Shell V Power Petrol - Waste of money?

[sheri1]

I filled my car up last week at my local Shell station and half way through, I realised that I was filling with Shell V Power instead of the normal (E10) petrol by mistake. £1.65 per litre!

Never mind I thought, at least I will see a boost in fuel economy I thought.

Nothing of the sort.  I am averaging exactly the same economy at around 39mpg with this fuel as I do normally on my commute.

So, in my opinion at least, ignore the hype that surrounds the so called premium fuels, as they seem no different to the standard fuels, other than in price!

[Steve]

I have never noticed the difference personally.

[royoftherovers]

Ian, one fill will not demonstrate the efficiency or otherwise of V Power.

One must measure5/6 fills against 5/6 fills of not using V Power.

Read widely and be better informed. https://www.honestjohn.co.uk/askhj/answer/89093/what-super-fuel-do-you-recommend-

[H3XME]

I'm not sure, it's meant to have better cleaning properties for your engine, but I'm not rich enough to fill up with V-Power regularly, especially when I go through a tank a week.. Tesco Momentum 99 is what I use and have been for years. Still a high octane fuel, so it should be the same stuff. I'm sure Shell just have the upper hand in terms of marketing.

[Herbie]

Oh dear - worms, can, opened!

All the cars I've ever owned have been run on nothing but standard supermarket petrol when they started selling it or standard forecourt petrol before that. No problems whatsoever.

Super-duper petrol in super-duper engines that have been tuned to make use of it - great.

Super-duper petrol in ordinary engines that have not been tuned to make use of it - complete waste of money.

Now I'm just going to get the popcorn so that I can sit back and watch the battle 

[Duggie B]

21 minutes ago, Herbie said:

Super-duper petrol in ordinary engines that have not been tuned to make use of it - complete waste of money.

Except those that have much older cars with much older engines having to use E5 fuel or else suffer the consequences of E10 🤔

[Herbie]

1 hour ago, Duggie B said:

Except those that have much older cars with much older engines having to use E5 fuel or else suffer the consequences of E10 🤔

True, but that's a case of having to do that to prevent damage, rather than being taken in by the snake oil claims of marketing departments.

[randyreindeer]

I use LPG and cheap and cheerful supermarket fuel occasionally.  

 

[First_Lexus]

6 hours ago, sheri1 said:

I filled my car up last week at my local Shell station and half way through, I realised that I was filling with Shell V Power instead of the normal (E10) petrol by mistake. £1.65 per litre!

Never mind I thought, at least I will see a boost in fuel economy I thought.

Nothing of the sort.  I am averaging exactly the same economy at around 39mpg with this fuel as I do normally on my commute.

So, in my opinion at least, ignore the hype that surrounds the so called premium fuels, as they seem no different to the standard fuels, other than in price!

^^ Can open, worms everywhere…😆

Personal experience. I used premium fuel for quite some time on a petrol CR-V as an experiment when I was over on the sadly departed HondaKarma forum. I did see a marginal economy increase - perhaps 1-2mpg on the same journeys - over 2-3k mile but in terms of performance no real change. Whether the cleaning properties made a difference I just don’t know.

Usually I use whatever ‘normal’ unleaded is available, often from Sainsbury where I filled up today. This has always seemed absolutely fine to me as @Herbienotes. 

My 2004 MINI requires 98RON minimum so has always used one of the premium fuels, usually ESSO or BP. I’ve discussed this with MINI a couple of times, and they do state that I should only use this rating as the car was designed to use it - the sticker on the fuel cap does say 98RON fuel only. This changed for the 2006/7 model year.

[steve2006]

4 hours ago, Herbie said:

True, but that's a case of having to do that to prevent damage, rather than being taken in by the snake oil claims of marketing departments.

But I used the E5 SUP and it didn’t prevent any damage......the idler bearing still failed and took out the belt. 😀

 

[Sundance]

Of course John (of the Rovers) is quite right in that no meaningful difference will show after just one tank.  That said it's all personal experience, research and depth of pocket that will decide what fuel each of us chooses to use ... except, that is, when you have a model that is not compatible with E10.  Like me! 🙄

[dutchie01]

Simple. If your carś manual states 95 thats what you go for. Useless to go for the more expensive Vpower or Excellence or whatever the marketingdept came up with. I always go for the cheapest unmanned pump away from the highway. By the way did you know that some petrolstations on the highway increase prices during the night? No alternative if you have to fill up! Next morning pricing is back to the normal expensive levels.

[Las Palmas]

Used BP Ultima more than half a year (have a card there). Then whatever tank we were close to when needing juice; after that Shell V-Power 4 - 5 months.

Never noticed anything different. The car runs great on whatever we have put in the tank. We stay with the V-Power for the silly reason that it smells more like gasoline smelled when I was working with MB. Put a tiger in the tank.

If you go to Africa you can risk to get bad fuel. Had problems with a MB 350 SE maybe in 1982 -83 and the MB importer told us not to tank from service stations far from big cities as the fuel could have been laying waiting to get sold several years and heat in the day - cold in the night would make dew ruin the fuel. In Europe I have never heard of anything like that.

 

[Initial P]

I heard that E10 in order engines will cause damage to your fuel lines but not for about 10 years but the gov is just covering themselves.

[Mossypossy]

Again with my experience.

Car nearly empty. Put in £30 worth of E10.

Drive it on motorway for 200 miles.  Felt just the same as super unleaded to be honest.

Refilled with super unleaded purely because I feel I ought to (as a petrol head).

