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AVGAS prices in US vs. engine development

S

Skyhawk

Member
Hello
Here in Sweden we currently pay around $12/USG for 100LL, and it is even worse in other places in Europe. You in the US, think about your flying and how such price level would affect you. Glad to read your thoughts about it.

My thoughts goes to the general threat of the enviroment and the "peak oil".
In the car industry in Europe and Asia it's of high priority to develop fuel-efficient and environmentally friendly cars, which there are resources for because of the big market providing this.
The market for general aviation however isn't that big here and is mainly dominated by the USA.
Could it be that the relatively low prices on gas in the states leads to that the development isn't growing in the speed we desire? Lycoming and Continental is the greatest industries for engines, but do they really have the whipping pressure to develope new engines when they have the USA-market secured in the forseeable future?
 
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Hello Skyhawk,

It's an interesting argument - certainly necessity is the mother of invention, but when you look at the economy of the typical RV flying at cruise settings it is more than competitive with some of the most fuel efficient cars - i.e., in terms of miles/gallon.

Our primary focus now and biggest challenge is lead, and developing a fuel source and set of engines that will run on a lead free fuel.

Forget electricity. IMHO, unless you're generating all your electric needs via water or wind, burning coal, gas or oil to generate electricity to power an airplane motor is a false economy (the BTU to power output in an internal combustion engine is more efficient than the BTU to electricity generation to power in a motor). I might make sense now, but wait until internal combustion engines go away and see what happens to the price of electricity. I believe powering your airplane will be just as costly.

Not sure what the answer is - maybe biodiesel?
 
Biodiesel sure is an alternative. We have word leading pilot plants here in Sweden that investigates that form of source. But then, we lacks diesel engines! Do we have to wait for the big market (US) demanding diesels to get the big ones (Lyc., Cont.) develope a diesel?
Long wait for us. Not positive for GA.
 
IMO, it is not developing engines that run on unleaded fuel, it is developing an unleaded/less leaded AVGAS that works in the current crop of aircraft engines.

As far as fuel price in Europe, if it is similar to autogas price in some countries, taxes are a major factor in high cost...so fix that and AVGAS becomes more affordable.

Barring government intrusion, free markets work very well. So you would find that my viewpoint on such matters may be mucho different than many Europeans.

100LL just jumped to $5.69 USD a gallon at my airport. That will impact my flying just as the 50-70 cent (USD) increase is autogas is impacting car driving.

It is a fact that I or many other people I know could quickly lower this high cost if we made the decisions at a US national level.
 
Yes

Ron,

Yes, I agree with you regarding engines. My point was there are engines now that will run fine on unleaded fuel and engines that will not. For the ones that will not, we can either modify the engine or come up with a suitable fuel.

Sky - as you know, everything in aviation moves at a snails pace. There was just a recent thread here on the subject. There are many reasons for that, including the threat of product liability that occurs when one moves away from a tried and true technology. The future of biodiesel is still quite uncertain in this country. The problem today is that diesel fuel (Jet A) is as, or more expensive, than avgas. If there was a plentiful source of cheap (bio)diesel today, I think you would see many more companies developing diesel engines for GA.

I think to your point, gas, while expensive, is still relatively affordable in this country, and that dulls any incentives to develop new related technologies. I'm afraid until we see $12/gallon not much is going to happen.
 
Ron Lee:
Nothing else than spec.ed fuel works with the crop of engines. Otherwise you for sure get some trouble.
We do have bio alternates, ethanol and diesel made with renewable processes. But we lacks engines which can run on it.

Taxes is a major factor for sure, but a cuple of thousand pilots dont have much to say about it. Sadly enough.

Just curious, how much would a doubling of the AVGAS-price affect you in the US and your flying?


Av8torTom:
Oh, here JetA1 is 1/3 as expensive as 100LL.
For sure this is a political issue and nothing we small pilots could do about it. :(
 
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Avgas Prices in US vs. Engine Development

How would doubling of US avgas prices affect our flying? Pretty sure we will find out, sir.

But I am not sure "Go West Young Man" is a realistic solution to your Swedish $12US fuel prices and a new engine design.

