Victoria is the only state not offering live fuel pricing data

Victoria is the only state that does not offer live fuel pricing data, potentially costing motorists hundreds extra every year.

Victoria is the only state that does not offer live fuel pricing data, potentially costing motorists hundreds extra every year. Picture: Ian Currie.

Fuel cycles with soaring prices which used to last a week are now stretching to nearly two months, hitting Victorians in their pockets at the pump.

The average price of unleaded petrol at the top of the fuel cycle in Victoria so far this year was a whopping 214.9 cents per litre, new research has revealed.

In contrast, the average at the bottom of the cycle was 181.7 cents per litre, a gap of more than 33 cents between the top and the bottom.

A driver filling up their car at the bottom of the cycle rather than the top would therefore save $865 annually on a standard 50l tank, but motorists in Victoria get the opportunity to take advantage of bottom-of-cycle prices less often due to ever lengthening fuel cycles.

Motorists in Victoria get the opportunity to take advantage of bottom-of-cycle prices less often. Picture: NewsWire / Andrew Henshaw

National Road and Motorists’ Association spokesman Peter Khoury said the lack of real-time fuel pricing information left Victorians worse off.

Victoria is the only state to not provide live fuel pricing data to motorists.

“Without real-time fuel pricing, Victorians have no reliable way of knowing what the price for fuel will be or should be when they leave home to fill up their tank,” Mr Khoury said.

“Price cycles are unique to Australia and NRMA research has exposed the reality of these cycles: they are lasting longer, prices rise up to three times faster than they fall and we now know that the majority of service stations in Melbourne are charging the maximum price at the top of the cycle.”

The petrol price cycle moves slower in Victoria than the rest of the country. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Josie Hayden

Melburnian motorists are some of the worst off in the country when it comes to long periods of high prices at the bowser.

Along with Brisbane and Sydney, drivers in Victoria’s capital were exposed to price cycles of between four to seven weeks from 2018-2024, NRMA research found.

Australia’s two cheapest cities, Perth and Adelaide, had cycles of just seven days and seventeen days respectively.

Longer periods of high average prices were not the only pain points for Victorian drivers, the NRMA discovered.

The gap between wholesale and retail prices in Melbourne has soared to 18.1 cents per litre in 2024, the highest the NRMA has ever found in its research.

The NRMA has released a new app which aims to help motorists save money on fuel. One feature of the app is delivering live notifications to users when prices are at the bottom of a cycle.

Originally published as Victoria is the only state not offering live fuel pricing data