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When Carl Camilleri goes to fill up his Ford Falcon XR6 Mark II, he pays just over 70 cents a litre for fuel. Filling up the whole tank costs about $60.

The tank is about 85 litres and if driven daily, lasts Camilleri two to three weeks around town.

“You can see why I love this car,” Camilleri says.

He is one of a dwindling number of Australians with a car fuelled by liquid petroleum gas – a fossil fuel composed of propane and butane, compressed into a liquid.

It may not be as headlining-grabbing as EVs when it comes to environmental impact, but LPG cars burn cleaner than traditional cars, releasing significantly less CO2 than petrol or diesel models.

Camilleri bought his car for $28,000 in 2013. At that time, there were 500,000 other LPG-fuelled vehicles on the road. That number has declined substantially, but the fuel crisis caused by war in the Middle East has suddenly made his car a hot commodity. Another motorist at a service station recently offered him more than $20,000 for it, which he politely declined.

“It’s become quite the blast in the Australian car industry recently, being one of the last of the perfect, Australian-made vehicles left around,” Camilleri says.

Sales of LPG cars peaked in the early 2000s when the government offered generous subsidies for factory installations and conversion. From 2014 onwards, the rollback of subsidies and the demise of local car manufacturing – where LPG tanks were factory fitted – caused the number of LPG-fuelled cars to drop sharply. As of 2025, there were only 200,000 left on Australian roads, according to Elgas.

But for enthusiasts, they are worth hanging on to.

After driving over 178,000km, Camilleri’s daughter calculates he has saved almost $20,000 in fuel. “The car almost paid for itself,” Camilleri says.

Carl once drove from his house in Point Cook to Deniliquin for a weekend and then all the way back on one tank. “I remember watching the gauge all the time, 660km, and that was with a boot-load of clothes and three people in the car; it was pretty cool.”

He also praises the car for its ability to tow what he calls his “toys” – a boat and a caravan – across Australia. Camilleri’s Falcon was factory-equipped with LPI, a system which injects LPG directly into the engine as a liquid rather than a vapour, offering better efficiency and more power.

The downside?

Despite the advantages, there is a downside to LPG.

The hardest part of owning an LPG car is finding a place to fill up, Camilleri says.

LPG sales dropped 87% from 2011 to 2025, and the number of service stations offering the fuel has fallen to about 406 in metropolitan Melbourne, 79 in metropolitan Sydney and 37 in metropolitan Perth.

It’s a problem. Stuart Brown created a Facebook community group for LPG users after his wife ran into trouble finding a place to fill up their car.

“She was visiting Tasmania in an LPG car and was having trouble finding gas … as the problem persisted, I was thinking this is ridiculous. I thought, well, maybe we’d make and grow our own group.”

He never expected the group to grow so big, with more than 6,000 members, many joining due to the fuel crisis.

“In the last month the group’s exploded because people are remembering that LPG is cheaper … seeing it’s not going up in price, so they’re coming back to it,” Brown says.

Brown and his wife own two LPG mid-90s Falcon utes and an LPI 1998 Range Rover.

The Range Rover has clocked more than 400,000km. Brown says it is in immaculate condition and still goes like a “freight train”.

Lack of government and motoring organisation support are two key issues facing LPG car owners, Brown says.

“Despite the fact we are basically using an Australian fuel manufactured in Australia that’s cheap and plentiful and clean, it’s this obsession with net zero that is holding LPG back.”

There are other ways to get an LPG car, such as conversion kits, which come in many different forms and acronyms, such as LPDI and LPI.

Conversion is done by installing an LPG storage tank, usually in the boot or under the floor of cars, and this will usually require a 4WD but other commercial vehicles can be used too.

A converter is then added. This converts the liquid gas into a gaseous vapour, as well as regulating the process. It is recommended that all of this is done by a mechanic and it’s estimated to cost between $1,500 and $4,500, according to Repco.

The NRMA recommends planning ahead for journeys with LPG cars, to make sure there are adequate places to fill up along the route.

Brown’s advice for anyone thinking of getting an LPG car is: “Make sure there’s gas near you and … be prepared to educate people on the fact that it’s Australian and cheap and clean.”