How economical is the Dacia Sandero Bi-Fuel in practice?

For this overview, we look at the Dacia Sandero that was delivered from 2016 to 2021. Under the hood is a 0.9-liter three-cylinder turbo petrol engine. The block mobilizes 90 horses and, as we are used to from Dacia, comes from the shelves of mother Renault. What you will no longer find at Renault is the Bi-Fuel version, while Dacia boosts the engine in the new Sandero with another 10 hp and replaces the designation Bi-Fuel with the trendy ECO-G. The savings are at least as hip, because in practice there is often a whole euro difference between the price of a liter of LPG and a liter of petrol.

Stack receipts

Seven owners of a Dacia Sandero Bi-Fuel keep track of their consumption in the AutoWeek Consumption Monitor. Involuntarily we expected that more Sandero drivers would keep track of their consumption. Would driving on LPG be so beneficial that people do not think about the costs or is the range on gas so limited that keeping track of consumption becomes a day’s job?

To answer these questions directly: this driver does not enter every receipt, but processes them once every 5,000 km. Pretty smart, although an input error here and there immediately distorts the overall picture. It also appears that owners of a Sandero Bi-Fuel in practice drive about 350 to 400 km between two refuellings. Because the filling level is limited to 80 percent with LPG, about 32 liters of the 40 liter tank capacity are available.

The Sandero Bi-Fuel also has a regular petrol tank, after all, an LPG-g3 car always starts on petrol. According to the AutoWeek Consumption Monitor, the owner must therefore count on an average fuel consumption of 1 in 130. This will be higher if people make many short journeys and decrease with longer motorway journeys.

Consumption Dacia Sandero Bi-Fuel

Fast calculators have already been able to estimate the consumption of the Sandero on LPG. On average, the Sandero uses 7.6 liters of LPG per 100 km, which corresponds to 1 in 13.2. Slightly more economical than the Sandero Stepway in the AutoWeek Endurance Test, namely 1 in 12.7. Cost-wise, you can compare the consumption of the Sandero Bi-Fuel with a petrol car that drives roughly 1 in 30.

Let’s close on another positive note. As you read in the intro, Dacia itself gives a consumption of 7 liters per 100 km, so 1 in 14.3. This means that the difference between theory and practice is limited to a neat 8.5 percent.