Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Paying extra for premium gas? You should probably stop
You love your car. You want to treat it well. You certainly don’t want to do anything that would damage it. That’s why you’ve been filling it with premium gasoline all these years. But with prices up above $7 a gallon in some places, you’ve started to wonder: Does my car really need the good stuff? Can I just switch to regular? Or should I compromise and buy midgrade?
Answers: Probably no, probably yes and almost definitely not.
Confused? Don’t worry, you’re in good company.
Many years of research at the American Automobile Association’s Los Angeles fuels laboratory has shown that if your car requires premium, you should keep using premium and suck up the cost. But thanks to a mix of clever marketing and quirky consumer psychology, some 16.5 million U.S. drivers fill their cars with premium when regular would work just as well, according to AAA.
Think you might be one of them? Check your owner’s manual, advises Doug Shupe, program manager at the Automobile Club of Southern California and the AAA. And pay close attention to the language. “Unless your vehicle manufacturer says premium is required — not recommended, but required — we’ve found no advantage to using premium fuel,” Shupe said.
If it says “recommended,” you can ignore the recommendation and pocket the 30 to 50 cents per gallon you’d be saving. Spending more doesn’t buy any benefit in horsepower, fuel economy or emissions, Shupe said.
The AAA lab didn’t test the pluses or minuses of midgrade fuel. That could be because there aren’t many benefits to speak of, except for gas industry profit margins. (The exception is older cars with engine knock, which can potentially benefit from midgrade gas.) The middle choice is an artifact from the days when unleaded began showing up as an alternative to gas with lead. Gas stations needed three pumps to sell leaded regular, unleaded regular and unleaded premium. After leaded gas was phased out beginning in the 1990s, midgrade was a way to make use of the third pump.