Will our car be compatible with greener petrol?

I was very interested in your article about the fact that older cars aren’t compatible with the new E10 petrol that might be introduced. You included a Rover 25 on your list. My wife drives a 1998 example of that car’s forerunner, the Rover 214.

Could you advise me if her car will be a ected by this and if we should start using a fuel additive if we have to switch to E10 petrol rather than the E5 that is currently on sale?

Don Westcott WHAT CAR? SAYS…

The British Government is considering making petrol greener by doubling the amount of bioethanol in it from 5% to 10% from next year. The new fuel will be called E10 to distinguish it from current petrol, called E5.

However, if the change is approved, larger filling stations that sell more than three million litres of fuel a year will need to continue to stock E5 ‘protection grade’ fuel for use in older cars. This is similar to the situation when unleaded petrol was introduced in the 1990s; you could still buy leaded petrol from larger forecourts for use in cars that couldn’t run on lead-free fuel.

So, although we don’t think it’s advisable to use E10 petrol in your Rover 214, you should still be able to fill it with E5 for the foreseeable future.

You can put in a cleaning additive for the fuel injection system into the fuel tank if you wish, but, given that most fuels have additives in them anyway to prevent the build-up of deposits in your fuel system, there shouldn’t be any need to do this.

You can find out more about E10 petrol in our online article, at bit.ly/e10-petrol.