It is scary at the pump and for a long holiday trip you now have to pull out your wallet. A survey shows that 36 percent of Dutch people who normally go on holiday by car, even consider not going at all.
This is apparent from a representative survey by Independer and Q&A research on the holiday behavior of the Dutch. Also, 28 percent of those surveyed indicated that they have already made the decision and are now going on holiday closer to home. Slightly more than half of all respondents with a car have stopped driving anyway due to the increased petrol prices.
In the Independer survey, 55 percent of the Dutch also indicate that they are willing to drive a bit in order to save some money. “Refueling on the highway is often very easy and you can immediately get a sandwich or a cup of coffee. But if it saves up to 20 cents per liter, it can pay off enormously on an annual basis to make a detour,” says Independers car expert Menno Dijcks.
Calculate your holiday fuel costs before departure
According to Dijcks, it is useful to calculate the fuel consumption before departure. This can be done in four steps: set the trip meter to zero immediately after refueling. Usually you have to press and hold a button next to the counter. When you next fill up, you know exactly how many kilometers you have driven in the meantime.
Write the number on your trip meter just before your next refueling. Then look at the pump to see how many liters of petrol or diesel you have refueled. It is important that you fill the tank completely, each time until the pump itself stops automatically. Then you multiply the number of liters tanked by 100 and divide the result by the kilometers driven. The result is your fuel consumption, expressed in liters per 100 kilometres.
Driving through cities and on country roads is more expensive than the highway
Do you want to know how many kilometers you can drive with 1 liter of petrol or diesel? Then you divide the number of kilometers from step 2 by the number of liters from step 3. The fuel price per kilometer is obtained by dividing the price per liter by the number of kilometers per liter of petrol or diesel.
“On sites such as Google Maps you can often see very precisely how many kilometers the journey is from departure to end point,” says car expert Menno Dijcks. “Then you multiply the number of kilometers by the calculated fuel price per kilometer. a good indication of the costs of the journey at home or abroad, but keep in mind that driving in the city or on country roads consumes more than long stretches on the highway.”
Fill up the car in ‘cheap’ fuel countries
The Netherlands is one of the most expensive countries in Europe when it comes to fuel. This has to do with the excise duty and tax burden of the government. As in other countries, fuel prices at gas stations are constantly changing. This is because the oil price changes almost daily. Oil prices have risen sharply in the past six months. However, excise duties and taxes differ from country to country. It can be very advantageous to refuel on the road in ‘cheap’ countries such as Germany or Luxembourg.
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