How drivers can save hundreds of dollars a year at the petrol pump

Motorists can save up to $740 a year by tracking their capital city’s petrol price cycle, and the competition watchdog has urged drivers to use a growing number of apps to find the cheapest time to fill their tank.

Petrol prices in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane take a fortnight to move from their lowest to highest point and then another month or so to bottom out again, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission found in a report that shows price cycles across the country are lengthening.

Fuel prices across Sydney and Melbourne were last week hovering around the low end of the price cycle and well below their peaks this year.Credit: Dion Georgopoulos

A motorist buying 50 litres of regular unleaded petrol a week last year could have saved hundreds of dollars by switching to retailers offering cheaper prices, or refuelling at the nadir of a price cycle, it said.

Motorists in Perth could have made the biggest savings last year, averaging about $740, while those in Sydney could have pocketed about $407, and Melbourne drivers about $333. Brisbane drivers could have made about $242. There is no petrol price cycle in smaller cities including Canberra, Hobart and Darwin, or most regional locations.

“We know that not all motorists have the time or ability to always seek out the lowest available price,” ACCC commissioner Anna Brakey said.

“These illustrative savings, however, show the potential value of shopping around.”

About 40 apps and websites provide real-time or near real-time prices for the nation’s network of service stations.

Petrol is the single largest weekly expense of most households and affects transport and energy costs for the nation’s businesses.

The Australian Automobile Association this month revealed transport costs had jumped 10 per cent over the past year – nearly triple the rise in broader inflation over the same period. The typical capital city household’s average weekly outlay on fuel crept above $100, its transport affordability index showed.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics’ latest inflation data showed petrol prices were 7.7 per cent higher in the June quarter than the same period a year ago.

But they are starting to fall, and in Sydney and Melbourne, they are the cheapest since January.

Data from the Australian Institute of Petroleum showed a litre of unleaded petrol in Sydney cost an average of $1.76 last week, down from $2.20 in April. In Melbourne, it fell to $1.81 from its recent high of $2.25 in May.

The ACCC found Perth had the most predictable petrol pricing cycle, with Tuesday the most affordable day to fill up. Neither Sydney nor Melbourne have a set cheap day.

Petrol price cycles have become longer in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, with retailers much slower to lower prices than raise them. The average cycle in these cities has lengthened from four weeks in 2018 to seven weeks last year, making it more difficult to time petrol purchases in these cities than in Perth.

However, Brakey said retail prices did not all increase at once and that customers could use retail sites, apps and websites to find petrol stations that had not yet raised their prices. These tools can be accessed through the FuelCheck NSW app and website, the Royal Automobile Club of Victoria app, and commercial providers such as MotorMouth and Petrol Spy.

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