You Want To Know Our Secret?

X-1R stretches the dollar. 

With hour-long daily commutes being common in major cities across the world, it’s no surprise that we spend a sizeable portion of our income on petrol. In the States, drivers spend 39% of their daily wages to fill up a 60-litre tank while drivers in the UK spend almost 109%. Before you Brits start to pity yourselves…in China, where it is predicted will become the largest consumer of oil in the years to come, drivers spend a whopping 373% of their daily wages to fill up the tank. (Based on data from Bloomberg: Pain at the Pump.)

As governments move to curb petrol consumption, prices are rising even more. In sunny California, analysts expect petrol price to soar by 76 cents a gallon starting from 1 January 2015, as the State’s cap-and-trade programme to clean up the air takes effect. All the way Down Under, the Australian government is planning to increase petrol excise to fill up federal coffers. Amidst protests that the move would burden lower-income earners, the Treasurer of Australia, Joe Hockey, is drawing a lot of flak after defending the budget measure with his comment that: “…the poorest people either don’t have cars or actually don’t drive very far in many cases.”

Hmm. We’re not sure about that, but we certainly feel poorer each time fuel prices increase. Which got us thinking ‘how can we stretch our dollar at the pump itself?’ The market offers a plethora of products claiming to help drivers save fuel, so many of which are unfounded that the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) even cautions against untested brands.

Well, we don’t all have the expertise and equipment to test fuel additives, so, we were very glad to find a rare product that had been scientifically tested by an independent laboratory, and the results actually attested to the manufacturer’s claim. Intertek is an established testing facility (130-year history!) that has helped determined “trusted brands” worthy of that label.

The lab recently put the X-1R Octane Booster to the test. As its name suggests, the product – containing a mixture of MMT, Power-X and Nitromethane - claims to increase the fuel’s octane rating when added to the tank. 

Intertek added the X-1R product to a sample RON94.9 fuel and determined the octane rating again. The conclusion? Results showed that the octane rating did indeed increase…by 3.5 numbers! Now, that is a remarkable improvement that could save us many dollars at the pump, for we know that the price difference between regular and premium quality fuels, which are usually just a RON number or two apart, is quite significant. Using better quality fuel would also allow the engine to achieve optimum performance, effectively reducing fuel consumption and getting more mileage out of the same amount of petrol.

Read X-1R’s report on the test here.

Now…how do we let the hard-working folks in China, who has to work for almost four days to afford a tankful of petrol, know about this product...?


image: afroautos.com