The pandemic and a war, in my fuel receipts
Right, so I've got a slightly odd habit. Since October 2018 I've written down every single time I've filled up the same Toyota Aygo. That's 125 fill-ups, 45,357 miles and 3,996 litres later, and it turns out there's a proper little story buried in all those receipts. Here's what I found.
- Fill-ups
- 125
- Miles driven
- 45,357
- Total spent
- £5,638
- Average MPG
- 52.1
01/The car
The same Toyota Aygo, all the way through.
HN14WXP has been my daily ride since October 2018, and pretty much the day I got it I started scribbling down every fill. The litres, the price, what it cost, the odometer reading, all of it. A bit obsessive, I know, but it does mean none of the numbers here are guesswork.
Add it all up and we're talking 3,996 litres of petrol, £5,638 spent and 45,357 miles covered, which works out at about 52.1 miles to the gallon.
- Fill-ups logged
- 125
- Miles driven
- 45,357
- Litres bought
- 3,996
- Total spent
- £5,638
02/The price of petrol
From £1.07 to £1.90 a litre.
The price per litre has been on a proper rollercoaster. The cheapest I ever paid was £1.07 in November 2020, right in the depths of the pandemic when nobody was going anywhere. The dearest was £1.90 in June 2022, when the energy crisis after Russia invaded Ukraine sent everything haywire. That's a 77% jump between the two, for the same car at the same sort of garage.
- Cheapest, November 2020
- £1.07
- Dearest, June 2022
- £1.90
- Peak-to-trough swing
- 77%
- All-time average
- £1.41
03/How far I drove
Around 6,000 miles a year, with two big exceptions.
Most years I just potter along at around 6,000 miles, which is actually a fair bit under the national average. The big oddball is 2020, when it dropped to barely half that. And you can see exactly why in the data: two big stretches where the car basically didn't move.
- Longest gap between fills
- 124 days
- Typical gap
- 20 days
- Shortest gap
- 2 days
04/Seasonal economy
Summer adds nearly 4.8 miles per gallon.
Here's a fun one you only really spot after a few years: the car drinks more in winter. Summer fills average 54.5 mpg, but winter ones drop to 49.7 mpg. Some of it is the boring physics, cold dense air, soft tyres, the engine taking ages to warm up on short hops. But honestly the biggest culprit is probably me, blasting the heating the second it gets cold, which the engine has to graft a bit harder to provide. Either way, it shows up every single year.
- Summer MPG (June to August)
- 54.5
- Winter MPG (December to February)
- 49.7
- Summer gain (mpg)
- +4.8
- All-time average
- 52.1
05/Fuel economy
52.1 miles per gallon, year after year.
Over all those fills, the Toyota Aygo averages 52.1 mpg. For a little petrol car that's pretty much bang on, just a touch under the official number, which is totally normal once you're out in the real world. The bit I like is how steady it stays year after year, even with the clock now well past 71,914 miles.
06/What it cost
2022 was the most expensive year. 2020 the cheapest.
What I spend in a year is way more about the price of petrol than how much I actually drive. 2022 was the priciest by a country mile, and not because I drove more, the mileage was bang average, but because the price per litre went mad. 2020 was the cheapest, for the least impressive reason going: I hardly went anywhere, and fuel was dirt cheap anyway.
2020 was cheap because I barely drove and petrol had crashed, not because of any clever driving. 2022 was dear purely because of the price.
07/The real cost
About 12.7p a mile to keep moving.
Pence per mile is probably my favourite number, because it squishes the price and the economy into one: what it genuinely costs me to drive a single mile. Back in 2019, before all the chaos, it was about 10.7p. Then it shot up, and even now, with petrol much cheaper again, it's stuck around 12.7p, still 19% higher than it was. The annoying bit is that cheaper fuel keeps getting cancelled out by the car going a tiny bit thirstier every year.
08/The fuel card
A small, steady saving since January 2024.
In January 2024 I started paying with a fuel card, which just quietly knocks a bit off the pump price. I've been logging both prices every time I use it, so I know exactly what it's saved me: £111 so far, slowly stacking up in the background over 35 fills. Never much on the day, but it's basically free money for doing nothing.
The best single one was £10.18 on 30 December 2024: a £52.88 fill that came to just £42.70 on the card. That one was so big because I filled up at motorway services, where the pump price is daylight robbery, so the card's rate left a massive gap.
- Saved via the fuel card
- £111
- Fills on the card
- 35
- Best saving, 30 December 2024
- £10.18
09/Still driving
The record continues.
So that's seven-ish years of it. The mileage barely budges, the economy wobbles about with the seasons, and the cost has been yanked around far more by the world than by anything I've done. You can pretty much read the pandemic and the energy crisis straight off the charts.
If I keep going at my usual 5,969 miles a year, the odometer should tick past 75,000 miles somewhere around February 2027.
I'm in no rush to get rid of it. It's cheap to run, it's never let me down, and honestly the longer this goes the more interesting it gets. So I'll just keep doing what I always have: writing down every litre, every mile, every price. I come back and give this a refresh every so often, so the date up top tells you how recent these numbers are.