Originally Posted By: Kestas
Originally Posted By: y_p_w
It's pretty clear that the price difference has little to do with actual costs.... I've heard some gas station owners price their fuel to barely make any profit for regular, but then make it up with premium.
From poking around the internet to understand this jump in price differential I've read the same thing. Additionally, they gouge people for premium fuel because they can. They believe people who drive premium fueled vehicles are driving upscale vehicles, have more money to spend, and thus can afford to pay what they charge for premium... not because it cost more to produce.
So screw them, I'm filling up with regular. All my vehicles have knock sensors.
Todd, you may want to read through the thread linked below. It shows you how to easily make pure gasoline by washing the ethanol out of it. It's easy to do and can save you from paying the 1000% markup you mentioned.
https://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/ubbthr...10?#Post2749602
There isn't necessarily any extra "cost" to making higher octane base fuel save maybe some of the cracking steps. Even those are going to go into all fuel grades as a blending component. It's really about how much is the customer willing to pay and what proportion of each can you make. Someone at the refinery is looking at the crude and thinking how much of this can we make into gasoline, how much into diesel and kerosene, how much into asphalt, and how much into lubricants.
As for trying to remove the alcohol, I'm not sure that's such a great idea with a car engine. Those guys were talking about doing that for power equipment, which typically has low octane requirement. The ethanol is integral to meeting the octane rating specified on the pump. There was a time when 87 octane at the pump was initially 87 octane fuel with up to 10% ethanol, but those days are mostly gone. Now it's something like 85 octane before blending, and the ethanol is required to bring the octane rating up to the expected number on the pump. They called the old practice "octane giveaway".