Excise duty on autogas unchanged

© gazeo.comWill these become more common in the UK? They just might...

British Chancellor of Trust has announced that excise duty on autogas will remain unchanged until September 2015. The UKLPG (British LPG Association) has spoken enthusiastically about the announcement, saying that it should motivate individual drivers and fleet managers alike to convert cars to run on LPG (buying new ones is practically out of the question since there is only one model offered – the Proton Gen-2 ecologic). Until now, due to unclear autogas policy, British motorists used to be quite skeptical of this affordable and environmentally friendly petrol substitute and the market stalled rather than thrived.

One may argue if freezing the tax for 15 months will be enough for a breakthrough to occur, but such a time should be perfectly sufficient for an autogas conversion to break even (particularly for a fleet) and besides even beyond September 2015 the rate of the excise duty will rise proportionally with the rate of tax on petrol and diesel, so autogas economy will remain stable. Unless politicall will changes and the tax on autogas is further frozen.

LPG refueling network in the UK is already sufficient with 1400 retail points across England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland (even up north, along the coast of the Atlantic). According to various estimates, the network is now used by approx. 150-170 thousand motorists, which means each station is used on average by approx. 100 drivers. That's not many – e. g. in Poland, where there are some 6000 stations and 2,8 million autogas-powered cars, which means each retail point is visited by nearly 470 drivers. This goes to show the British market is still far from saturating and the untapped potential for growth remains vast (for the 1400 stations to be regularly used by 470 motorists each there would have to be over 650 thousand LPG-powered vehicles on the roads). Now, thanks to the tax freeze, chances are interest in autogas will soar and the number of cars will grow. We'll keep you up-to-date as soon as we learn more.