Poor mileage with Tesco petrol?

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nvc

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hi there,

recently I have serious doubt with the tesco petrol I use from time to time.

I noticed this after realising my newly bought A3 ( approved used, 06reg 1.6SE 16k on clock) is doing worse than my old mondeo with blown engine. it is 1.8L petrol, which once managed to do 55mpg from London to bristol return.
only managed to do a few fills with my new A3.
tesco 15pound @1.04 - 83miles
sainsburys £15 @1.04 - 104m
tesco 15L - 84m
shell 15L - done 80 now with 1/8 tank to red

seems tesco is consistantly worse than the others

guess I will just stick with shell, not worth trying tesco again, especially it more expensive than shell.

any of you have the same experience with tesco petrol?
thanks
 
They must be filtering the petrol to cover the 5p off per litre when you spend £50 on shopping lol
 
Good thing this il be sacking tesco to if thats the case ...

does your car perform the same on all the types of petrol just that tesco's may burn quicker due to higher octain or something i may be wrong
 
Hi thanks for replies

it seems tesco is the one in question

I am not trying to spread rumour or anything

tesco has seems to be singled out all the time

just google 'supermarket petrol quality'. I have seen many people report

poor mileage from tesco

and one report petrol rusted his new car 's tank in one year,
guess what , he fills with the one run club cards
 
Last edited:
Tesco is renound for having crap petrol, their diesel is apparently fine however

I must say though, if you are using Tesco brand and only putting a quarter of a tank in and then running it to red, it won't do your car any good
 
Tesco petrol is a lower quality, i've heard this through the fuel industry. Not good for your motor!
Every now and then i put a few tanks of premium fuel through. don't notice much difference untill the second or third tank so it must be cleaning something?
Then I get closer to pay day so its cheap stuff again....
Some petrol stations do have dirty tanks, there was one many years ago in Ilkley that ******** alot of engines.
 
audi upgrades
Tescos Premium unleaded has proved superior to Shells V Power and BP's Ultimate, with regards to bhp.
 
Hey,
I work for BP Oil.
The varying results are down to the base product and the additives which they put in there base grade. It is my understanding that the tesco base product is the same as other company's (most places lift from the same locations around the country), but the additive is not as good as other company's such as BP, Shell, Esso, Total, Texaco etc.
The Supermarket fuels are really just the luck of the draw really, all depends which company has the supply contract for a given time and what product contracts these company's have in place. Sainsbury's has been supplied by BP for the last 5 years, and as such have benefitted from better additives (although still not as good as the BP additives).
At the end of the day, all the fuel out there meets the minimum spec required by law, but the big Companies spend more on producing and supplying better additives and better qaulity fuel.
You also have to bare in mind that most major Company's have tranferred all product to 5% ethenol which may have some effect aswell, the only grades that aren't are the Super Unleaded grades.
I personally wouldn't touch supermarket fuels, for the reasons above, but each to their own.
 
Shell is by far the best. If i had one local to me i'd use it over BP anyday
 
I think this is just rumour to be honest. Tesco fuel is supplied by its own company Greenergy and not by who ever the supplier is this week. Tesco petrol is seen as poor because its Tesco. If it was M&S petrol, people would say its good. I did 500 milers yesterday and i went out on Shell ultimate and came back on bog standard Jet....no difference in MPG or performance, both were happy to cruise at 90mph and gave just over 30 mpg. If there was a problem with a petrol i would look at the petrol station rather than the fuel. We had a BP that was crap near my place and it was water in the storage tanks.
 
paddy said:
If there was a problem with a petrol i would look at the petrol station rather than the fuel. We had a BP that was crap near my place and it was water in the storage tanks.
Click to expand...

I kind agree with you, it seems the perticular tesco petrol station I should avoid at any cost. then again I doubt tesco is not selling the lowest quality fuel possible

it is interesting, there is no independent report/review of the fuels quality sell in UK. there is no head to head test like cars.

all these associations/ magzines says all the fuel met minimum standard and should be equally good. I do no buy a word of them.
 
I suppose the point is that the fuel is not as important as many other things.
30 years ago your Austin Allegro did 30k miles on its exhaust, 60k miles on its clutch and was burning neat oil by 80k miles and terminally rusted by 7 years.
A modern car on cheap petrol will probably go round the clock twice and last 20 years+. Its a funny fact that we buy a new car and we put expensive petrol in it and top quality oil. we pay audi £150 an hour to look after it and then we sell it at 3 years old and the only person who really beifits from all this is the guy that buys it for the fourth time at 90k miles and 10 years old :)l
 
Thanks JCS....that was my point :)

Quote


The Tesco 99 fuel again outperformed V Power in all the tests but the differences between the two fuels were marginal and we doubt most people would tell the difference in their cars on a day to day basis. However the Tesco fuel was the most consistent.

