I’m sure that many readers will remember the days when petrol stations had attendants that put the petrol into the tank for you – before the days when “self service” became the modern way of filling up.

Well, perhaps we are going to return to that kind of service. I’ve been fascinated today by a video of a petrol station in the Netherlands, that uses a robot arm to fill up the cars.

The robot knows from the type of car how to open the petrol cap, and presumably whether or not to put diesel in. I wonder how it copes with bio-ethanol?

It looked rather slow at the moment, so I guess the queues at the petrol station near here would just get longer. I also didn’t see anywhere to pay for the petrol – does the robot arm swipe your credit card as well?

As fascinating as it is, I’m still not too sure what to make of it all. It may be nice not to have to get out of your car, but it doesn’t help the unemployment figures!

Today I filled up with bio-ethanol for the first time. Germany’s first bio-ethanol petrol station is located in Bad Homburg and to operate the pump I have a coded key, which allows me to go there at any time of the day, regardless of the opening hours.

For my first visit, however, I decided to go there whilst it was open, just to make sure that there were no problems.

Actually there was a problem – a car had parked on the space in front of the bio-ethanol pump, and I had to wait about 15 minutes until it was moved.

After that I parked there myself, turned the key and filled up the car. As simple as that! Now I have a full tank and can work out for myself how much the car is using. The on-board computer says that I used 13.3litres/100km since I started driving the car, but I don’t know how many litres were in the tank when I got it so I can’t check that figure.

The first bio-ethanol petrol station in Germany,
located in Bad Homburg

As yet I haven’t had to fill up the bio-ethanol car – it came with a full tank! But I have been looking at where to go when I do need to.

My dealer in Bad Homburg will probably be my usual port of call – the petrol pump is key-operated so I can go there anytime and get sent a monthly bill which should be very convenient.

But looking further afield, the site e85.biz has a downloadable directory of bio-ethanol petrol stations.

The list currently has 91 entries for Germany – I’ve already downloaded it to my Palm to be able to take it with me – the first thing I noticed was that there are lots of independent petrol stations or smaller chaines – the larger ones are conspicuous by their absence.

If a large car manufacturer like Ford can make the cars to run on bio-ethanol, surely the major petroleum chains can put it on their forecourts?

And unless I’m very much mistaken, none of the ones on the list are located on a motorway that I use regularly.

So what do I plan to do? Well, fill up before I go for one thing, and maybe put enough normal petrol into get home again. If I’m staying somewhere then I will find out where the nearest bio-ethanol petrol station is and go there if it’s not too much of a detour, but at the moment I don’t think I’d leave the motorway to find one situated in an area that I’m not familiar with.