Discrepancy between UK and Continental Europe availability of LPG/GPL,

[nicholsong]

From the thread of problems with availability of LPG in UK and my own research of availability on the Continent, which is widespread, I queried why there is a difference.

A poster suggested starting a new thread on the discrepancy point, so here it is.

 

[Jim]

From the thread of problems with availability of LPG in UK and my own research of availability on the Continent, which is widespread, I queried why there is a difference.

A poster suggested starting a new thread on the discrepancy point, so here it is.

Pumped gas I don't know, for years France, Spain and Portugal were behind us with pump numbers, then they caught us up and overtook us. Will they follow us and start losing them? Who knows. For bottles most of the continent is 'third world' when it comes gas, I knew a high-rise block of flats in N Spain where they all used bottles, bet that was a bugger when the lift was out. Bottles are just more widespread in use on the continent than here, so there are a lot of dealers and healthy competition, so always plenty of cheap gas for motorhomers.

 

[Basildog]

Pumped gas I don't know, for years France, Spain and Portugal were behind us with pump numbers, then they caught us up and overtook us. Will they follow us and start losing them? Who knows. For bottles most of the continent is 'third world' when it comes gas, I knew a high-rise block of flats in N Spain where they all used bottles, bet that was a bugger when the lift was out. Bottles are just more widespread in use on the continent than here, so there are a lot of dealers and healthy competition, so always plenty of cheap gas for motorhomers.

Spanish government actually price caps the most common 11Kg Propano and 12.5 kg Butano cylinders.
They are mainstream domestic fuel supply on the continent unlike the U.K. where small cylinders are predominantly leisure use .

 

[Basildog]

From the thread of problems with availability of LPG in UK and my own research of availability on the Continent, which is widespread, I queried why there is a difference.

A poster suggested starting a new thread on the discrepancy point, so here it is.

I think the main reason was Gordon Browns 2001 misinformed decision to push everyone into diesel engined vehicles that they didn’t need .
The diesel engine in cars unless doing high mileage was a complete joke .
More expensive to produce, more expensive to purchase and more expensive to maintain correctly.
I believe you needed to do over 30 thousand miles a year to start to warrant going diesel.
How anyone could ever believe that a diesel engine would be cleaner is beyond me , some of them literally make you choke if left running for a few minutes in our workshop.
They laugh at me because I literally can’t stand the noise of small diesel engines.
There was a few mainstream manufacturers like Ford , Volvo and Vauxhall that made factory dual fuel LPG vehicles but after the government’s announcement they declined in a few years, in fact manufacturers actually stopped producing any petrol engined small commercial vehicles, the conversion market was then predominantly driven by those who wanted massive petrol engines but either couldn’t afford to run them or thought they would save a fortune, unfortunately many engines don’t actually like being run on LPG but this didn’t stop a lot of conversion companies.
We do still occasionally do an LPG conversion but most enquiries are about complete piles of junk , where once upon a time it was brand new Rolls Royce , Range Rovers etc .
Local authorities, police and many other government agencies, companies etc ran LPG vehicles but all moved over to dirty diesel.
There were only a handful of LPG pumps in the country and even in 1998 only around 100 , this grew to approximately 2,000 at the peak but now around 500 LPG pumps remain.
I believe this figure will probably drop before it then begins to increase again ,as leisure businesses are now installing new LPG pumps, the days of cheap LPG are definitely going to end ,selling a few litres for leisure use with an appropriate capital investment of around £20,000 to install a new LPG tank and pump will necessitate higher prices along with higher supply costs for smaller volumes.
It will be interesting to see what happens with Calor and other leisure industry exchangeable cylinder suppliers as I can’t see how their business is profitable when you start to look at many people’s consumption.
Camping Gaz is something we are looking at stocking but they are pretty useless for leisure vehicle use , expensive as they are returned to France for refurbishment and refilling every time they are exchanged.

