Every year about 120,000 motorists in the UK fill their car’s tank with the wrong fuel. It can cost from £80 up to thousands of pounds – and take days to put right.
Even a small amount of the wrong fuel can seriously damage the car’s fuel system or reduce the efficiency of the catalyst.
In February 2004, The AA Motoring Trust launched a campaign to raise awareness of misfuelling.
February 2004 report (PDF 43K)
In May 2004, 9 million “Use your nozzle” cards were distributed to motorists via petrol station forecourts.
In July 2004, The AA Motoring Trust chaired a meeting with organisations dealing with petrol retailing in the UK. The main outcome of the meeting was to gain support from the industry for clear colour coding at the pumps, particularly with the growth of different types of unleaded and diesel fuels.
- Green for unleaded petrol
- Black for diesel
- Red for lead replacement petrol
In December 2004, figures show that misfuelling numbers have stabilised. Statistics show some interesting traits.
December 2004 report (PDF 35K)
In May 2005 the Department for Transport (DfT) published “Vehicle Licensing Statistics: 2004” containing the stock of licensed vehicles in Great Britain at the end of 2004. These statistics show that the number of diesel cars has more than tripled since 1994. Diesel cars now represent 18.5 per cent of the total stock of 27 million cars. Eighty-five per cent of misfuelling incidents involve putting petrol into a diesel car. Therefore it’s diesel car owners who have to be particularly careful when filling up their car. With 27 per cent of UK households having two or more cars, the chances of having cars with different fuels in a household is quite high.
