Petrol

It’s a very easy habit to pick up, once you find an affordable EV. The EV habit makes tremendous sense. When I learned to drive petrol was about 1.21 CHF per litre, and when I was driving the most it went to about 1.71 CHF per litre. Recently, due to recent electoral choices petrol has risen to between 1.98 CHF to 2.20CHF per litre in Switzerland.

When you see this price increase it means that your fuel costs from 70-100 CHF per refuelling stop. Even with the petrol scooter it went from 6 CHF up to 9 CHF. Within this context it means that driving to Geneva with the scooter doubled in price. That’s a discernable difference. That is quite the psychological wall.

Have you ever considered the difference in cost between cycling and driving a petrol car? Of course you have, and so have I. Yesterday I was reminded of how expensive cars are. I think that the last time I used the petrol car was to change to summer tyres. It has been dormant since then. Yesterday I refulled for about 50 CHF I think. I also used the self-checkout in the shop, rather than going to the human being. Everyone else went to the human being.

Every single time I go from driving an EV to driving a petrol car I am struck by old fashioned and smelly old cars are compared to new ones. In this context an old car is any car that has a petrol engine rather than an electric motor.

I had to play musical cars just now, and put the winter tires into the petrol car, to get them swapped so that I can drive in winter safely. In the process I had to move two cars around so that the petrol car is in front.

Years ago I would drive people to and from glocals activities for free. A diving friend of mine had excellent service. I drove to his home to pick him up, and then drive to dive sites. One day I decided that I wanted to go for a hike with a group, rather than a walk, so I went to Geneva, and asked two or three times, “Is it okay if I do this instead of that” and he said yes. I asked him two more times and he still said yes.

Today I refuelled the car after 380 kilometres for about 30 CHF. A few years ago, when I refuelled another car it cost me 70 CHF to refuel a car, to travel 400 kilometres. This means that the car I drive now costs half as much, in petrol, despite the price going up by 10-20 centimes per litre.

These days I like to refuel after seven hundred or more kilometres. When I checked the range when driving home today I saw that the projected range was 900 kilometres.

Yesterday I drove the petrol car for the first time in a while. I did it for two reasons. The first is that I didn’t feel like waiting five hours for the car to charge. Especially since it was cold, and rain was predicted. I also drove the petrol car because I wanted to run the engine and charge the battery, rather than letting it gradually degrade, from lack of use.