Written by Daniel Hatton
Over the last week I’ve noticed something whilst at the fuel station. While using the pump, I’ve noticed there’s a strange new pained squealing sound accompanying the sound of the fuel pump. After a little investigation, however, I soon realised the sound was coming from me, from where the fuel station had my bollocks in a vice, slowly tightening it up as I filled up the car.
Seriously though. Why has the price of fuel skyrocketed again? And why this time around no one seems to be talking about it. You see, a few months back fuel prices shot up thanks to unrest in another part of the world, and everyone kicked up a massive fuss about it. We even worried about what might happen to the emergency services, who use mostly diesel cars, and even freight because all trucks (as far as I am aware) are diesel. Do they make petrol trucks?
Of course, whilst all this was happening, the electric car owners sat there on their phones whilst waiting for their cars to charge, rattling on about how it costs fifteen pence to do 2000 miles. I don’t have anything against electric cars, and I don’t understand the internal combustion vs electric divide that seems to have formed. Electric cars are great fun when it comes to acceleration because electric motors deliver all their power in an instant, leaving you pressed deep within the seat padding.
For me though, when it comes to refuelling and getting on with my day, I don’t have enough time to sit and wait for my car to charge. I had a conversation with someone the other day about electric cars, and we genuinely couldn’t help but laugh when we talked about getting range anxiety and having to find a charging point, whilst I only need to find a fuel station, and two minutes later, I have enough fuel to do another 400 miles. I haven’t had enough time with an EV, so I could be wrong.
Anyway, last time the price of fuel went up, there were headlines and news stories, Facebook posts and even people panic-buying fuel in case the price went up even more. Thankfully after a few weeks the price slowly started to come down to the point I could reasonably fill the car without having to consider how life would be without two kidneys.
But whilst at the pump today, I nearly fainted when the price of diesel had shot up to 186.9, which is basically £1.87 a litre and frankly, horrific. So, after gently removing my man berries from the grip of the vice, I decided to drive like a 90-year-old home so as to not use too much fuel and sit down to both write this and also do some internetting to see what is going on.
Now according to the RAC, the prices are actually due to “top out", as they’ve worded it, meaning that in theory, the prices should come down, but how quickly is anyone’s guess. You see, whenever there is an event that causes fuel prices to shoot up, they rocket up faster than something from Space X, but when it comes to the prices coming back down, they tend to take a little longer. I guess only time will tell.
But what happens when the price does finally skyrocket to the point that running your car on a refined single malt will be cheaper than fuel? When diesel prices are so high that emergency vehicles will have to find alternative ways of fuelling their hospital rooms on wheels or fire engines full of kit and firefighters. Or when logistics collapses because fuelling a lorry will cost more than the actual purchase price of the rig, so no matter how many trailers full of the finest cheese they transport, it will never work out cost-effective to use the thing. Maybe we’ll get to a point where The Flintstones will be a source of inspiration, and we'll be cutting holes in the floors of our cars and sprinting to work, ensuring that no one will ever miss leg day again.
Or maybe, more inevitably, we’ll all end up in electric cars, because the time that it takes to recharge the thing will be offset by the money saved in charging and will justify buying the car in the first place. But then they have separate issues with battery life, etc. We’ll finally end up in a silent world, where the roads are full of nothing but sci-fi sounds from the electric motors of cars and tyre noise. I know that inevitably one day the internal combustion engine will die off, and we will forget the trouser-wetting scream of a red-lining V12, the sort of sound that makes you weak at the knees, or the ear-splitting sound of a straight-piped hemmy V8 or even the growl of a hard-working diesel. But I want the day they disappear to be the day we run out of fuel, and not because we can’t afford to fill the tanks with fermented dinosaur fuel.