If you have watched Dragons' Den yesterday evening, you must have seen the last guy who came with the invention of a device which can be fitted retrospectively in any diesel cars and will make filling up diesel car with petrol an impossibility.
Interesting to know that BMW, Ford & Land Rover have already built in similar feature in their new vehicles.
Hopefully, we'll see this on the high street within next few months.
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Clearly the entrepreneurs have misfuelled their diesels, as they handed over £250,000 for just 25% of the business.
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And that was the highest amount for someone in the den so far!
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Read all about it and order one?
Check out the cost for your vehicle.
For my old Mondeo cost is "Total with Postage:£79.49GBP"
www.misfuellingprevention.co.uk/
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OOPs just remembered my Mondeo is petrol ;-)
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Apparently not available for Mazdas. If this works I personally think it's a good idea. But not at that price!
Our fleet are all meant to have those silly devices that say something like "warning this is a diesel vehicle etc." when you open the filler flap. Not on my car!
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If the Dragons are worth their salt, they'll help these guys get it into forecourt shops and Halfords in a jiffy. Those places will get the price down under £50, which is where it belongs. The Dragons will also push for manufacturing more cheaply abroad, I would guess.
Pity they have to mention torque on their website. The light type on black background needs sorting too.
A device of this type is long overdue.
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Please can somebody explain how this device works, fitted as standard in new Mondeos I believe.
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It looks to me as if the diesel nozzle fits around the central filler on the new device but that the filler is too narrow to allow a petrol nozzle to enter. Quite a simple and neat solution but over-priced as many others have pointed out.
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Personally, I don't see how this device works, if fitting it produces a narrower orifice. How then does the wider diesel filling nozzle gain access? Or is there a central restrictor which prevents the narrower petrol nozzle being inserted?
Perhaps the bleeding obvious is escaping my mental capabilities.
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Wouldn't sticking "DIESEL ONLY" labels all over the place be a cheaper solution ?
At £69.99 + £9.50 Shipping, for the misfuel device, it's a heck of a price to pay.
One has to ask the question if people don't stop to think for 1 second about the correct type of highly explosive fuel they are about to put into their vehicles fuel tank then should they be driving on the roads ?
Edited by MikeTorque on 05/08/2008 at 13:13
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Yes, £69.99 + £9.50 Shipping is a lot to pay, but I bet a few people who have misfueled before will happily shell out!
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One has to ask the question if people don't stop to think for 1 second about the correct type of highly explosive fuel they are about to put into their vehicles fuel tank then should they be driving on the roads ?
There will always be human error. People aren't machines. That's why aircraft still crash for example. In 90% of cases its due to human error
Wherever possible the possiblity of critical error should be designed out. It seems amazing to me that cars are produced which can be misfuelled.
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Wish 'em well, obviously, but £70 is surely too dear and with Ford and the like fitting their own, it's already a diminishing market.
Can see this going the way of Kenlowe fans, Gunson's Colortune and a device I can't remember the name of that piped hot water to the washer jets via a heat exchanger.
My only regret is that odious Scotsman didn't back it, so he won't lose any of his money.
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Wouldn't sticking "DIESEL ONLY" labels all over the place be a cheaper solution ? At £69.99 + £9.50 Shipping for the misfuel device it's a heck of a price to pay. One has to ask the question if people don't stop to think for 1 second about the correct type of highly explosive fuel they are about to put into their vehicles fuel tank then should they be driving on the roads ?
I totally agree with you. Whenever I fill up, I check the pump, check the nozzle and even check the little digital disply which highlights the price and type of fuel you're about to use. How hard can it be?
maybe there are too many myopic drivers who just turn up, fill up then drive away totally oblivious to the world around them. As you say, these are the sort of people who shouldn't be on the road.
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"fill up then drive away totally oblivious to the world around them."
Usually women.
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I couldn't possibly comment, however saying that, only yesterday I saw a woman having her Focus sucked dry by one of these mobile guys who specialise in dealing with wrong fuel issues.
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Wish 'em well obviously, but £70 is surely too much and with Ford etc fitting their own, it is already a diminishing market.
Can see this going the same way as Gunson's Colortune, Kenlowe Fans, and a device whose name I forget which supplied hot water to your washer jets via a heat exchanger.
My only regret is that odious Scotsman didn't back it, so he won't be losing any of his money.
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Of course one of the downsides of such a device is that it requires the type of person who miss-fuels their car to buy and install it in the first place. Kind of a Catch-22 requirement!
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It can be confusing sometimes, especially if you're filling up at a different garage than you normally use.
On holiday recently I stopped off at an unfamiliar garage and had to check twice to make sure I was about to fill up with the correct fuel, because the pump nozzle colours and the pump display layout were different to what I was used to.
