Highest gas regular -> premium price spread you've seen?

As I filled one of my cars up this morning, thankfully with regular gas, I noticed the price spread between regular and premium. In what feels like the not too distant past it was always a seemingly token amount, 10 cents per gallon per grade change or as the prices went up it went to 20 cents per gallon or so. Well, today the station I was filling up at was $2.20/gallon for regular and $3.05/gallon for premium. 85 cents a gallon, or 39% difference! If you're using about $220 / 100 gallons of gas a month, at that rate having a car requiring premium would cost you $85/mo more! That's nuts.

What have you guys been seeing? Is that station an outlier or is really nearly 40% more expensive to use premium nowadays? I'm grateful that all my cars run regular right now.

Not sure if this counts but "premium" is only available as race gas in barrels or in the form of avgas by me, and in the past has started at clean over 2x the price of regular, although it's probably closer to 50% now that regular has gone up so much. Avgas is actually cheaper but illegal to use on the road...they'll look the other way and put it straight into a race car if you show up with one before an event though.

21 cents a liter has been common here for quite a while.  20 years ago, 10 cents a liter was common.

In Hebron this morning it was 1.88 for regular and and 2.76 for premium. 

YEP!

This is just a random immage off google...

The image traces back to San Jose in Aug 2014.  This used to be the common price spread in octane. 

Another image from Wash DC in 2011.  The gas is expensive but the octane is cheap as a percentage of the sale.  

Now, I routinely see a 75 cent price delta.  I have 2 cars that require premium due to tune.  I never buy gas for them w/o consulting the GasBuddy App.  My cheapest locally is Sams Club with a 30 cent delta. 

Via the gas buddy app, today a local Shell station is

$2.19, $2.49, $2.94  

Most places around here charge about $.50/gal difference from regular to premium.

The place that's dirty, is the Citgo in Saylorsburg where it can vary anywhere from $1.25 to $2 per gallon over regular. They don't advertise the price of premium either so you don't know until you look the price on the pump.

I got wise to that and plan ahead now.

Last time I filled up a couple of weeks ago 87 E10 was $1.89 and 91 E0 was $2.69.

The 135i of course drinks the 91, but even the price of gas tripled tomorrow it wouldn't really impact my budget because I only go through a tank of gas about every 3 weeks.

 

This is another good reason for me to start driving my '85 MR2 again.

Lately near me it seems to be 30 cents difference between grades, so 60 cents between regular and premium.  As the cars I usually drive daily take premium (CLS63 and NSX), I notice, especially as I never get more than 23mpg. 

My regular station was $.10/.10, now its $.20/.20 but I haven’t used premium since I got my civic. 

Couple nights ago in Chicago:

I took the photo because I legit had the exact same thought.

93 is basically 50% more!

BTW, the jag gets like 17 mpg on premium - not a cheap date!

Here in Ontario we pay about 25 cents/liter more for 91 rather than 87 Octane

Pete

In reply to Robbie :

Holy crap! Yeah that's close enough to 50% more. I am going to have to keep this in mind when car shopping. Potential 50% higher fuel costs is a significant downside to a premium fueled car.

In reply to Sonic :

At least it's pretty cars you're keeping fed. My LS400 was premium only, I'd hate to be feeding that premium nowadays.

Please don't take this the wrong way, but I really don't pay any attention to gas prices.  I fill up at pretty much the same station every time, and I only buy gas when I need it, so I'm pretty much paying what they're asking.

That said, with the new CX-9, I recently filled up with 93, since my son says it gets "moar horsepower" with the higher octane.   I think regular was around 2.19 and the premium was bumping up close to 3 bucks, like 2.89 or something like that.

Agree the spread is much bigger than in the "old days."

Around here the regular unleaded is 85 octane and premium is only 91. Depending on the station the spread is anywhere from 10c to 20c for the grade up. Some of the stations offer 4 grades 85, 87, 89, 91. So biggest spread I've seen is 80c. I put high test in my car and from quality providers whenever possible but with only 10g capacity and a daily commute of less than ten miles its no big deal.

Also 85 octane sucks. tried it a few times in my old focus and lost about 5mpgs. My old chevys didn't mind the stuff though.

Minutes ago at my local Sam's Club

In reply to 1988RedT2 :

Same. Regardless of which car I drive, it's $30-40 for 12-16 gallons. The price spread means nothing to me.

NOHOME said:

Here in Ontario we pay about 25 cents/liter more for 91 rather than 87 Octane

 

Pete

I was coming here to say this. It's basically $1 per USG

$0.16/L spread in Winnipeg.

In reply to 1kris06 :

Sure $10 isn’t a bunch of money once. But how often do you fill up? $10/wk would suck I think. I pay attention to what I spend though. 

Does anybody have insight as to why the percent spread has increased and whether this is the new normal or if we’re likely to regress back to the previous spread.

The percent of new cars that have small turbos requiring high octane seems to be increasing significantly so new car shoppers should be thinking about this.

I’m averaging around $400/month in 93 octane. I try not to think about it too much.

Today in south Fl: