What’s fueling South Africa? Driving experiences, fuel costs and small cars.

I just thought it would be interesting to share a bit about my experience so far with fuel (petrol, gas or whatever you want to call it) for cars. I will write more about this in a future blog as I really should be working on my capstone for SIT. I don’t think I have mentioned that I have been driving here off and on since about my third week here. So far I have driven to the store, driven short distances for work, gone for a ride with Marcilio to see a concert a few weeks back and driven to work with the girls and women at the center for former and current prostitutes that Linzi is on the board of and where Doug and I have been teaching speech skills for the past few weeks. In fact I will be going there tomorrow and this time all on my own. It is good to do some training with this group made up mostly of females but also with two guys who work for the center one teaching computers and the other I am not sure about but he is a poet, artist, actor, etc. You might want to look back at one of my first entries from back on July 27^th when I shared some impressions on what driving is like here in SA. It wasn’t that hard to drive on the other side of the road and it helps that the car that I have been driving is automatic. I love manual/stick but this is what is available and I can’t argue.

The car I have been using is a Toyota Camry which belongs to Doug and he was using when I first got here until it’s A/C quit, followed by it breaking down on him a few times while traveling long distances. Needless to say I will just drive it short distances and always have my cell phone with me. The specifics on the car is that it is a 4-speed automatic with four doors, a 2.2 liter/litre engine and has a fuel tank capacity of 70 liters. I just went to fill it up this afternoon as it was almost on empty and after I sat down to calculate fuel costs and compare the price between gas here in SA and in the US. It sucked up 58.78 liters which at a price of 6.06 a liter cost a whopping 356.21 ZAR (rands). I went to Pumpsandspares.com (if you know a better site to calculate costs please do share) and found out that the 58.78 liters is (about) equivalent to 13 gallons. I then went to XE.com to see what the current exchange from the rand to the dollar at about 6 PM my time was. I calculated the 356.21 ZAR that I paid to fill up the car and it came out to 46.8069 USD. Then from PumpsandSpares.com I figured out that 6.06 a liter equals 0.800117 USD and that 1 gallon is equal to about 5 liters. Thus if I was to buy one gallon here in South Africa (or at least at the Shell Station where I went here in Sandringham it would cost a little over $4. (If any of this calculation is inaccurate please let me know) As I haven’t been home in over three months I am not sure what current fuel costs are in the States but I would guess that this is between 20 and 30% more than the costs at home.

When you consider the fuel costs, the costs of living here in South Africa, the high level of unemployment and the weak rand it is no wonder that many of the cars that I see on the road are small 2 and 4 door ones many smaller than a VW Golf or Honda Civic hatchback. It really is amazing coming from the gas guzzling capitol of the world to South Africa where more because of the lack of money in your wallet most people choose small, compact, light and fuel efficient cars over the monster SUVs and other major pollution producers. It will be a shock to be back home and feel like I am the fool at the monster truck rally with my Golf. Heck, many of the cars here make my VW seem like a monster truck. I will undoubtedly write more on my experiences with energy consumption, travel and more in blogs to come.