 'blue' states, we have created a situation where the road maintenance tax paid by EV owners is twice or more what the typical ICEV driver is paying. I sort of expected that in 'red' states, since punishing EV owners is a political priority, but we see that same crap in Oregon & Washington, for example.

In the US, roads are paid for by other taxes instead. Property taxes for local roads, and general fund monies (income, sales, and inflation) for highways. Unfortunately that hides the real cost of using the roads, and makes it harder for people to make good choices. This seems unlikely to change though.

I think it is a complicated issue. People who do not drive still benefit from having a road going to their house. Either for deliveries, or for emergency vehicles, or whatever personal transportation they do end up using. So we want to spread the cost around a bit so everyone is paying something, in a perfect world as close as possible to how much they benefit from it.

I imagine it also varies somewhat across the US. Locally, our city does not use property taxes for road maintenance, we have a pavement fee which is billed through the utilities system (same one that handles water & sewer, for example). Plus gas tax from the state. It could be argued that the distinction between the pavement fee and property taxes is subtle, though.

Most of us laugh at the high taxes and prices in California, not realizing that their prices are reasonable, perhaps even cheap compared to overseas.

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