[Malc]

only ever used " normal " fuel from mainly supermarket stations ..........  20+ years later and probably 250k miles, can't say I've ever noticed any issues driving the Ls400s I've owned nor indeed any other of my cars from time to time, before, nor during this time

Now using E5 coz that's what they say, you guys etc, that I should be using in my ancient steed at this time

Morrison and Tesco have it ok  ...  E5 which Octane is 97 in M's   and 99 in Tesco

Sainsbury and Asda don't seem to in the few petrol stations I've visited these past couple of months .....  maybe they just aren't pampering to us needy oldies driving our ancient 4ltr limos 

Malc

My local Tesco is still selling fuel at what now seems ridiculously low prices  E10 140.9  ( for the Honda legend ) and E5 at 148.9 for my Ls400

[Don C]

I got called a fuel snob the other day by somebody who doesn’t know a thing about me or my trade or my experience or how many engines I’ve repaired from carbon fouling because I mentioned that I would normally not use supermarket fuel so before I give my opinion, I really don’t care what anybody else uses and if it ruins your engine so be it.  The usual arguments are “I’ve been using it for years in my old SAAB or my old Merc”, “all fuel meets BS**** so its all the same”, it isn’t the same by the time it gets to your car and that’s a fact.

 

All these different fuel companies can’t have their own bulk storage terminal and if you sit outside one you’ll see all different brands go in.  What is in those giant tanks is the same stuff, there’s no disputing that but the additive packages are added at the time of loading are not the same and the additive packages are expensive.  Yes the base fuel meets BS**** but that standard is more about calorific values than additives so that will appear on every pump.  In any case if we are talking Lexus then by the very nature of what goes on in the engine and the resultant carbon after burning fuel means that petrol is far less likely to cause problems than diesel and I would strongly recommend that supermarket diesel is avoided over branded standard and high grade fuels, this argument is far less relevant to us because the Lexus diesels have just about gone.  That said, things are about to change and the new models just launched have to meet Euro6d and that is tough.  The only ways that the A25A-FKS engine will meet that spec is with an exhaust filter rather like the DPF that causes all the expensive problems on diesel engines.  The only saving grace is that as long as the engine gets to normal temperature it will self purge rather than needing a “regeneration” like the diesel does.  Thats what causes the dilution problems which can be a nightmare along with major, carbon fouling.  Your potential problems will come with the PHEV 450h+ which may not see those temperatures on lower mileage use.  I have ordered the 350h to replace my 300h and I can tell you it will only be fed with high grade petrol.  Not because of the ridiculous notion that I’m a snob but I know that the detergents that are double dosed in high grade fuel will make the self purging of that very, very, expensive filter so much less of a challenge.  You please yourselves but to argue that it has always been OK to use fuel with a lessor additive package is coming to an end with petrols and came to an end with Euro 6 diesels from about 2017 - just google it to understand the extent of the problems.

 

Don’t confuse Tesco high octane fuel with the likes of Shell V-POwer.  The octane rating is about the burn rate of the fuel and not the additives.  It’s not clear if Millennium has an enhanced additive package but your regular 95 is far more volatile (it goes goes “bang”) and the Millennium 99 burns at a controlled rate so is far easier for the engine management computer to work with.  Luckily, I’ve got to go to work or you would get my long answer!

[Malc]

8 minutes ago, Don C said:

Luckily, I’ve got to go to work

wot might that role be ??

Malc

[Don C]

Why do you ask Malc?

[VFR]

I will tell you what I found.

Good few years back we loaded our van up to the gunnels and hooked our caravan onto the back to head off to Spain and the van had the pug non turbo 1.9 Diesel engine in it and yes we were well over the weight.

Full tank of Jet diesel and off we set but as you can imagine it was not the quickest thing on the road, next fill was in France and by mistake filled the tank with V-Power. Strange we thought after a few miles as it had become a good deal quieter in the cab and it would pull a good deal better and that was obvious, so that kept being filled with this until journeys end.

Had older diesel cars in Spain & as was the custom for most with old oil burners there you would fill the tank a week before its MOT with either Ultima or V-power to increase your chances of passing the emissions test.

Nothing to do with Lexus or petrol cars I know but the stuff does work when needed.

[Malc]

2 hours ago, Don C said:

my trade or my experience

coz you refer to it !

Malc

[Don C]

13 minutes ago, Malc said:

coz you refer to it !

Malc

I’ll tell you tomorrow when I’ve got a bit more time.  

[Steven Lockey]

On 11/16/2021 at 11:55 AM, sheri1 said:

I filled my car up last week at my local Shell station and half way through, I realised that I was filling with Shell V Power instead of the normal (E10) petrol by mistake. £1.65 per litre!

Never mind I thought, at least I will see a boost in fuel economy I thought.

Nothing of the sort.  I am averaging exactly the same economy at around 39mpg with this fuel as I do normally on my commute.

So, in my opinion at least, ignore the hype that surrounds the so called premium fuels, as they seem no different to the standard fuels, other than in price!

You will get slightly better mpg from it, but not much. Like 2-3%. Maybe 5% max.

You aren't likely to notice much of a difference under normal driving conditions tbh, too many other factors that will make a far bigger difference to your MPG, like wind-strength/direction, how stop/start you have to be e.t.c.

[Don C]

2 hours ago, Steven Lockey said:

You will get slightly better mpg from it, but not much. Like 2-3%. Maybe 5% max.

You aren't likely to notice much of a difference under normal driving conditions tbh, too many other factors that will make a far bigger difference to your MPG, like wind-strength/direction, how stop/start you have to be e.t.c.

Exactly. You won’t get a big enough improvement to justify the cost but certainly with diesel it might save thousands in repairs.  

[Don C]

21 hours ago, Malc said:

coz you refer to it !

Malc

I drive express passenger trains now.  I’m a time served mechanic and I was European Technical Sales Manager for Ferodo Friction Materials before I decided to play trains.  You can see what I do here;