Petrol vs Diesel vs LPG / CNG - Right Time To Choose Alternate Fuel?


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Thread intention : Think before your trade-off a Petrol car to Diesel when the monthly usage raises.

With the ever raising fuel prices and increasing monthly usage most of us trade our beloved petrol cars for diesel spending lakhs & lakhs of hard earned money.
1) Are we on the right track?
2) Do we really get profited (i.e., minimize the loss)
3) Should we do it?

Take an example, person X bought a fully loaded premium petrol hatchback assuming his/her monthly running will be limited to few hundred km monthly. Later realized / unfortunately monthly running increased around 1500~2000km/month. Obviously the running cost raises by 40%. In this situation we do think of switching to Diesel (best example is myself, sold my Honda City ZX vtec and bought Fiat Linea MJD)

We are left with below choices
1) Live with it[roll]
2) Reduce the running - aaah, that's not our intention
3) Trade-off and buy diesel - Heavy loss in selling and additional investment on buying
4) Alternate Fuel (LPG/CNG) - How many of us really consider this?

I don't have experience with CNG, so leaving it aside for someone to continue and let me blabber something on LPG
With fluctuating LPG price, there were days LPG running isn't economic, but considering today's LPG price and Petrol vs LPG price difference, it makes a lot of sense to convert Petrol vehicles to LPG.

Considering the current fuel prices and average cost of an LPG kit (normal one, not the sequential kit) we get the payback of additional investment on LPG kit within a year and the rest is profit for us (again, minimizing the loss)

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Does it make sense? The only compromise is boot space and marginal drop in performance. People who say adding LPG will reflect a huge drop in performance, FYI we are running our Honda Civic (my brother's ride) for more than 1.5L km in LPG without any noticeable drop in performance. And the FE figures are at-par with petrol (P: 11~12kmpl / LPG: 10~11kmpl)

Advantages:
- Lesser hole in pocket after the pay back period, compared to Petrol
- Beloved car remains with us
- No loss in trading-off / No more additional investment on new car purchase

Disadvantages:
- Compromised boot space
- Marginal drop in performance
- Run in search of LPG stations
- Additional periodic maintenance required

Disclaimer:
1) I'm considering only current price, not the fluctuation
2) For the one who don't want to compromise the boot space, wishing you all the best in selecting choices 1~3. This thread (Choice 4) isn't targeting you.
3) I'm not touching the CNG part as I don't have experience with it. So it is open for CNG users to add your views.
 
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