Its another case of badge snobbery ...
 
paddy said:
I think this is just rumour to be honest. Tesco fuel is supplied by its own company Greenergy and not by who ever the supplier is this week. Tesco petrol is seen as poor because its Tesco. If it was M&S petrol, people would say its good. I did 500 milers yesterday and i went out on Shell ultimate and came back on bog standard Jet....no difference in MPG or performance, both were happy to cruise at 90mph and gave just over 30 mpg. If there was a problem with a petrol i would look at the petrol station rather than the fuel. We had a BP that was crap near my place and it was water in the storage tanks.
Click to expand...

I think you may have misunderstood what i was syaing. You are correct in saying that Tesco lift from Greenergy. You will find that places like greenergy are cheaper to lift from (base product) and even the likes af BP and other big company's lift from them, but the additives that they use are vastly different. For example, Sainsbury's have been supplied by BP for the last five years and had the relavant additives they supply, but as of january greenergy are taking over the contract and the quality and qauntity of the additives will vary vastly. The additives vary enough for Sainsburys fuel NOT to be allowed to be dropped into a BP station's tanks because they are below the spec BP sell, and are treated as a contam and have to be uplifted and replenished.
Me personally, i would never use supermarket fuel,they are cheaper for a reason, i seem to remember a contam at a large number of Tesco garages last year (was on the news).
But as i have said before, each to their own.
 
I think if you compare like for like RON you'd struggle to see a difference.
 
DJM
You say you wouldn't touch supermarket fuel because the additives are not as good as the mainstream fuels. what effect would you expect these poor additives to have on a car ? I have used supermarket fuels for years. when i was on the road with a company Cavalier i did 230,000 miles in it in 4 years and it was the most reliable car i have ever owned......a lot better than my Audi.....lol
As you say...each to their own :shrug:
 
I used to drive the same 400 mile round trip every weekend, all motorway miles and all with the cruise control so my driving was consistent. The car was a 140 bhp golf tdi. I would get around 60mpg filling up at shell and 55mpg filling up at sainsburys. I cant say anything about tescos fuel but based on what has been said above and my own experience there is definitely a difference between supermarkets and the rest. I would always choose shell, past experience has proven its a quality fuel and is very competitively priced against the supermarkets.
 
In fairness we are talking about petrol...
 
I thought we was also talking about the quality of supermarket petrol, I was only talking about my experience of supermarket fuels.
 
Some people talking about regular petrol, others about performance petrol, others about diesel, what a mess!:huh:
 
I've been having this discussion alot recently,
But i do agree with Tesco's being the worse of the lot, i only use Total & BP now, since owning the audi the difference on MPG is definitely noticeable over tesco.
I remember reading a while back that diesel has a set 'recipe'? so doesn't differ anywhere, whereas petrol can be mixed in more ways, It may not be a quality issue, just a performance issue with Tesco's.

Wasn't there a big scandle a few years ago with some supermarkets watering down petrol? Think that was Tesco's.
 
So there you have it :thumbsup:

26 post and 26 different views.
I guy has put 15L in his car and come up with a decisive MPG !!
Another has a mate who's new petrol tank rusted through in a year !!
another guy uses Shell even though he has a BP fuel card !!
Despite a link to a scientific based test that says Tesco is better than V power and ultimate.......no one likes Tesco fuel...


Lets face it guys...We don't know :)
 
audi upgrades
hi,

had a quick look at the link, that was testing the bhp rather than mpg, right? if I didn't get it totally wrong.

actually I found a test posted on a taiwan forum, the guy actually spent 2 whole days and covered 800miles to test the mpg of 2 different local petrol brand. the result is astonishing.

a 12% different in mpg brand to brand.

the guy was serious and determined, gps, counter , checked historical weather data, etc

link
http://translate.google.com/transla...ail.php?id=8405&sl=zh-CN&tl=en&history_state0=
 
paddy said:
So there you have it :thumbsup:

26 post and 26 different views.
I guy has put 15L in his car and come up with a decisive MPG !!
Another has a mate who's new petrol tank rusted through in a year !!
another guy uses Shell even though he has a BP fuel card !!
Despite a link to a scientific based test that says Tesco is better than V power and ultimate.......no one likes Tesco fuel...


Lets face it guys...We don't know :)
Click to expand...

After 10years in the industry i think i have alittle more knowledge than you give me credit for.
For that reason and in the words of the dragons ' I'm out '
 
Traffic, weather, mood, operating temperatures, etc, make these DIY comparisons pointless. Just as a side issue, does no one bother to search anymore? The whole Tesco "crap fuel" thing has been done before at least twice to a similar conclusion i.e. none. Please someone commission a scientific comparison to put this to bed once and for all for Gods sake. Buy what you want for your tank but dont expect your "comparison data" to be taken as fact please.
 
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