Have you ever wondered while refueling your vehicle, that there is a Premium fuel out there costing much higher than the regular one. Well, there are certain benefits of the same, but there are certain disadvantages too. Below are the Pros and Cons of the premium fuel over the unleaded “regular” fuel.
Xtra-Premium, Speed and Power variants of Petrol differs from seller to seller in India. They have much higher Octane Number or Octane rating over the regular petrol/gasoline. The Octane rating of fuel is a measure of how much the fuel can resist compression inside the engine. Moreover, It is the fuel’s ability to resist “pinging” or “knocking” during combustion inside the engine.
This octane number doesn’t have any much significance. In India, unleaded Petrol has an Octane rating of 83 to 87 points, and the Premium Fuels have an Octane rating of 91-94 points. However, the premium fuel is a necessity for vehicles with very high-compression engines.
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Most of the regular vehicles are designed to run on 87-Octane fuel, but performance vehicles, such as those that use turbocharging or supercharging to force more air into the engine, might require higher octane fuel.
This is due to the fact that these vehicles undergo extreme pressure increase inside the cylinder which allows engine to generate more mechanical energy from the fuel + air mixture, run with higher compression ratios and more advanced ignition timing, which results in a huge gain in overall horsepower, thus requiring a premium fuel that could tolerate such high pressures.
Using a regular fuel in a bigger engine might cause the vehicle to perform poorly and may degrade its performance. It can also cause damage to the engine and your fuel economy will suffer too.
To the flip-side, using a premium fuel in a regular car might improve performance and mileage but under normal driving conditions, you’ll not get much benefit.
For most people, using a premium fuel in their vehicles in India means nothing more than waste of money. But for petrol-heads with higher performance vehicles, this is beneficial.