Sweden is a historic example of industriousness and innovation, having by Wiki records had 38 automobile manufacturers since 1903, although only Esther, Koenigsegg and Volvo (Saab another story) still exist. In fact Saab as you know was a division of Swedish Aeroplane Limited (Svenska Aeroplan Aktiebolaget).

Saddle up over in Europe and show us what you have. We will think it is cool and buy a mess of them, like we always have.

Mike Bauer
RV6 N918MB O-360 Dual Pmag Steam
 
"How would doubling of US avgas prices affect our flying? Pretty sure we will find out, sir."

Sounds easy, whats your recipte?
 
The use of lead might be the biggest hazard to avgas in the US given the ongoing lawsuit.

We are dependent on this factory for all of the TEL in the free world...

lead-factory.jpg


It's the Catalyst plant in Ellsemere Port on the River Mersey near Liverpool.

I think it's fairly safe to say the 100LL is just about the only refined fuel world-wide that still uses lead.
 
91 UNL

Apparently they are going to start selling 91 Octane unleaded in Europe...??? Anyway, when they do, I would certainly be interested in how that works out in the high compression Rotax 912ULS. I use 92 in the states all the time. Hard to believe one number in the rating would cause dramatic consequences but...
 
Avgas Perspectives and Actions

Some related information based on a quick search:

As of Jan. 1, 2011, the Swedish car gasoline tax was 6.875 SEK per liter ($3.86 per gallon). The tax is apparently a combination of carbon, energy, and value-added taxes. I could not find a specific source for the avgas tax rate. Skyhawk, what is the Swedish avgas tax rate? Is it the same as for car gasoline?

Note: In Sweden, Hjelmco sells 91/96 UL (unleaded) avgas which evidently works fine for compression ratios 8.5 and lower. I could not find the latest prices for 91/96 UL. Skyhawk, is the $12 per gallon (21 SEK per liter) applicable to 91/96 UL as well as 100LL?

In California, avgas is taxed at 19.4 cents per gallon federal plus 18 cents per gallon state (total: 37.4 cents per gallon). Most other states have lower avgas tax rates. Recently, the U.S. administration proposed increasing the federal avgas tax rate to 70.1 cents per gallon, but this has not been approved by Congress to date.

In California, the California Center for Environmental Health (CEH) has initiated a civil lawsuit against major aviation companies to stop the sale of 100LL avgas in California. If the CEH is successful, CEH is entitled to 25% of any civil penalties (millions of dollars) imposed through an in-court decision. There has been no court ruling to date. Legal proceedings are currently on hold. In the past, the CEH has always settled its lawsuits out-of-court. Negotiations between CEH and aviation interests opposing the lawsuit are ongoing.

Bottom Lines: Aviation fuel prices are a function of taxation and environmental law as well as energy technology and commodity (oil) prices. In the immediate past, aviation fuels were developed, refined, and distributed mainly as required to support aviation engine technology. In the immediate future, it looks like fuel technology (type,* environmental impact, availability, and distribution) will lead and influence engine technology. (* looks like “clean” petroleum, hydrogen, and electric)

My personal take-aways: I may, or may not, need to replace my angle-valve’s 8.7:1 pistons. I may, or may not, be able to afford to fly cross-country. I may need to invest in an ice cream cart to earn some extra money on Saturday so I can fly on Sunday.
 
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Bill Palmer said:
Bottom Lines: Aviation fuel prices are a function of taxation and environmental law as well as energy technology and commodity (oil) prices.
Click to expand...

And I suspect the the first two factors are both the most influential, and most artificial reasons for the cost.
 
Trucking

Another big factor contributing to the higher cost of avgas is that, unlike auto fuel (unleaded), it is illegal to send it through any gasoline pipelines in this country. Therefore 100% of the transportation of avgas has to be done by trucking it... which of course requires mogas :eek:
 
Taxes, Taxes, Taxes!

Not sure about the pipeline law but here in the Bay area, avgas is pipe lined to most of the airports within 30 miles of the refineries.