It didn't help that the cashier made a mistake by charging another customer for my fuel, and spent 20 minutes trying to contact her boss on the phone to sort it out. At the end of it I was so confused by it all I wasn't sure I'd filled up with diesel. Turned out I had got it right, but I do get paranoid about it.
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They kept you back 20 minutes due to their error?
You should have left your address and left.
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Just sniff the nozzle before you put it into the filler neck.
This serves multiple purposes; guarding against a mis-filled garage tank, making you think which liquid is going into the car tank and lifting the spirits by reminding you of the inherent efficiency of the diesel before you pay a whacking bill.
I've never got it wrong using this method - it's always caught a potential mis-fuel even when I had one car of each type.
659.
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Btw - I believe that after the 'Dragons' have done due diligence, many of the people that they promise money to don't actually get it!
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I'm far from convinced by all this misfuelling hoo-ha. In my opinion it's a nice ploy to wriggle out of warranty claims. Problems with your engine? Go for the injectors. No luck? Oh well try the pump. Never mind, it's under warranty. But no, swarf in the system of course, caused by misfuelling.
Our Migraine dci was misfuelled four times in the three years we had it. On each occasion about 10 litres of petrol was put in by mistake. In each case we then brimmed the tank with diesel and over the next week or so kept topping up with diesel whenever we could squeeze five litres or so in to dilute it. We had no problems whatsoever with the high pressure pump/injectors. That's not to say other things didn't cause grief on that wretched car but that's another story for another day.
£200 for a system drain? That's a nice little earner.
I would like to see some authoritative evidence that misfuelling is a problem. It wouldn't be too difficult to set up a laboratory test and see to what extent a diesel can tolerate some misfuelling.
£80 is too much for that gadget as well. It needs to be £19.99 max, particularly in the current economic mire of this cartoon economy of ours.
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Can't say I've done it myself, but SWMBO misfuelled the Scenic about 6 months ago, thankfully realising after just 6 litres and not starting the engine. We didn't even think about risking it - had it towed to a nerarby garage who relieved us of £125 to drain the tank and flush the fuel lines through with clean diesel.
Assuming it really was idiot proof and didn't impede normal filling of the tank, I'd pay £80 for this gadget. It's still less than half the going rate for a tank drain and line flush, and about a twentieth of the potential cost if you don't realise your mistake and drive off.
Good luck to them!
Cheers
DP
Edited by DP on 05/08/2008 at 21:50
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So it is right?
"A fuel and his money are soon parted"
dvd
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Groan. :-)
I still maintain if it stops you misfuelling just once, £80 is cheap. We pay hundreds of pounds for buildings and contents insurance every year, for example, and most of us are never accidentally demolished, burgled or flooded. It's the same principle - a complete waste of money until you need it.
Cheers
DP
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Can see this going the same way as Gunson's Colortune,
That just disappeared because cars stopped having carbs. I used to use it on my old Metro, it never failed an emissions test.
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£80 is too much for that gadget as well. It needs to be £19.99 max particularly in the current economic mire of this cartoon economy of ours.
If you were a fleet manager for BT, Hertz, Police, ambulance etc it would be worth it. If you are Joe Public with 1 car you can buy @ £80 or be careful!
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From my brief reading of the patent the standard filler on a petrol car seems to breach it, but then it preceded the patent so can't!
v3.espacenet.com/textdoc?DB=EPODOC&IDX=GB2435037&F...0
And just wait for the "substance sensing device" to fail, the device to fail, and the claims for £8k as detailed in their sales literature to roll in - bet they would only offer £80!
Siome people will soon be asking for rails on the road to steer their cars in case they get that wrong. Oh - that is a train isn't it!
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Gets better . . .
It does not prevent misfuelling, it only gives an indication to the user that they are about to misfuel but can be overcome by a determined user.
The preferred application also has diverter flaps which prevent the passage of the wrong fuel - I guess that means you get it on your shoes! Not sure I would want to be next to someone who was pouring petrol on the floor neat hot exhausts/cats!
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If this does work then I can see fleets taking them up even at £80. My car's list price is ovr £19k so the lease company got it for a lot less. But an additional £80 over 4 years.... it's nothing. And they could include it in the monthly lease cost ;-)
My simple check is always to look at the pump and nozzle before I put fuel in. My car is a diesel but it is me who fills up the wife's petrol car.
Once I broke down in a Mondeo (failed EGR) and I was concerned I'd got contaminated fuel or something. And as I paid at pump didn't bother with the receipt. Went back to Tesco and got them to dig out the till roll to confirm it was diesel and they handwrote the receipt with the transaction number.
Until more car companies integrate something like this I think they could be onto a good seller. £80 vs. cost of a new engine and fuelling system. Okay that's worst case.
