Lai said cross-border refuelling is often tied to broader travel patterns rather than driven solely by cost savings.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn this context, refuelling (petrol in mainland China) is seen as a secondary convenience of the trip, meaning people will continue to do it even if the financial benefit is marginal,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
Instead, drivers who do not regularly travel to the mainland may turn to alternatives like electric vehicles (EVs) if petrol prices remain high.<\/p>\n
Chin, the 55-year-old driver, is among those who have made the switch.<\/p>\n
\u201cPetrol prices in Hong Kong are too high but driving to the mainland just to refuel takes too much time,\u201d he told CNA.<\/p>\n
He has since switched to an EV, under a government \u201cone for one\u201d scheme that offers tax incentives for replacing older petrol cars.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow that the economy is not doing so well, I will save (as much as I can) save,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
BUT IS IT WORTH THE TRIP?\u00a0<\/p>\n
For Hong Kong drivers, the cost effectiveness of pumping petrol across the border also depends largely on the type of vehicle and how trips are made.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is tied to fuel tank capacity and fuel efficiency,\u201d said Lai from PolyU.<\/p>\n
Larger vehicles like SUVs or 7-seaters, with tank capacities of up to 90 litres, stand to benefit more, Lai added.<\/p>\n
Even so, time cost can offset any savings.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe trade-off of sacrificing several hours just to save a few hundred dollars\u201d means efforts \u201cdon\u2019t always pay off\u201d, said Lai.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lai said cross-border refuelling is often tied to broader travel patterns rather than driven solely by cost savings.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550191,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[64,63,99,512,164,10340,5520],"class_list":["post-550190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-china","tag-economy","tag-hong-kong","tag-petrol"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550190\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550191"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}