Dacia Sandero LPG
It’s friendly on the wallet and planet, so why can’t we buy one?
Why we can’t buy one over here
To see what UK buyers are missing from not being sold new cars with factoryfitted – and fuel-sipping – LPG tanks
Cheap, uneventful. Two words I find myself coming back to when people ask what it is like to drive around in an Lpg-powered car. Colleagues who borrow it for a week have a happy knack of using similar words to describe their own experiences. “I don’t know why you can’t buy one here officially” is the (paraphrased) follow-up point myself and others typically make.
So why is that? As discussed right back at the start of this long-term test, Lpg-powered cars, which produce fewer harmful emissions, could be used to help tackle the UK’S air-quality problems while we wait for the more widespread availability of affordable electric, zero-emissions cars and a charging network to make their use viable for more motorists.
A report has landed on my desk with stats on LPG across Europe. On the other side of the English Channel and North Sea, you’ll find more than 45,000 LPG stations before you hit the edge of Spain, the Balkans or Turkey, depending on your direction of travel. In the UK, there are only 1250.
Those 45,000 pumps can provide fuel to a whole host of mainstream cars – not just cheap and cheerful ones like the Dacia Sandero we’re testing – that leave their respective production plants equipped with an LPG tank alongside their conventional petrol one, meaning no need for an aftermarket conversion.
Alfa Romeo will sell you an Lpg-powered Mito or Giulietta; Fiat a 500, 500L, Panda, Tipo or Punto (yes, they still make Puntos); Ford the B-max, C-max, Fiesta and Focus; Kia the Picanto, Rio or Venga. The good people at Mitsubishi will provide your ASX or Outlander with LPG power if you so choose. Likewise Nissan with the Juke, Micra or Note; and Opel with the Adam, Astra, Corsa, Insignia, Karl (known as the Vauxhall Viva in the UK), Meriva, Zafira Tourer and Mokka X.
Still with us? There’s more. The Peugeot 208, Citroën C3, Hyundai i10 and i20, Renault Clio and Mégane, Honda Civic, Subaru XV, Forester and Outback, plus the Ssangyong Tivoli and Korando, complete the set of models sold in the UK that are offered with an LPG option on the continent but not here.
Two main reasons are typically given for it not being offered: first, the Lpg-powered cars are not produced in right-hand drive; and second, that LPG is no longer protected from the fuel duty escalator, meaning it is exposed to the same rises in taxation as petrol and diesel.
Autogas, the chief supplier of LPG in the country that was set up as a joint venture between Shell and Calor in 2000, isn’t having any of the latter argument. It points out that the escalator has yet to be enacted and that LPG duty is much lower anyway, at 15.8% of the cost of a litre to the 58.9% of petrol and diesel. Even if the tax went up, it would remain a much cheaper fuel at the pump than either of its more traditional alternatives.
As for the point about left-handdrive, Autogas uses the Ford Transit Connect van as an example of an Lpg-powered model that is already in production in right-hand drive. It is built in Spain and exported to Hong Kong, where motorists drive on the left, like we do here in the UK. So, Ford, why not divert some over here to gauge the reaction? From our experience, buyers are missing out unfairly on perfectly decent vehicles.