Economical cars threaten servos

Imagine going to the supermarket to buy petrol off the shelf like you do a slab of soft drinks, rather than pull up to a bowser and refuel at a service station.

That's the vision presented by a senior automotive analyst, who says the inexorable improvement in passenger vehicle fuel economy will eventually make the traditional servo a rare sight, if not irrelevant.

"One of the outcomes we might be looking at as we drive efficiency higher is the fuelling system necessarily might change and suddenly gasoline starts to look ubiquitous – I can buy it anywhere," said Kevin J. Lindemer, managing director downstream consulting at IHS Automotive.

Lindemer was speaking in Chengdu, China at the 12th edition of the Michelin Bibendum Challenge, a think-tank, seminar and motor show devoted to future transport technologies and sustainable mobility.

And he also suggested needing only a few litres to drive hundreds of kilometres could mean a fundamental change to car design.

"Why do you need a fuel tank on a car?" he asked. "Maybe the fuel tank is something you just unplug and plug back in again. That is what the battery guys would like you to do.

"If I can just drop in a five litre container and pull out a five litre container and it takes me all of 15 seconds and I am on my way and I can do it anywhere I want, it's a tough value proposition to beat."

Lindemer's radical forecast for the way we will eventually refuel cars was triggered by a discussion theme at the Challenge regarding cars powered by internal combustion engines being able to average emissions of 50g CO2/km (2.1 L/100km of petrol or 1.9L/100km of diesel).

In Europe, it is mandated the automotive corporate average must be 95g CO2/km by 2021 (4.1 L/100 km of petrol or 3.6 L/100 km of diesel)

"The distance we are travelling between fill-ups is increasing," Lindemer said. "Back in 2000 the average was around 600km per tank between fill-ups, now it's up to 885km."

"So what's been happening over a couple of decades is we have been leaving the fuel tank the same size and making the cars more efficient.

"So if you say we are 'going to go to a 50 gram car and leave the fuel tank the same size', well that raises your range to 1600 miles (2570km)per tank. In other words you only stop and buy fuel only seven times per year. That causes a lot of problems."

While tanks could be made smaller to force people to fill up more often to compensate for more economical cars, Lindemer made the point that would still not prevent a reduced number of service stations because demand was still shrinking.

That would make service stations less convenient to access. Combine that with reduced amount of fuel required to travel a certain distance and buying packaged petrol off the shelf makes sense.

"We might go from using 1500 litres of fuel per year per person down to maybe 100 and if you go down to 100 litres suddenly it looks like I can sell gasoline and diesel fuel differently than I did before," Lindemer said.

"So rather than sell it in bulk, I can start selling gasoline as a product in a container on the shelf in just about any store I would go in to.

"An American consumes 44 gallons (166 litres) of Diet Coke every year, so 'honey when you are out buying a case of Diet coke would you buy me two litres of gasoline?'.

"Two litres of gasoline at 50 grams emissions, that's going to get me 100km."

Lindemer rejected one obvious objection to a packaged petrol – its volatility and the potential for accidents.

"LPG is available everywhere you go in cylinders, you can go to the hardware store and buy paint thinners and stains. Heating oil, kerosene and oxygen are in almost every home; these are all flammable things and we deal with them all the time."