‘Driving in the US becomes a luxury’, says an article in the FT, complete with doleful quotes from a Houston-based woman who can no longer afford to refuel her monstrous Ford Expedition (a giant 4×4 that makes a Hummer look like a Mini). Now that petrol in America costs almost $4 a gallon, it costs her $70 (about £35) to refill her freeway freighter.
The other day, while driving a Range Rover TDV8 in the UK, I forked out £95 ($190) on a tank of fuel – the most I’ve ever spent at a petrol station forecourt. That came as a shock. I know of plenty of people in the UK who, like the Houston Expedition-driver, have cut back on their driving. The story is similar throughout the western world.
Yet sales, and the use, of cars in China, India, Russia, Eastern Europe, Brazil, the Middle East and other ‘developing’ (euphemism for ‘poor’) countries boom. While motoring becomes a luxury in the rich world, it increasingly becomes everyday in the emerging markets. This, to quote Churchill, strikes me as a ‘riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma’.
In America, I have little sympathy for the Houston lady and her horrible Expedition: petrol has been absurdly cheap in America for too long and it’s about time the Yanks began to look beyond their tarmac tanks. Four bucks a gallon still strikes me as a bargain. Let them drive Priuses and repent.
But in the UK we are being cynically taxed off the roads, as politicians try disingenuously to save the planet while lining treasury pockets. It’s not just fuel tax: it’s sales tax, road tax, congestion tax, parking tax, gas guzzler tax and soon road usage tax.
In the UK, petrol costs twice what it does in India, Japan or the Czech Republic, almost three times the US price, and nine times what it does in Qatar. Same crude oil, same refinery techniques, same oil companies. The UK now has the world’s most expensive petrol. This is not a riddle or a mystery: rather it’s a rip-off wrapped in a swindle inside a scandal.
Click here to read more blogs by Gavin Green
Click here to read more blogs by the rest of the CAR team