No need to ask what this van runs on. (image: Roush)
How much did a typical American household spend on gasoline in April? With prices hovering around $4 a gallon, the average gas bill was about a dime north of $368 last month, according to a report the oil info site OPIS gave to CNNMoney today. That’s a cringer, amounting to $87 more than we paid for gasoline last April and $194 more than in the April of 2009.
Though what if the family station wagon ran on propane autogas? The savings would be enough to pay for a classy dinner, or even a barrel of crude oil (and with today’s price, there would be enough left over for dinner at Popeyes). Sticking to the 70-percent rule — that autogas historically costs 30-percent less than gasoline — fueling up a propane-mobile would have saved you $110 on average last month. And probably even more than that if you factored in a tax rebate or two.
Of course there’s one small wrinkle here: Where do you get a propane-powered station wagon in these parts? As the folks at Autogas for America have pointed out, the focus is on getting autogas into the tanks of the country’s fleet vehicles first.