The Price of Gas in Australia

[canyonwalker]

Australia Travelog #29
Leura, NSW - Fri, 29 Dec 2023, 12pm

I pumped gas into our rental car today in Australia. That gave me occasion to do the math on gas prices. It's $1.99 at many gas stations in the area. But that price is (a) in Australian Dollars and (b) per liter. The AUD-USD exchange rate is 0.68, so that's $1.35 US per liter, and at 3.785 liters/gallon that works out to $5.12/gal US.

$5.12/gal... that's actually not much higher than premium grade gas at name-brand stations in California right now.

Why premium grade? Because Australia would seem to offer only premium grades of gasoline....



Notice those octane grade ratings— 91, 95, and 98. Anyone who drives a car with a high performance engine in the US would be salivating as our typical stations offer 87, 89, and 91 octane gas. A few states offer 93, and grades like 95 and 97 aren't seen outside of race tracks. But the US and AU figures are not the same. The US figure is an AKI calculation, Australia is RON. Australia's higher numbers actually work out to about the same octane content as the US's 87-89-91 fuel grades.

Comments

[some_other_dave]

If you are interested in details--

Research Octane Number (RON) and Motor Octane Number (MON) are two different physical tests to determine an effective "octane" rating. Typically MON reads about 8-10 points lower than RON for a given batch of fuel; this difference is called the fuel's "sensitivity".

The rating that US pumps use is called AKI, or Anti-Knock Index, and it is the average of the RON and MON rating for that fuel. Some pumps are even labeled "(R+M)/2".

[canyonwalker]

I've seen "AKI" and "(R+M)/2" on some gas pumps and in some German vehicles but never spent the time to look up what they mean. Thanks for the explainer.