L.P.G. car ‘just not worth while’

Press, 5 August 1981, Page 11

L.P.G. car ‘just not worth while’

PA Hamilton A Hamilton taxi driver, Mr John Lahman, has retired the near-new car when he converted to liquefied petroleum gas at a cost of $l3OO. Last year Mr Lahman bought two new Ford Falcons. He had one converted for L.P.G. and the. other for compressed natural gas. For more than a year he has driven the L.P.G. car, reserving the other one for weddings. But since the L.P.G. price rise it has been taken off the road and confined to the garage. That is where it will stay, the owner says. Having spent $l3OO converting the car for L.P.G. he now finds that the fuel is “just not worth while.” At the beginning of last year L.P.G. cost 24c a litre. “I was laughing all the way to the bank,” Mr Lahman says. It now retails — at Waikato Bitumen. Hamilton’s only outlet for private vehicles — for 46c a litre, after the 78 per cent jump in the wholesale price. Effectively it would cost the taxi-driver 59.5 c a litre, once road user tax is added.

This makes it only 1.5 c cheaper than petrol. “With the price rise I would be saving only about $l.BO a day over petrol — if that, because if the car is not precisely tuned it will not go as far on. L.P.G. as on petrol.” As well, with only one L.P.G. outlet in Hamilton, it would cost time to get to the station to fill up. The outlet is not open in the evenings or at week-ends.

Mr Lahman was one of only two Hamilton taxidrivers who took the L.P.G. option. About two-thirds of the rest, he says, went for C.N.G.

But the option is now gone for Mr Lahman. He believes C.N.G. is the only viable fuel for his work. But it is not a fuel he likes.

“L.P.G. is twice as good,” he said. “With C.N.G. you lose power, you are continually filling. L.P.G. has a greater range and it is much more efficient in tuning.” • Mr Lahman says that the L.P.G. experiment has cost him dearly. “I am left with a car I can no longer use,” he said. “It is a struggle to sell it — no-one wants it now'.”