 

[gus-lopez]

When i first moved here 20 years back there was pumped lpg in Murcia city centre & the next i knew of was in Granada. One then appeared reasonably locally in Totana whereas now within 6km of me i can think of 5 garages with bulk lpg pumps. probably helps that there are far more dual fuel vehiocles being sold here & the council, ambulances & local water board are using them in large numbers

Local authorities, police and many other government agencies, companies etc ran LPG vehicles but all moved over to dirty diesel.

all gone the other way here in last couple of years.

expensive as they are returned to France for refurbishment and refilling every time they are exchanged.

I never knew that.

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[bobandjanie]

Basildog
I don't know if they cap the price on Propano (€18 ) here in Spain, but certainly Butano because it's used in lots of homes for cooking / heating, our apartment complex could have had piped gas installed but it was voted against, we are all electric.

We had two duel fuel autogas / petrol Citreon xantia and a Vauxhall astra over the years, great economical cars, we though that was the way forward.
All the water companies, dust carts road sweepers and so on are electric here, even the street cleaner's have electric tricycles they seem to do alot of riding about chatting on their phones apparently this is the way forward. Bob

 

[Spriddler]

Thirty years ago all of our 25 company sales cars at the French and Belgian subsidiaries ran on LPG as a cost saving.

 

[Stealaway]

Dacia LPG car's seem to be very popular in France. It could just be that

 

[gus-lopez]

Dacia LPG car's seem to be very popular in France. It could just be that

& here but they withdrew them in the Uk as sales were poor

 

[nicholsong]

Basildog

As you said government agencies bought dual fuel LPG/Petrol vehicles including Government Car and Dispatch Agency in Vauxhall, London, when I was driving for them.

They bought one batch but replacements were diesel.

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[Landy Andy]

LPG is in over 90% of fuel stations in Holland from what we are seeing. Never yet seen one LPG pump being used but very useful for us and they use the same connection. Many of the pumps are pay by card too.

 

[EuroTrotters]

I think the main reason was Gordon Browns 2001 misinformed decision to push everyone into diesel engined vehicles that they didn’t need .
The diesel engine in cars unless doing high mileage was a complete joke .
More expensive to produce, more expensive to purchase and more expensive to maintain correctly.
I believe you needed to do over 30 thousand miles a year to start to warrant going diesel.
How anyone could ever believe that a diesel engine would be cleaner is beyond me , some of them literally make you choke if left running for a few minutes in our workshop.
They laugh at me because I literally can’t stand the noise of small diesel engines.
There was a few mainstream manufacturers like Ford , Volvo and Vauxhall that made factory dual fuel LPG vehicles but after the government’s announcement they declined in a few years, in fact manufacturers actually stopped producing any petrol engined small commercial vehicles, the conversion market was then predominantly driven by those who wanted massive petrol engines but either couldn’t afford to run them or thought they would save a fortune, unfortunately many engines don’t actually like being run on LPG but this didn’t stop a lot of conversion companies.
We do still occasionally do an LPG conversion but most enquiries are about complete piles of junk , where once upon a time it was brand new Rolls Royce , Range Rovers etc .
Local authorities, police and many other government agencies, companies etc ran LPG vehicles but all moved over to dirty diesel.
There were only a handful of LPG pumps in the country and even in 1998 only around 100 , this grew to approximately 2,000 at the peak but now around 500 LPG pumps remain.
I believe this figure will probably drop before it then begins to increase again ,as leisure businesses are now installing new LPG pumps, the days of cheap LPG are definitely going to end ,selling a few litres for leisure use with an appropriate capital investment of around £20,000 to install a new LPG tank and pump will necessitate higher prices along with higher supply costs for smaller volumes.
It will be interesting to see what happens with Calor and other leisure industry exchangeable cylinder suppliers as I can’t see how their business is profitable when you start to look at many people’s consumption.
Camping Gaz is something we are looking at stocking but they are pretty useless for leisure vehicle use , expensive as they are returned to France for refurbishment and refilling every time they are exchanged.

Love our family Audi 1.9Tdie.

Stockport to Valencia via London and BF Spanish route on 1 tank of diesel