Does Hi-Octane fuel give better fuel mileage than the regular petrol? We decided to fill up the tank with Hi-Octane petrol and compare the results.
The car used normally gives just over 400 kilometers on a fuel tank of regular fuel. That’s about 35 liters of petrol. On the next fill, we bought 36 liters of Hi-Octane petrol at a rate of 302 rupees / liter, giving a total bill of 10,770 rupees.
This much regular petrol would have cost us 9380 rupees at a rate of 262 rupees per Liter. Okay so we spent 1390 rupees more than usual.
Then we reset our trip data to zero and started measuring the kilometers.
Does hi-octane give better mileage?
Hi-octane Drive test
The car performed noticeably better in terms of drive quality and acceleration, as claimed by hi-octane petrol sellers.
When the fuel tank needle hit the reserve mark, the Odometer gave a reading of 443.4 kilometres.
Wow, thats like 35 kilometres extra from the same amount of fuel! Almost 1km/litre improvement over the regular fuel. So in absolute terms, yes hi-octane gives better mileage or fuel average than regular petrol.
But, remember this fuel costed almost 15% more than the regular fuel. So in terms of rupees, is hi-octane worth the premium? Lets calculate.
Regular vs. hi-octane fuel mileage cost savings
With regular fuel, the cost per kilometer is: 9,380 rupees / 400 kilometers = 23.45 rupees per kilometer.
With high octane fuel we got: 10,770 rupees / 443.4 kilometers = 24.28 rupees per kilometer.
So with high octane fuel we get better performance at a cost of 0.83 rupees per kilometre. This is a marginal difference. Hi Octane perhaps might be a better deal if its price were 288 rupees per litre (9% more than regular gas price).
That would make the cost per kilometre at par with that of regular petrol.
Moving forward, I would continue to use regular fuel over high octane, unless I spot a good deal on it that comes under a difference of 9% of the regular gas price.
Read up on some other fuel saving tips and see whether keeping your car in neutral at red lights saves fuel.
