Back in July, I wrote an article announcing the launch of Shell FuelSave petrol and diesel – two new fuels that would replace Shell’s regular unleaded and diesel throughout the UK. I’d been to the press launch and the piece I wrote was fairly positive, I thought.
What I didn’t expect was to be met by a barrage of negative comments from drivers who felt that using FuelSave fuels had caused problems with their cars. My original article on FuelSave has had more comments than any other on this site – 65 comments, at the last count. Somehow, this website became the focus for anyone who thought they were having car problems caused by FuelSave petrol or diesel.
It has now been more than three months since FuelSave was launched and I hope that the dust has now settled. It is clear that the vast majority of people who use the fuel do not experience problems – given the size of Shell’s forecourt network, if lots of drivers were having problems it would have hit the mainstream news by now (remember the contaminated supermarket fuel fiasco a few years ago?)
Does anyone still feel that their car is being affected by FuelSave? If you are a regular Shell customer, have you noticed any change in fuel consumption?
(I’d only expect to see a small improvement at best, as even Shell’s best-case claimed figure of 1 litre per 50 litres only equates to a 2% improvement – the equivalent of going from 40mpg to 40.8mpg. However, anyone who does a lot of driving might have noticed a slight change, especially if your car has a computer that calculates fuel consumption.)
I would be very interested to hear anything at all about people’s experience with FuelSave – whether good, bad or indifferent.
To get in touch, just leave a comment below this post or on my original FuelSave post.
I run 2 diesel cars, 1 a skoda fabia vrs pd130 and the other a KIA ceed 1.6 crdi. Ive been using fuel save diesel for a while in vrs but always with a dash of millers in and found no problems. That was until I ran out of millers and filled up with fuel save. Within a few days my vrs went into limp mode with an egr fault. Took it to the local vag specialist who reset the codes but it just did not run right after that. Felt like the car had lost 30bhp and power delivery was very hesitant. . Still didn’t occur to me that it might be the fuel and I feared it might be the turbo but after a week without the garage again they found no problems but mechanic did notice that hesitancy. I’m trading the vrs in 2 months so I took the wifes ceed, again, filled up with fuel save diesel which she has been using for a couple of months but only uses 1 tank a month, as appose to my 1 tank per week and lo and behold her car has with the lumpy idle and hesitancy my vrs was suffering from. She never noticed it because she hardly does any motorway driving. It only then occurred to me about the fuel so I did a search and found all kinds of complaints with the same symptoms both my cars are having. I’ve filled up at the same station for the past 5 years and with 4 different diesel cars and never had a problem until I started using fuel save. Needless to say I’m not using fuel save anymore and I’m on my first full tank of BP diesel in the ceed. Unfortunately the problems still persist but I’m hoping as the BP works it’s way through then it will clean things up but what if it doesn’t? Where do I stand? The vrs is going next month so I’m not too fussed about that, although I only thought of trading it because of the problems caused by using fuel save. So, I think I have a good view of the fuel save fiasco. 2 separate cars using the same fuel and both exhibiting the same problems. I admit that shell has a huge customer base and this would have raised its head long ago but how many people actually do the driving or are as anal as me to notice it?