Developing new engine technologies is not in the best interest of either Continental or Lycoming, since they own the type certificates for approved aircraft engines. Relatively low avgas prices have little to do with slow development but rather our product liability laws which are the achilles heel
of progress, especially when it comes to certified aircraft. Clearly, the experimental market has shown what can be accomplished without the constraints of product liability.

I sympathize with your plight of exorbitant avgas prices and the lack of viable alternatives. 30 years ago, I left Europe in pursuit of aviation happiness and came to the United States where a fairly large number of pilots wield considerable pressure to keep general aviation alive and well
and that includes pressure to keep aviation fuel taxes at a minimum.
Your avgas prices are designed to eradicate general aviation, an unwanted nuisance in the eyes of most Europeans. Your mention of a couple of thousand pilots left, makes me think that your society has managed to succeed in putting an end to general aviation in the foreseeable future.

In addition, alternative fuels especially bio fuels require an enormous amount of fresh water for processing. Turns out, our fresh water resources are even scarcer than oil reserves, especially in light of the huge domestic oil discoveries made in the last decade.

To date, as has been mentioned by another poster, the internal combustion engine is still the most efficient way to turn fuel into horsepower and until someone comes up with a more efficient and cheaper version of propulsion, no one is going to put any new engine on fast track development.
 
On our last fuel load quote, these are the Arizona 100LL taxes - all in $ per US gallon/

Avgas Taxes
Federal Excise 0.19300
Federal Lust 0.00100
Fed Oil Spill 0.00190
AZ State Excise 0.05000
AZ UST 0.01000
 
Av8torTom said:
Another big factor contributing to the higher cost of avgas is that, unlike auto fuel (unleaded), it is illegal to send it through any gasoline pipelines in this country. Therefore 100% of the transportation of avgas has to be done by trucking it... which of course requires mogas :eek:
Click to expand...

I have say that this statement is simply not true. I work on pipelines for a living and know for a fact that many of them do indeed carry avgas, and jet A fuels along with auto fuel and diesel fuels. In fact they do this without any mechanical means of separating the products. In the old days they used "pigs" to separate the products. Now they just use careful valve timing and put the products that are a blend of different products into a tank that is then injected back into all of the prodcucts in parts per million.

Tanker trucks have to get cleaned out and certified in order to haul a load of avgas and this adds to the cost of delivery by truck.

Randall Crothers
Pipeline Welder
 
One thing that people need to remember is that our engines are reasonably efficient, with BSFC's of 0.45 or lower at 75% power or less. Auto engines are probably in the .35 range, but that number grows when they enrich the mixture at higher power settings.

The way for us to save fuel is by building cleaner airframes (and the RV's are already clean) or to pull the throttle back. We will not see significant improvements in efficency in reciprocating engines which are normally run at 65%-100% of full power at relatively low RPM. The physics simply won't allow it.

Diesels? Sure, they do better, but they are typically heavier and liquid cooled, so whatever you gain in fuel savings, you give back in weight and complexity. Also, diesel fuel has a higher energy content to start with.
 
Randy said:
I have say that this statement is simply not true. I work on pipelines for a living and know for a fact that many of them do indeed carry avgas, and jet A fuels along with auto fuel and diesel fuels. In fact they do this without any mechanical means of separating the products. In the old days they used "pigs" to separate the products. Now they just use careful valve timing and put the products that are a blend of different products into a tank that is then injected back into all of the prodcucts in parts per million.

Tanker trucks have to get cleaned out and certified in order to haul a load of avgas and this adds to the cost of delivery by truck.

Randall Crothers
Pipeline Welder
Click to expand...

Randall,

Apparently there are some pipelines that carry avgas, but according the this article, most do not, so the bulk of the transportation must be trucked. The point is, the difference in transportation is a major factor in the cost difference.
http://www.avweb.com/blogs/insider/AvWebInsider_AvgasPrices_199000-1.html?type=pf
 
Av8torTom said:
Another big factor contributing to the higher cost of avgas is that, unlike auto fuel (unleaded), it is illegal to send it through any gasoline pipelines in this country. Therefore 100% of the transportation of avgas has to be done by trucking it... which of course requires DIESEL :eek:
Click to expand...

I think that's what you meant.
 
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