Current petrol price is stimulating changes that were already rational at a much lower petrol price. The two transparently rational changes are to LPG fuelled cars and to hybrid petrol-electric cars perhaps both together. Ethanol and possibly methanol will also play a part. Hydrogen cars are still well into the future. A substantial change in the car fleet towards the more fuel-efficient vehicles has three aspects: new car purchases, liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) conversions and scrapping of inefficient cars. For the new car market, this paper will revisit the complex demand relationships between the major car types and the major fuels. The topic is complicated by design acceptability, some more or less faulty perceptions and lags in response. Regardless of the speed of change in the new car market, the rate at which the whole fleet changes depends on the scrapping of used cars. A simple analysis shows that the used car markets accelerated discounting of the resale price of inefficient cars is unlikely to remove them from the fleet in appreciable numbers. (Author/publisher) For the covering entry of this conference, please see ITRD abstract no. E214133.
Abstract