Who Else Has Switched to Premium Fuel 92 OCTANE?

I have been since day one regardless of price.....

 

"Premium" does nothing for a Gen 1, Gen 2, or Gen3 Prius, Prius PHV, or v. Some drivers feel that it does something for the c, I do not own a c and can't confirm or deny that.

Since 1995, 'premium' is no 'cleaner' than 'regular' in the US.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_Tier_Detergent_Gasoline#History

You, of course, may continue to use Premium, you are only wasting money.

(In some locations, premium is E0 while regular is E10, also some locations do not use reformulated gasoline as premium but to so for regular. California is not any of those places)

 

Premium is only required as deemed by the mfgr. Aka not in the prius at all, waste of money..

It is needed in high compression engines especially EDIT: "most" turbo engines that require the slower burn of the fuel. Yes that seems counterintuitive but high test burns slower.. Go figure.

Engineers out there edit as needed, although after owning a few turbo'd veh's that required premium fuel I read up on the topic and what I posted seems to be the consensus...

Edit = cruze ECO was a small turbo that didn't require premium but in my experience had better throttle response while running premium. My above statements were in reference to high performance turbo'd engines....

 

Appearances aside, all higher octane does is resist ignition better. It's tailored for higher compression engines, the ones prone to pre-ignition.

Not exactly exciting, eh?

 

after seeing my 3 pri go over a total of 240,000 miles on regular, with no detrimental effects, i can't see any reason to.

 

Using Premium in a car that doesn't require it is dumb. There's absolutely no evidence that it's better than Regular in a vehicle that's designed for Regular.

 

Pointless discussion......again.

The octane rating in and of itself says NOTHING about how clean a fuel burns.......or the energy content.......or the amount of detergents in it.

Octane rating measures ***ONLY*** the fuels resistance to pre-detonation due to compression heating of the fuel/air mix.
That's it. Nothing else.

An E10 blend contains about 4% less energy than E0 so the E0 should give you a little better mileage.
But if the price spread is more than 4%, it is still a waste of money.......just not quite as much.

At $3.00 a gallon, that 4% would be about 12 cents.
The price spread lately that I have seen is more like 40 cents.
So you would be paying an extra 4o cents but only getting a 12 cent benefit.

 

The oil companies fuel (pun intended) the confusion on this topic. Driving into any station, with the plethora of higher octane pumps, it's hard not to think more cars on the road actually need the stuff.

 

Nope, 87 is all I use and it works great.

 

moet of the pumps i run across are three octanes.

 

That's really volatile fuel!

 

My Prius loves the 83 octane. Sometimes 85 if I drop down in elevation a few thousand feet.

 

Car and Driver:
"Our tests confirm that for most cars there is no compelling reason to buy more expensive fuel than the factory recommends, as any performance gain realized will surely be far less than the percentage hike in price."

Test Results

 

Toyota Hybrid System Technical training course - Course 071, "Fuel Type & Octane Rating", Page 4-17:

 

Even though it's theoretical.

 

Put your money in the bank, not in the tank.