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They are doing it the normal way, sell for top dollar, saturate the market at that price, then go down in £10 increments until each increment's sales are saturated. Eventually, you'll get one with 6 Tiger tokens.
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sq
Or buy one in the Pound Shop!
Edited by Pugugly on 06/08/2008 at 22:32
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vauxhall have had restrictors in the filler neck for years but its a plastic push in thing and any amount of force (ie wrong size nozzle) used to push it down the filler neck and cause all sorts of problems with filling up, as an ex AA man the amount of missfuels that we attended was almost as many as flat batterys on a cold frosty morning i am also paranoid about which fuel that i am putting into which vehicle i check and double check the mere thought of phoneing my manager and telling him that i had filled the AA van with the wrong fuel kept me on my toe's and as for the stick that i would get from my fellow AA men don't bear thinking about
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sq Or buy one in the Pound Shop!
How much will that be?
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I'm surpirsed it got past the Dragons with a retail price of that magnitude, unless their target market is large fleets with heavy volume discounts.
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The key to making money is to sell at a price just below where your target buyer will say it is too expensive!
The price will vary - the man in the street might baulk @ £80 for the item but the fleet man looks at not just the cost of the misfuel and repair costs but also the lost revenue from the downtime the van/car and driver were off the road.
As a punter you can be conscientous and avoid misfuelling, the fleet manager has to allow for the 10% of drivers who do not give a monkeys or an unaware driver who visits a BP site with green hoses on diesel pumps!
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"The key to making money is to sell at a price just below where your target buyer will say it is too expensive"
Well, actually no. The van Westerndorp price sensitivity analysis technique combined with breakeven analysis whereby you can determine the optimum volume/margin tradeoff is a more insightful approach to making money. However, anything to do with pricing involves an element of art as well as science.
MGs
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www.saxonind.co.uk/fuelrite.htm
Looks like it does the same job and not quite £80!!
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I have looked into this and they are charging way too much, did you here the profit figures compared to their turnover figures. Its not right.
Been looking around for something cheaper, found this:
www.think-diesel.co.uk/
Think its much better and a hell of a lot cheaper.
Xav
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What an amazing website - lots about the problem of misfuelling, but nothing about what their product actually does.
From the pictures I assume that it shouts "think diesel" at you when you open the filler cap, but it's not exactly clear.
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I think the optimum is to have two prices for virtually identical products. That mops up the budget market at £9.99, and also catches people who like paying £70 for the "real" thing with the right expensive looking labels.
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I'm surpirsed it got past the Dragons with a retail price of that magnitude unless their target market is large fleets with heavy volume discounts.
I saw it last night and the fleet price was quoted at £50.
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Its easy enough for car manufacturers and petrol stations to solve, fit a transponder to the fuel tank aperture and a reader to the pump, inserting the pump into the tank turns on the pump providing its the correct fuel type for the car.
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Regarding this device : www.think-diesel.co.uk/
It attaches to the inside of the fuel cap and when you open the fuel cap it makes an audio warning noise and then says : "Stop diesel, remember diesel" twice.
It's £8.98 inc. p&p.
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All the devices mentioned previously rely upon the driver being alerted to the mistake they are just about to make. Even the gadget shown on Dragons Den (one hollow tube within another) will allow petrol in.
If you think you might become one of the 410 who misfuel every day in the UK then you should wait a few weeks and check out Caparo's new 'Rightfuel' see www.caparo.com/rightfuel Its the same company who make the T1 sports car, the one the Stig broke the lap record with on top gear last year.
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I'm surpirsed it got past the Dragons with a retail price of that magnitude unless their target market is large fleets with heavy volume discounts.
Bear in mind that if you share your car with others, such as partner, children, relatives, the chances of misfuelling increase. And if you have a fleet, the costs of misfuelling will be high. So I think you have to think about the potential savings. Yes it is expensive, but I suppose that is how the market works. And if they have not patented it, or the patent is easy to work around, then they won't be in business long, or the price will drop from competition.
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I have been doing research on many different misfueling devices, i had seen and enquired about the DDN device before it featured on Dragons Den and it looked like the best one untill a few months back i found an actual device that completely stops you putting petrol in a diesel, unlike the DDN device that claims it does when you can just stand there and squirt petrol straight in, therefore it doesn't prevent misfueling!!
I recently ordered the DDN device for a New Mercedes Sprinter Van and once it came it didn't fit at all and the instructions were very confusing, not just that but it looked cheap and badly made.
The other misfueling device i found that completely eliminates misfueling is:
tullmaninnovations.com/
I recommend you having a look at the site above before you go near any other device claiming they prevent misfueling when they clearly don't.
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I have a device to prevent misfuelling on my BMW, and it cost nothing...it's called a brain.
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