RON92, RON95 and RON97

I rarely update my blog, the thing that triggers me to write is when I was listening to my favourite breakfast radio show this morning, three radio hosts were fighting over the differences in RON92, RON95 and RON97 and had entirely no idea on the topic that caused the rift. Is really a downer to know that the hosts from my favourite breakfast show weren’t doing any homework at all for the topic that they were discussing, so I had decided to post something about it.

I realized people generally have few misconceptions on RON. To give you a brief idea, RON is an acronym for Research Octane Number, an index for your car’s ignition level (knocking). Higher RON value indicates easier knocking and lower value indicates harder ignition.

A common misconception people made was higher RON gases produce more power in a car as compared to lower RON gases. In fact, the amount of power generated from two different RON value gases is equal, or almost equal. The only different is the ignition level, higher RON gases have higher probability that unwanted ignition can occur which leads to engine overheating and shorten the engine’s life.

A second misconception on RON is that it indicates the level of lead compound, or RON92 represents leaded gases and RON95 represents unleaded gases. In Malaysia, the Government had eradicated the idea of having leaded gas long before, so all RON92, RON95 and RON97 gases are unleaded.

Higher RON gases are designed for high performance spot cars. If you owned an ordinary sedan, you do not need high RON value gases because in performance wise, RON95 is as good as RON97. So why lower RON gases are cheaper than higher RON gases? The reason being is Government subsidy. The Government in Malaysia subsidizes gases based on production cost; more subsidies are given to lower RON gases because of the lower cost of production. For gas refineries’ profit, I think is about equal for the same reason (difference in Government subsidies).