Price of fuel in France

Brace yourself:Ready?At least $8.25 per gallonHere's a graph of motor gasoline price in Europe as of about April 15:click Make sure you're looking at the graph for Motor Gasoline Prices Weekly Retail and if you read the graph line for France it appears to be about $8.25 per gallon right now. But the reason I said "at least $8.25" is: I can't tell whether the highest line is actually the color for France, if it is then the answer is more like $9.25 per gallon! Either way, not good news. The price of diesel is a little less, it's also on that website.

In a word, EXPENSIVE! Unleaded gas averages 1.32 Euro/litre, (approx. $8.02/gal) while diesel averages 1.18 Euro/litre (@$7.18/gal).

Any idea how many litres a compact car's gas tank holds?

Yep, it's pricey alright. Still worth it though. For one thing, the cars in Europe get better mileage than we're used to. And travelling by car is the best way to see the countryside. It's just one of those expenses that you need to accept if you're going to travel.

Have a great trip!

A Citroen C1 (what they call a compact...what we would call a sub-compact) will hold about 35 litres of fuel, or about 9 1/4 U-S gallons. It gets about 60 mpg fuel economy on the hiway....about 50 combined hiway/city.

Norm's data is excellent, as usual. If your smaller car here has a 12 gallon tank and you thought your car in Europe might have the same size tank, 12 gal x 3.8 = a 45 liter tank empty. And a 10 gal tank x 3.8 = 38 liter tank. You could probably go online and find the size of the tank in liters. We got a figure from a Europe resident the other day saying €1.38 per liter, €1.38/liter x 3.8 x 1.63 = $8.55/gallon, which is about what the graph (my post above) is saying for most of the countries. Diesel is maybe $1/gal less, on average.

Let's say you have a 40 liter tank and it's 1/4 full when you pull into the gas station (that might be pushing your luck). Anyway, that would be 30 liters x let's say €1.38 = €41 or x 1.63 = $67 for a fillup. Here's the kicker: we're getting reports that American credit cards (sans micro chip) have a tendency not to work at European gas stations, esp. those that are unmanned. If your card doesn't work and it's an unmanned station, you don't get gas and better not get too empty. If the card doesn't work and it's a manned station and it's "pump first then pay", you better have €41 ($67) in cash in your pocket to pay for the gas you just pumped.Makes the train sound better and better, doesn't it? Of course, we're North Americans and we don't do trains, right? (especially those of us in western North America)