Mitsubishi Lancer on LPG

[domoDD]

Hello,

Well i tried to find somewhere where to post it since i do not see i think this is best place to post it.
So i'm owner of Lancer 1.8 (2009y) and i have instaled LPG(Lovato) in it when it had 38 000km, now i have driven all around Europe in last few years and i have 188 000km, i never had a single one problem with it.
Where ever i go there is LPG stations and you can fuel up your thank, with 60l of LPG i can make 550km in city and 650-700km outside city.
aprox cost of 60l LPG was around 40€, but now with this COVID-19 its around 20€
I'm really satisfied with it but main problem and question for me is, why don't i see more cars with LPG ?! where is the problem ? what don't i know

[MeteorGray]

If everybody were starting off from scratch, in today's conditions perhaps the LPG option would be viable against gasoline.

The problem is, we already have a massive investment in gasoline, which is competitive in every way with LPG.

It's hard to justify spending the billions to build a parallel system at this point. Otherwise, it may have been done, or at least it would be underway in a significant manner.

[Ecky]

In the 'states (at least as I've seen it) propane tends to average around the same cost as gasoline but has 30% less energy per unit, and it's harder (heavier) to store safely.

[domoDD]

I have traveled really a lot with this car
- Albania
- Montenegro
- Macedonia
- Bosnia
- Slovenia
- Hungary
- Poland
- Russia(kalingrad)
- Italy
- Austria
- Germany
- Spain
- Portugal
- France
- Monaco
- Luxembourg
- Andorra
- Belgium
- Nederland
- Danmark

In every country LPG stations are spread nicely i didn't had to drive off road to refuel my tank. After some time i asked on stations workers do they have lot of LPG cars, in every of them told me they don't have them a lot, some of them store LPG over 6-7 months until they fill them up again ... Only country which told me oposit was in Slovenia and in Portugal.

I payed 1600€ to place LPG in my car and 300€ some papers to place it into car documents, and that is it. I didn't had really any problem with it, i googled it a little bit and i found that several car company have motors with only LPG, but they are mostly unavailable to buy in Europe(Croatia).

And story about that car is slower, well i have 150kS and i drive pretty much nicely i do not see any problem or that i'm slower on LPG ...

[oldtamiyaphile]

I had an LPG car a long time ago.

Basically LPG made (some) sense when cars had carbs or single point EFI. Most of today's cars cannot be aftermarket converted. Converting my '05 Jeep to LPG would have cost $6k, not many converters left at those prices.

Anything aftermarket is not as reliable as OEM.

LPG was OK when most people drove sedans with a fixed rear seat, where the tank could go against the seatback, with hatchbacks and SUV's a big tank in the load space is a massive issue, as you loose the ability to fold the seats for large cargo. Spare wheel replacement tanks are small and won't fit most cars with 'space savers' anyway.

Fewer miles per litre, offsets the lower cost of fuel to a degree. As newer cars are more optimised for the intended fuel, aftermarket conversions will lag more and more.

LPG is only popular if it's not taxed like petrol/ diesel. Here it's only taxed at 10c vs 50c (flat rate per litre, not %). If you do the math, at the same tax rate LPG would make no sense.

[D.O.G.]

Originally Posted by oldtamiyaphile

I had an LPG car a long time ago.

I got an early 90's people mover converted to LPG (dual fuel) around 2000 and ran it for 10 years.
LPG was only half the price of petrol and even though you used more of it, the overall cost was low enough that the conversion paid for itself in the first year.

Unfortunately LPG prices increased later on, so the cost benefit faded away.

There are still plenty of service stations offering LPG around Sydney, but you don't see many cars filling up anymore.

[teoman]

Here in Turkey it was also very common when the prices were lower. A lot of older cars got converted to LPG, for large engined cars (3+ liters) the only way to financially keep them on the road after the intial owner sold the car was to convert it to LPG. (I used to have a MB ML350 which was dual fuel LPG and gasoline, and I would not have bought it if it were not for the cheaper running costs).